Hannah Wallace

The Nike Designers who Started an Online Cremation Service

I wrote about Solace, a Portland-based startup, for Bloomberg Businessweek. 

David Odusanya (L) and Keith Crawford (R) at the Solace offices in Portland, Oregon 

When Keith Crawford and David Odusanya started their cremation company in April 2019, there was no way they could anticipate that a worldwide pandemic would soon prove the urgency of their model.

As Covid-19 approaches the two-year mark, Solace Cremation has turned out to be a service for the modern age—a web-based business that offers a safe and remote experience while allowing customers to smoothly organize a loved one’s cremation. Based in Portland, Ore., with operations in Seattle and Southern California, Solace handles the entire process almost completely online.

Crawford and Odusanya, formerly brand designers at Nike, left the apparel giant in 2017 to form their own creative agency, Co-Lab.  A couple years later, after reflecting on the difficulties they both experienced upon losing a parent, they started to research the funeral business. 

Crawford’s father died in 2013 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease, but he’d planned everything about his own funeral and paid for all of it in advance. Even so, the funeral director overseeing the arrangements tried to up-sell Crawford and his siblings on various products and services once their father was gone. “Why would we want to do anything different from what my dad had chosen?” Crawford asks. And why, he kept wondering, hadn’t anyone come up with a better experience, given how many Americans are dissatisfied with end-of-life rituals.

Odusanya’s mother passed away later that same year, in his hometown of Sheffield, England. Her wish was to be cremated.  “I couldn’t understand why we were paying $2,000 for a wooden casket,” he says.

They each came away from those experiences wondering how they might fully redesign the funeral home experience — “so creepy and gloomy,” says Crawford. Part of their research involved interviewing families who’d had reactions similar to Crawford’s. The process, they heard again and again, was antiquated and cold, leaving most people feeling it was all about money. The pair was also surprised to learn that the cremation rate surpasses the burial rate in this country and no one’s building new funeral homes. So they ditched their initial idea and focused on modernizing the experience of saying goodbye to a loved one.

The death-care industry is dominated by Service Corporation International, a conglomerate that owns mortuary chains such as Dignity Memorial, Neptune Society, and Funeraria Del Angel. The industry is notoriously opaque about pricing. Even in California, where funeral homes must list prices online, a loophole allows many to get out of that basic requirement. Most funeral homes won’t disclose rates until you’re sitting at a table with them with a big binder plopped down in front of you.

“If you’ve chosen direct cremation there is no need for all the funeral home visits, paperwork by hand, and in-person meetings,” Crawford says. “We removed that from the equation and—COVID aside—people are very happy about that. It gives them time to do other things—plan a memorial, grieve with their families.”

Funeral rates rise with various purchases: caskets, floral arrangements, even prayer cards. And the cost of cremation increases significantly when handled by a traditional funeral home—to an average of $2,550 in the U.S., according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Even when choosing cremation at a typical funeral home, the fees can pile up, says Malisa Riceci, Solace’s funeral director. “If you want ‘priority’ cremation, if you want a lock of hair, if your loved one is over a certain weight, even if you want a pacemaker removed—these all add up very quickly,” she says. Most people, still overcome by grief, wind up agreeing to extra costs because they don’t have the time or emotional energy to shop around or negotiate.

Solace adds no extra fees. Its $895 flat fee includes: picking up the body (of any size), removing a pacemaker, cremating within 48 hours, completing paperwork, and returning a loved one’s ashes in a simple cardboard box. The only extra cost is for the death certificate, as that varies depending on the state and the number of copies a family needs.

The Solace office in Portland, Oregon.   [Courtesy of Solace Cremation] 

 

“What they have done is brilliant and necessary,” says Michael Hebb, founder of Death Over Dinner, a nonprofit that organizes events where people talk about death. He met Crawford and Odusanya about five years ago at Endwell, an annual industry symposium. “For one, the clarity of the offer and the pricing.” he says. “It’s not hidden away in some part of a funeral home’s website.”

Liz Eddy is the 31-year-old founder of Lantern, a resource guide for end-of-life planning that also serves as a digital vault for documents. Eddy singles out the one-on-one care the Solace team takes with each customer—even as it’s done remotely. “You have to deeply connect and earn trust with the individual,” she says. “They allow for ease, but also the experience is warm and connected and run by people who really understand” customers’ needs.

Solace says its growth has been swift. Although it doesn’t disclose figures, it says revenue tripled from 2019 to 2020. The startup recently collaborated with the Good Mod, a Portland design company, and industrial designer Rob Bruce, also a former Nike employee, to create more permanent urns—a frequent customer request—from 3D printed clay. These are available for sale on a separate website for $195 and up.

“We want to provide services that families want,” Odusanya says, “vs. just trying to sell them anything.”

Politics Not As Usual

I wrote a profile of two powerhouse Mount Holyoke alumnae: Tami Gouveia ('96) and Kristen Elechko ('97) for the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly.  

Kristen Elechko, left, and Tami Gouveia, right. 

In early 2021, Kristen Elechko ‘97, who had recently wrapped working for U.S. Senator Ed Markey’s reelection campaign in Massachusetts, finally had time to read her Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly. She was skimming through the Class Notes when one name jumped out at her: Tami Gouveia ‘96.

Though she had not known Gouveia at Mount Holyoke, she had recently read the statement that Gouveia, a Massachusetts state representative from the 14th Middlesex District, had released on why she hadn’t voted for Ron Mariano for speaker of the Massachusetts House. "I believe that the residents of my district and across the state deserve, and are demanding, an open process and new leadership that represents the values, identities and priorities of voters across our state," Gouveia’s statement read in part. She felt that Mariano stood for politics as usual — he was so sure he’d win that he didn’t even give a speech until after he was elected — and that the climate crisis, the housing emergency and staggering economic inequality in Massachusetts demanded bolder leadership than he would offer. None of her House colleagues could give her a compelling reason to vote for Mariano, a Democrat, she wrote, except that she could be punished for not endorsing the status quo. "None could describe the great things that Speaker Mariano might do to help ensure a just recovery through the coronavirus pandemic," she wrote.

Elechko was impressed that Gouveia had the guts to not vote for Mariano. "I’d had conversations within my channels around how much I appreciated her standing in her leadership and in her values, and doing something that’s very hard publicly," Elechko says. She was also inspired by how Gouveia regularly spoke up about the need for climate justice and simultaneously raised up young leaders of the Sunrise Movement. When she discovered that Gouveia was an MHC alum, she says, "I lost my mind! I reached out to her on every channel possible and thanked her, and also noted that we were at Mount Holyoke at the same time. We had a wonderful exchange," Elechko says. And then that was that.

A few months later, in March, when Lowell, Massachusetts, native Gouveia decided to run for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, she started asking people in her networks for suggestions for a whip-smart campaign manager. Elechko’s name came up several times. Gouveia soon arranged to talk with Elechko over Zoom.

"It wasn’t like a traditional interview. It was more like, ‘Here are my values and here’s how I approach the world, and here’s how I think about campaigns, and here’s how I think about leadership,’" Gouveia says. "And then there was a lot of laughing, head nods and ‘Yes. Yes! Yes!’"

They had two or three multi-hour-long conversations.

Elechko, who had been the deputy relational organizing director for Ed Markey’s campaign, had instant chemistry with Gouveia. Gouveia felt the same and hired Elechko, who began her new job as campaign manager in mid-June.

GOUVEIA: POLITICS NOT AS USUAL

When I interviewed Gouveia in 2018 for my “She’s Running” feature for the Quarterly it was the first time she had run for office, after a 25-year career as a social worker protecting children from environmental toxins and preventing substance abuse. She ran against two men in the primary—winning with 64.3% of the vote, the widest margin of a first time candidate in the state’s history—and then went on to win against a Green-Rainbow Party candidate in the general, garnering 90% of the vote.

"Representing the people of the 14th District has been the joy of a lifetime," Gouveia says. "They are just very civically engaged. They show up for meetings, they reach out to me all the time about different policy issues they care about." But despite getting some progressive legislation passed, her time in the state legislature has shown her that her skills as a public health social worker might be better suited to the role of lieutenant governor. "What I’ve been observing is that the corner office has been occupied by people who prefer to maintain the status quo. They don’t have the express commitment to addressing the structural issues that drive inequities in our state — whether you’re talking about inequities around race or ethnicity or immigration status or class or gender and gender identity. We’re standing still," Gouveia says. "So there’s so much opportunity — especially with the infusion of federal dollars as a result of COVID-19 — to really chart a different path forward. And I’m not seeing that from Charlie Baker."

Continue reading here.     Or download the PDF here. Download MHQ_Sum21_Tami-Kristen FEAT_Spreads

How These Founders Are Detoxifying the Denim Industry—and Saving the Planet

This story appeared in Inc.'s October, 2021 issue, as part of the Female Founders 100.

Most jeans manufacturers rely on petroleum-based dyes and pollutants. Tammy Hsu and Michelle Zhu are on a mission to revolutionize the industry with planet-friendly, microbe-based dyes.

Michelle Zhu (left) and Tammy Hsu run Huue, a startup developing sustainable textile dyes to replace the ecologically destructive colorants the fashion industry uses.

About 20 percent of the world's industrial water pollution comes from textile dyeing. And the denim industry is the worst offender: Most mass-market denim brands rely on petroleum-based dyes and chemicals like formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. In 2019, that reality inspired Tammy Hsu and Michelle Zhu to start Huue, which they spun out of Hsu's grad school work at the University of California at Berkeley, where she developed dyes made from microbial secretions. Huue is working on the launch of its first dye, a natural-but-synthetic indigo. The company's eight scientists are also developing sustainable dyes and colorants to disrupt other parts of the fashion industry. --As told to Hannah Wallace

 

ZHU: My parents were entrepreneurs in the apparel industry. Their brand focused on urban streetwear in the late '90s and early 2000s, which was why denim was such a large focus. As a child, I would visit garment manufacturing facilities on summer trips to China and witness the pollution firsthand: particles in the air that workers had to guard against with facemasks, and foul-looking waterways around the factories. It made a lasting impression on me.

HSU: I came at it from studying science and biology. The lab I was in was very entrepreneurial—we were all thinking about how we could apply these solutions to real-world problems. I'm interested in fashion, clothes, and textiles. The more I read about it, the more I realized that this is a huge problem in the industry.

ZHU: Until the turn of the 20th century, indigo was made from plants. Natural indigo is not very cost effective or scalable, and its performance and color consistency doesn't fit industrial needs. Today, it is generally created via petrochemicals. Fossil fuels are used at the source of creation, but the industry also relies on toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde and benzene— which not only pollute the planet but are carcinogenic as well. That's the main challenge we're tackling.

HSU: We look at how the indigo plant makes the indigo dye molecule. Then we take that genetic information and instruct our microbes to make indigo the same way. We're growing these microbes, and they're programmed to secrete the indigo.

ZHU: Microbes are truly amazing—they multiply rapidly. We call them nature's most powerful manufacturers.

 

HSU: Six years ago, my professor at Berkeley had a grant, and a story was written about our project. When people learned we were working on sustainable indigo, brands started inquiring.

ZHU: We'd just hired our team of scientists and everyone was so excited to get to work last year. And then it was all shut down. Our milestones are lab-based, so not being able to go into the facility for three months created all sorts of uncertainty. Then there was the issue of when we could run productions and supply products. We were fortunate to win a female founders competition hosted by Microsoft's M12 fund, Mayfield, and Melinda Gates's Pivotal Ventures. That gave us an extra million dollars, which was a big help in the midst of Covid. Finally in July 2021, we brought the whole (vaccinated) team back into the lab full time.

HSU: We've made a lot of progress to scale up our production with a couple of facilities around the U.S. and to make our microbes more efficient. In August, we were producing 80 times more dye than at the end of last year. Our partners want huge amounts of dye.

ZHU: The fashion industry is aware of its challenges—its troubled supply chain and the toxic nature of the dyeing process. It hasn't been difficult to get people really excited about the technology and potential.

Great Escape: Oregon's Wallowa Mountains

I recently got to write about one of my favorite regions of Oregon: the Wallowa Mountains.  It may be a five-hour drive from Portland, but boy, this part of the state is utterly gorgeous.  I long to go back every summer to hike, camp, swim, and have a beer along the creek at Terminal Gravity. 

At the end of our long hike from the trailhead, we found the Minam River Lodge 

Here's my story, for Conde Nast Traveler. I'll give a tease here.  

Two hours into our hike through the Eagle Cap Wilderness, I looked up from the wooded path to see that the thick stand of Douglas fir was draped in a gauzy yellow-green lichen. “Usnea!” I called out to my husband, Don, who is used to me blurting out the scientific names of Pacific Northwest flora and fauna. The usnea—also called old-man's beard—looked ethereal in the dappled afternoon sunlight. I half expected to see a wood sprite spring out from behind one of the towering firs in this patch of old-growth forest.

I suppose you could say that Don and I had come to this far-­northeastern corner of Oregon to escape reality for a bit. After the year we'd had—cooped up indoors, our attention wandering from the pandemic to the protests, the wildfires to the election—we felt we'd earned it. The place's remoteness, a five-and-a-half-hour drive from our home in Portland, helps explain why, even though I've lived in Oregon on and off since the late '80s, I didn't visit Wallowa County until a decade ago. But when I first saw the wide-open Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, snowcapped mountains, and glacial lakes, I fell in love. I've been back a handful of times since to hike and ride horses.

Some refer to the Wallowa Mountains, a 40-mile-long range that extends into neighboring Union County, as Oregon's Alps, and the whole region does bear some resemblance to Switzerland. But it's also distinctly the American West. The Nez Percé were the first people to settle the area. They lived here for at least 11,000 years before being driven out by the U.S. Army in the late 1870s, in direct violation of the U.S. government's own treaty. Though the tribe is now officially based in Idaho, it still holds culture camps for Nez Percé kids each summer near Wallowa Lake.

An aerial view of Joseph, Oregon with Wallowa Lake in the background. PHOTO: LEON WERDINGER

There's something romantic about hiking into a place with everything you need on your back. Even better when the destination is a backcountry luxury retreat with no Wi-Fi or cell service where we could be blissfully ignorant of the news cycle. We were on our way to the Minam River Lodge, hidden in the middle of the 360,000-acre Eagle Cap Wilderness and accessible only by private plane, horseback, or foot.

Owner Barnes Ellis came here in his 20s for a family reunion. It was 1990 and the property—an old hunting lodge—had seen better days. The beauty of the wild landscape made an impression on him, though, and 20 years later he bought the roughly 126-acre spread. By then the lodge was a dilapidated wreck, but Barnes hired an architect and embarked on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar renovation. Since the Minam opened in 2017, I'd had it in my mind to visit and, specifically, to arrive on foot, even if that meant possible, if unlikely, encounters with elk, cougars, and bears.

The eight-and-a-half-mile journey in, mostly downhill, started at the Moss Springs Trailhead, high above the tiny town of Cove. We didn't have to trek far after leaving the relative civilization of the Moss Springs campground to feel totally enveloped by wilderness. We traversed steep scree-covered paths, passed hillside meadows, and scrambled across pristine creeks, all against the backdrop of evergreen-covered mountains.

By the time we arrived at the Minam, our feet ached and it was a challenge to stand upright under our packs. Our tent was more of the glamping than camping variety, with luxe linens and wide-plank floors. (The resort also has cabins and conventional guest rooms in the lodge.) After a quick rest, we ambled slowly to the main lodge, where chef Sean Temple, a veteran of New York's Jean-Georges and Portland's beloved Paley's Place, holds court at the restaurant. Most of the herbs and vegetables he uses are grown on the property, while nearly everything else is sourced from nearby farms, ranches, and wineries. It was a memorable dinner—and not just because it was one of the first, in a very long while, that we didn't have to cook ourselves. After a chicory salad studded with Jonagold apples and showered with Parmesan, Temple presented a perfectly seared grass-fed strip steak over a purée of grilled chanterelles. We heard laughter from a boisterous group on the outdoor patio, a balm after months of isolation.

To continue reading, see the full story here.  

 

FACTS

Hotels

The Jennings: This 12-room boutique hotel is self check in, so be sure to have your key code before arriving. A communal kitchen/library means you can brew your own coffee or tea and store snacks in the fridge. From the shared balcony, you can view the mountains. Doubles from $95 (with shared bathroom)

The Indian Lodge Motel: If you can’t get into the Jennings, the Indian Lodge Motel down the street is a spotless, quiet spot with good beds and free Wifi. Doubles from $125.

Restaurants

The Range Rider One of the only restaurants along OR-82 open on a Tuesday night, Range Rider is a western bar complete with old cowboy boots, fiddles, and a 100-strong collection of vintage ceramic Jim Beam decanters. The grass-fed Corriente beef burger from 6 Ranch (just a few miles down the road), is a delicious juicy mess. 

Blythe Cricket This whimsical café serves up six delicious english muffin sandwiches, a daily fritatta, waffles, and strong Nossa Familia coffee. Get the Deep Dark Woods—sautéed mushroom, onion, spinach, egg, and havarti, all slathered with red pepper aioli on a homemade english muffin.  700 N. Main St., Joseph; Serves breakfast until 11:00 a.m.

The Gold Room—JoMarie Pitino and Ross Effinger make naturally-leavened crusts with Oregon-grown wheat at this pizzeria, which also has excellent sides like wood-fired beets with coriander buttermilk dip and radicchio salad with sourdough breadcrumbs, pecorino, and a roasted garlic dressing. Don’t skip the habanada margarita. 100 N. Main St., Joseph; Opened Thurs.-Sun., 3-8:00 p.m.

Activities /Shops

Joseph Branch Railriders— If you want to see off-the-road scenery without the exertion of hiking, take a ride on these recumbent bikes, orchestrated to fit on the region’s decommissioned railroad tracks. Just be sure to empty your pockets of all valuables. As your guide will warn you, people who don’t have had their wallets, sunglasses, and phones crushed on the tracks.

From May-early October; jbrailriders.com

Sports Corral—This store has everything you need for your Wallowa hiking/camping/hunting expedition. City folk will pine after the $280 Stetson hats and gorgeous cowboy boots and might even snap up an insulated Hydroflask beer flask, a fishing rod, or…a bear horn. 401 N Main Street, Joseph

Wild Carrot—Who knew that the headquarters for this botanical beauty brand, which has a cult following, is in sleepy Enterprise? In addition to rosewood body lotion, Doug Fir lip balm, and neroli night cream, the store sells organic tea, greeting cards, and hand-stitched wallets. 112 W. Main St., Enterprise 

 

 

The 'Top Chef' Guide to Portland

I wrote this Top Chef guide to Portland for Food & Wine back in June.

In Season 18 of Top Chef, the culinary reality competition traveled to Oregon for the first time. While we watched the cheftestants eat, cook, and compete for the title in the City of Roses, we also caught glimpses of the natural beauty of the entire state along the way-including the Columbia Gorge, the Oregon Coast, and Willamette Valley wine country. Here are all the locations visited by Top Chef in the city of Portland and beyond.

Portland Restaurants

Homebase for this season, the city known for its food carts and farm-to-table cuisine also boasts a wide range of African diaspora restaurants, Latino spots, and elevated Japanese fare, some of which were featured on-screen.

Akadi, which the contestants visited in Episode 3 with judge Kwame Onwuachi, is justly famous for its attieke poisson (grilled whole fish with grated, fermented cassava), peanut butter mafe and shosho (black eyed pea stew). Though it's been closed since January so chef-owner Fatou Ouattara could take an extended visit to her native Ivory Coast, it will re-open in September in a larger location with an expanded menu that will include dishes from Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, and South Africa.

 

Judge Gregory Gourdet took another group of contestants to Yaad Style Jamaican on busy MLK Jr., Boulevard for some curried goat and brown stewed chicken. Try these and other Jamaican specialties like oxtail stew or jerk chicken (with a medley of peppers and onions). Owner Curtis Mazelin hails from Montego Bay (he's lived in Portland since '97) and has plans to start some Reggae music nights this summer.

The South American country of Guyana is a melting pot of people and that's reflected in its diverse cuisines. Try the same delicious puff breads-stuffed with either a bacalhau (Portuguese-style salt cod) omelet or chana aloo (chickpea and potato curry)-that the contestants sampled at Bake on the Run, a food cart located at the Hawthorne Asylum pod.

The contestants also swung by the Portland Mercado, home to nine rotating food carts, to try Mathilde Aurelien Wilson's Haitian food. Though Wilson has since closed her food cart to run a catering company, you can sample the cuisines of Argentina, Colombia, Coast Rica, Cuba, Oaxaca, Peru, Venezuela, and more at the Mercado, which is also a business incubator for Latino food entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, you can try Wilson's tasty Mathilde's Kitchen hibiscus flower drinks all over town at New Seasons, Green Zebra, and Market of Choice.

Departure, where previous Top Chef contestant Gregory Gourdet presided until 2019, still shines atop the Nines Hotel. Executive Chef Matt Christianson oversees the new menu which still has a lot of inventive vegan options (mahogany noodles sport a chili glaze, truffle marinated crispy tofu, sweet pepper, shiitake, and spring rabe; baby gold potatoes with fermented cashew cream) as well as pork belly, steamed buns with wagyu meatball, and bison rendang curry.

Don't forget to hit up Season 18 contestant Gabriel Pascuzzi's restaurants, Mama Bird, Stacked Sandwich Shop, and Feel Good.

Portland Hotels

Left: CREDIT: THE HOXTON

Right: CREDIT: THE HOXTON

At the end of Episode 3, the judges dine in the lobby of the Hoxton, the edgy British hotel chain, to taste the contestants' own take on Pan-African cuisine.Post-pandemic, the lobby coffee bar has re-opened (though at limited capacity) with its work stations and Proud Mary coffee. Rooms have a Northwest-chic vibe with wood paneling, vintage furniture from local shops, and art from Portland's Upfor Gallery. Tope, the rooftop Mexican restaurant, has re-opened under chef Joel Lui-Kwan and still has its trademark spicy Margaritas and mouth-watering tacos.

Bed down where the Top Chef contestants stayed for three months during filming-at the Royal Sonesta (formerly Kimpton's Hotel Monaco). This 221-room property has a regal high-ceilinged lobby, Frette linens, and whimsical guest rooms with bird-patterned wallpaper.

Other 'Top Chef: Portland' Locations

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, otherwise known as OMSI, is one of the top science museums in the U.S. In addition to fun interactive exhibits for kids of all ages, the museum offers tours of the USS Blueback, the U.S. Navy's last non-nuclear powered submarine-now docked in the Willamette River.

Spend a few hours enjoying the tranquility of the Portland Japenese Garden, a lush series of gardens full of ponds, streams, and water fountains. Stop for tea from Tokyo-based Jugetsudo and a piece of castella cake at Umami Café.

One of the biggest urban green spaces in the country, Forest Park has over 80 miles of hiking trails, 112 species of birds, and serious wildlife. (Joggers have spotted elk and coyote.) Try one of the shorter loops of the Wildwood Trail and you'll soon be surrounded by towering Douglas fir and bigleaf maples.

Columbia Gorge

CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

Located along the "Fruit Loop" above Hood River, the 40-acre Mt. View Orchards is where the contestants picked their fruit for Episode 4's savory fruit challenge. Here you'll find everything from Pink Pearl apples and Akane to apricots, cherries, peaches, and plums-all with a backdrop of snow-covered Mount Hood.

Oregon Coast

An easy day trip from Portland, the Oregon Coast where to go to walk on the beach, explore tidal pools, and sample some ice cream.

CREDIT: CARLY DIAZ

Getting a cone (or a bag of cheese curds) at Tillamook Creamery is a time-honored summer tradition in Oregon. A few years ago, the facility got a splashy new redesign. It's currently open to visitors for self-guided tours of the creamery exhibit and purchases of to-go food and ice cream.

Gearheart is the tiny town where Portland native and pioneering American chef James Beard spent his summers as a child. Though his family cottage is privately owned (and therefore not open to the public) you can recreate his outings and pack a picnic of charcuterie, cheese, smoked fish, and bread and head to the beach or to stunning Ecola State Park, 18 minutes south.

CREDIT: LIDIJA KAMANSKY / GETTY IMAGES

Two miles south of Ecola is the popular coastal town of Cannon Beach, known for its iconic Haystack Rock. Book an oceanfront studio at the very place Top Chef contestants stayed, the 95-room Surfsand Resort.

About half an hour further south is picturesque Nehalem Bay, a state park that has year-round camping, a two-mile bike trail, and great crabbing and clamming. In fact, this is where the chefs go crabbing for their Dungeness at Kelly's Brighton Marina. Rent baited rings and a bucket from Kelly's and you can crab right from the dock. (Kelly's provides the shellfish permit, which is $19 for three days for non-Oregonians; $10 for Oregon residents.) 

Willamette Valley

Willamette Valley Vineyards, located just south of Salem in Oregon's celebrated wine country, is where the final challenge takes place in the Season 18 finale. Try a daily flight ($15-$20) or a "pairings exploration" which pairs small-lot wines with four small plates prepared by winery chef DJ MacIntyre.

Left: CREDIT: ANDREA JOHNSON

Right: CREDIT: CHERYL JUETTEN

One of the most beautiful vineyards in the state, Soter Vineyards is perched atop a hill in Carlton. Justly famous for their biodynamic pinots and rosés, the winery is also illustrious for having hired Top Chef contestant Sara Hauman to be their head chef in 2019.

More Food to Explore in Portland

Of course, Top Chef could only cover so much in 14 episodes shot during lockdown. If you're planning a trip to Portland, here are a few not-to-be-missed places that opened during or just before the pandemic.

Former food cart Malka became a brick and mortars restaurant in February 2020. Though their timing was rotten, chefs Jessie Aron and Colin McArthur pivoted to take-out and their inventive rice bowls, quirky salads, and outrageously yummy sandwiches have kept much of southeast Portland fed ever since. The Important Helmet for Outer Space is a must-slow-roasted pork shoulder in apricot curry BBQ sauce with pan-roasted mushrooms, stir-fried vegetables, crispy shallots, peanuts, and avocado on coconut jasmine rice. The veggie options are equally creative. A new salad, Hobbes is Wearing Jams! has sugar snap peas, quick pickled cherries, watermelon radish, mint and basil, tahini, spice-roasted carrots, golden raisins, fried shallots-and that's only half the ingredients. "I'm a maximalist, through and through," Aron says.

Chef Peter Cho of Han Oak fame opened Toki in January, in the old Tasty & Alder space. The restaurant, already known for its lip-smacking Korean fried chicken wings, also has chargrilled spicy pork short ribs, pork dumplings, and bi bim bap with Yuzu soy cured salmon belly served with snap peas, carrots, kohlrabi, and cabbage. 

Takibi, the hotly anticipated Japanese bonfire restaurant, is now open in Snow Peak's new flagship store. (The Japanese outdoor lifestyle brand has had a presence in Portland since 1999.) Start with a cocktail; the bar menu is a fun collaboration between bar legend Jim Meehan and buzzy new talent Lydia McLuen. Chef Alex Kim, a veteran of Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City and Tokyo, creates an aggressively seasonal menu of shareable dishes. Standouts include the sashimi platter (served with Oregon-grown wasabi), the charcoal-grilled black cod with white miso, and his handmade soba noodles. Just around the corner is the brand-new Smith Teamaker Cafe. Chef Karl Holl's small but stellar plant-based menu includes tea-infused dishes like golden turmeric noodles with tea kimchi and chocolate chia pudding with Lord Bergamont jam and chocolate hazelnut granola. It goes without saying that these dishes pair splendidly with Steven Smith teas and tea lattes.