Chef’s Week PDX

If you are the type who saves up to splurge on food-related things, here’s your next one-time-only opportunity: Chef’s Week PDX is a new series of dinners running Feb 6-9 that teams Portland’s hotshot chefs up with others from up and down the West Coast for unique, multi-course collaborative offerings.

Each has a theme, like “Hearth and Turf,” which promises “rustic, flavorful, West Coast soul food” and matches up Portland chefs from Ava Gene’s (which is hosting), Nedd Ludd, Urban Farmer, and Departure with Seattle’s Matt Dillon from Sitka & Spruce and Vancouver BC’s Angus An from Maenam—and so on down the line. (Complete list of the locations and match-ups here.)

It all sounds very exciting and a little clusterfucky, but these are the very professionals that cities trust their reputations to, so let’s assume they can perform this kind of dining room pornography in suitably astonishing form—even the finale dinner, which features 21 courses, one prepared by each of the series’ participants, plus additional contributors from places like Little Bird and Ox. And if it sounds expensive, you are right: each night grows spendier, with the first starting at $75 a head (plus $35 if you’d like a beverage pairing), but to each his own financial priorities. (And keep in mind that Portland Dining Month—during which you can get three courses at some of these same fancy-pants joints for a much more reasonable $29—is coming up in March.)

• Chef’s Week PDX
• Hearth & Turf