Naomi Pomeroy, one of the culinary world’s most celebrated chefs, died in a freak accident over the weekend.
Pomeroy, who was 49, is believed to have drowned during an inner-tubing incident in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, Portland Monthly reported. The chef was out on the water with her husband when their raft hit a snag and flipped over. Search and rescue teams are still working to recover her body. In addition to her husband, she is survived by her daughter, August, her parents, her stepmother, and two half brothers.
“2001 Naomi and her then partner Michael re-invented the Portland restaurant scene and launched a movement whose reverberations were felt around the world,” Andy Ricker, the former chef-owner of Pok Pok, wrote on Instagram. “From that first supper club to the present, she repped PDX. It got messy, it broke norms, it raised bars, it opened doors for all of us. Rest easy legend, your place in history and in hearts is eternal.”
For more than two decades, Pomeroy was a leader in Portland’s culinary scene, making it what it is today. In the early 2000s, as Ricker noted, she and her then-partner, Michael Hebb, ran a supper club that at one point had an email list of more than 12,000 people waiting to get in, according to Kevin Alexander’s Burn the Ice. Together, Pomeroy and Hebb opened a trio of restaurants that became the toast of the town, before the duo’s personal and professional relationship turned sour.
In 2007, Pomeroy opened her own restaurant, Beast, a fine-dining spot where guests sat at a communal table and Pomeroy wouldn’t allow any substitutions. Her vision was clear, and it led to three James Beard Award nominations for Best Chef: Pacific Northwest before she won the category in 2014.
Beast was one of many pandemic casualties, closing in 2020. In the same space, Pomeroy opened the more casual Ripe Cooperative, which similarly shuttered in 2022. That didn’t mark the end of Pomeroy’s culinary career, though: In May she opened an outpost of the custard shop Cornet Custard, and she was planning to open a new French restaurant in the near future.
Beyond her work in the kitchen, Pomeroy was an advocate for independent restaurants and their employees. At the height of the #MeToo movement, she wrote an essay for Eater condemning the boys’-club culture found at many restaurants, which she owned up to having perpetuated in the past. And during the pandemic, she supported the Independent Restaurant Coalition and economic relief for eateries. She also competed on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters in 2011.
The culinary world has lost more than just a visionary chef. It’s lost one of its fiercest and most beloved advocates, too.
