Congratulations to Vitaly Paley: the chef will celebrating the 20th anniversary of Paley’s Place on Sunday with a special tasting menu featuring his greatest hits from over the years. It’s some feat to keep any restaurant going for two decades, let alone managing to thrive and stay relevant as well. Back in 1995 Portland was just a “lunch stop on the way from San Francisco to Seattle”, as Paley put it to me in an interview a few years ago, but traveling here from the East Coast he was captivated by the availability of great ingredients and by the fact there weren’t any grand culinary traditions or rules here—as Paley put it, “There [was] nothing set in front of us that says this is how you cook.”
Paley’s Place was one of the original Portland restaurants to offer modernized, upscale dining—the cooking was French influenced, but very much of the Northwest, and if ‘local’ and ‘seasonal’ are now monotonous adjectives found on every menu in town, it’s in part thanks to Paley’s pioneering efforts. Paley has won numerous awards, including a James Beard Best Chef Pacific Northwest, and a glance at some of the chefs who have been through the kitchen door on NW 21st gives an indication of how important he has been to the food scene here: Gabriel Rucker (Le Pigeon, Little Bird), Scott Ketterman (Crown Paella), Tommy Habetz (Bunk empire), Ben Bettinger (Laurelhurst Market) and Doug Adams (Imperial). Paley’s Place, 1204 NW 21st, 243-2403
