Portland’s star chef Naomi Pomeroy dies

Naomi Pomeroy, a shining star of the Portland restaurant scene, died last weekend in a tragic accident. The 49-year-old chef was tubing on the Willamette River near Corvallis, Oregon with her husband (fellow chef Kyle Linden Webster) and another party on Saturday, when the group hit a snag and were pulled under. Her husband and the other person were removed to safety quickly but efforts to locate the chef, who was not wearing a life jacket, were hindered due to heavy debris.

Pomeroy was a self-taught chef who made her first recipe at age four. She was selected as Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chef in 2009 and competed on “Iron Chef” in 2010 and “Top Chef Masters” in 2011. Pomeroy redefined the Portland, Oregon restaurant scene at Beast, her groundbreaking fine-dining destination. In 2014, Pomeroy won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific. Her 2016 cookbook Taste & Technique: Recipes to Elevate Your Home Cooking was well received.

Beast closed in October 2020, a casualty of the pandemic. During that time, Pomeroy was a vocal advocate for the Independent Restaurant Coalition, lobbying for more funds for restaurants. She used the shuttered restaurant space to launch Ripe Cooperative, a hybrid neighborhood restaurant and market specializing in grab-and-go items. Ripe closed in 2022.

Most recently, Pomeroy partnered with longtime Beast sous chef Mika Paredes on Cornet Custard, which got its start as a pop-up at Pomeroy’s flower shop Colibri. Cornet just opened its first standalone location on SE Division Street in May and Pomeroy had also planned to open a new restaurant in the same building. Condolences from fellow chefs and food industry people flooded social media. Dominique Crenn and Gavin Kaysen were among those posting tributes, remembering Pomeroy as a “beautiful soul.”