Top Chef Season 12 winner Mei Lin and that season's runner-up, Gregory Gourdet, are both cooking in Portland this weekend for collaboration dinners, a new event series launch and a brunch featuring a limited-release coffee blend.
Four events across Saturday, Aug. 15, and Sunday, Aug. 16, put Portland restaurants at the center of a culinary moment stretching from Northwest Portland to the Central Eastside.
Mei Lin returns to cook at Hey Luigi
Mei Lin, the Chinese-American chef who won Top Chef in 2014 and Food Network's Tournament of Champions in 2023, will collaborate with Portland chef Gabriel Pascuzzi for a five-course, $155 dinner at Hey Luigi (2175 N.W. Raleigh St.) on Saturday, Aug. 15, according to OregonLive. The menu blends Chinese and Italian flavors: youtiao with burrata and Italian chili crunch, scallop crudo in XO vinaigrette and dry-aged New York strip steak with brown butter polenta and ginger-scallion gremolata.
The dinner is part of Pascuzzi's "I ❤ Portland" series, a monthly chef collaboration running March through December 2026 at Hey Luigi and Bistecca. Reservations are through OpenTable.
Gourdet hosts Kann brunch with Deadstock Coffee
The next morning, three-time James Beard Award winner Gregory Gourdet will host a counter-service brunch at his Southeast Portland restaurant Kann (548 S.E. Ash St.) from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday, Aug. 16. The menu includes biscuits and gravy, shrimp and grits, and coffee cake, plus a limited-release coffee blend made with Deadstock Coffee's Ian Williams.
Gourdet and Mei Lin faced off in the Top Chef Season 12 finale. Both are appearing in Portland the same weekend, a reunion since that 2014 competition.
Kann earned Best New Restaurant at the 2023 James Beard Awards, and Gourdet won Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific in 2024. The restaurant ranked No. 27 on the inaugural North America's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2025. Gourdet also serves as culinary director of Printemps New York, which opened in March 2025.
Birdfat dinner series launches in the Central Eastside
The weekend's most ambitious debut is Birdfat, a live-music dinner series inspired by the Harlem Renaissance. The first event runs 6 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, at 2nd and Salmon events venue (133 S.E. Salmon St.).
Co-creators Jonathan Biko Mandela Jones, estate chef at Bryn Mawr Vineyards and a two-time James Beard Award semifinalist, and Tiquette Bramlett, owner of Henderson Ave Wines and chair of the Oregon Wine Board, built the evening around à la carte dishes and fat-washed cocktails. Hoodline reported the menu features fried chicken skin with braised collards, burrata and hot honey, pastrami duck breast in a buttermilk biscuit and a duck fat doughnut with goose fat lemon icing, butternut squash curd and smoked trout roe.
Bartender Iona Tong's cocktails are washed with chicken fat and duck fat. Musician Edwin Coleman III provides live jazz drawn from Charlie Parker's songbook. Reservations carry a $9 fee through Tock.
Bramlett made industry history in May 2021 as the first Black woman appointed president of a winery in a major U.S. wine region when she took the helm at Compris Vineyard in Newberg.
A follow-up Birdfat dinner is planned for Saturday, Sept. 19, at Soho House Portland in the historic 1913 Troy Laundry Building.
Plant-based tasting at Astera
Rounding out the weekend, chef Aaron Adams' plant-based restaurant Astera (1403 S.E. Belmont St.) hosts San Francisco chef Seth Stowaway of the 10-seat "tasting salon" The Lore for 10-course dinners ($185) on both Saturday, Aug. 15, and Sunday, Aug. 16. Stowaway's menu draws on produce from the Astera garden, local farmers markets and a foraging trip to the Columbia River Gorge.
