September 29, 2020: Support Your Local Economy, Cooking with Gas Edition! -

Pop culture and I are acquainted, but we don't know each other well. It has always been thus. I watched Miracle on 34th Street for the first time this week. (It had been on my list for a while.) I got a kick out of Natalie Wood's little-girl knees.

In the realm of TV-entertainment, I am undereducated: I don't watch cooking shows or gardening shows, singing or dancing competition shows, wedding shows, reality shows or makeover shows except - if I am demoralized in a very particular way - Queer Eye, which can cheer me up by letting me cry, what with the guys just being so bracing-yet-encouraging to people who really need it. (I am not alone in this.) 

So my first thought upon learning that the next season of Top Chef will be based in Portland was to shrug. Not my thing, have fun, all of you. 

My second thought was Oh, dear, please don't let them discover one of my favorite places and make the chef so famous that I can never get in there again (if and when "getting in" is a thing we can do).

And my third thought was: that's so nice of them, to feature us right now on some national show where we get to shine and not be portrayed as a hotbed of anarchy OH! WAIT! They could call it the Anarchist Cookbook season, but no, there is already an Anarchist Cookbook, so I hope none of the contestants think there will be a print deal spinning off from this, though I suppose they could feature "cooking with tear gas," and ....

No. 

Sorry. 

That's how long it took for me to go dark: three thoughts. 

Anyway, going back to thought #2, our favorite local chef who really WAS a chef - Kevin Gibson - closed Davenport, his restaurant on Burnside, a few months into the pandemic. Kevin will rise again, phoenix-like, from the hotplate, as he did at Evoe, after Castagna, after Genoa.... (I just Googled around to see if by some chance he has already opened a cart or something, and then I felt sad at all the "best chefs of America" pieces; 2014, 2016, 2018, and .... poof ! Come back, Kevin!)  Davenport, like many local restaurants, was crushed by the pandemic. In fact, two nights before all Portland restaurants closed in March, we went to Davenport to show our support, because there was the possibility that restaurants might be closed for TWO WEEKS - two whole weeks, people! - and we though that might be hard for them to weather. They actually lasted for months, and they experimented with takeout, but they folded in the end. 

Other than Davenport, though, most of my favorite places are probably characterized as having "cooks" rather than "chefs," and are likely not going to be featured on Top Chef. (I am just guessing. I assume they don't often pluck people from the obscurity of little ethnic restaurants out on 82nd Avenue.) 

Chances are I will be able to get takeout mi quang from Pho Van for some time to come. The thought made me so happy that I drove out and got some to go.