Rebel, Disgraced, Tries to Pull Off Rebound (from todays NYTimes)
((wow i didnt know))
THE meal was open to just 40 people. They had to sign up before they could learn the address, that of a vacant bank in this city’s industrial-chic Georgetown neighborhood.
Inside, a video projection played an endless loop of two women kissing. Diners sat at a long table lighted by votive candles and covered with a tablecloth made of blouses from the Salvation Army. As they passed dishes from “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook,” guests read aloud from Gertrude Stein’s “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.”
The event was one of a movable series of theme dinners in clandestine locations around Seattle. Called “One Pot,” the series is run by Michael Hebberoy, underground restaurateur, impresario and provocateur.
In Seattle, this blending of roles has stirred excitement. But many people elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest would find it uncomfortably familiar. Dinners like this were exactly how Mr. Hebberoy got his start in Portland, Ore. Those evenings generated enough good will and even national celebrity that, by the time he moved up from the underground and opened three restaurants, he almost had to turn away investors.
Then one April day last year, he disappeared, leaving behind a wife, a ruined restaurant empire, a welter of debt and an angry herd of creditors and business partners.
“What’s most despicable is that Michael just left,” said Tommy Habetz, the chef and a partner at Mr. Hebberoy’s Gotham Building Tavern in Portland, which closed after the crackup. “It was so immature. I had put my heart and soul into the restaurant, and to have my partner leave without a warning or a conversation about how we could fix things — it was pretty heartbreaking.”
Mr. Hebberoy, 31, began his career as a culinary showman in 2001. Michael Hebb, as he was known then, began holding meals for the public in the Portland bungalow he rented with his girlfriend, Naomi Pomeroy. (They would combine their names the following year and marry in 2004.) Later held at a changing series of secret locations, those “Family Supper” gatherings — dinners that mixed food, art and anarchy without the overhead, licenses or health inspectors required of restaurants — became the talk of the city.
Diners who could wrangle an invitation and find the e-mailed address would gather at a 24-foot-long table, where, typically, bankers, farmers and tattooed baristas shared platters of whatever was fresh from the markets. Mr. Hebberoy washed lettuce in the bathtub, Ms. Pomeroy cooked on backyard barbecue grills, and nights might end with strangers-turned-friends singing John Denver songs.
As Family Supper’s e-mail list swelled to nearly 10,000, Portland investors lined up to back a couple that W Magazine had crowned “prince and princess of the Pacific Northwest food scene.”
By 2004, the Hebberoys were overseeing a catering company, Ripe, and three highly acclaimed restaurants: Family Supper, Clarklewis and the Gotham Building Tavern. The Hebberoys had limited restaurant experience themselves, but they recruited pedigreed chefs like Morgan Brownlow, who trained at Rubicon in San Francisco; Mr. Habetz, who had cooked alongside Bobby Flay and Mario Batali in New York; and Troy MacLarty, straight from Chez Panisse.
The glow around Ripe, as the businesses were known collectively, was so bright that The Oregonian, the Portland newspaper, named Clarklewis the 2004 restaurant of the year before it even opened. Meanwhile, the Hebberoys continued below-the-radar gatherings, like ones in an industrial glass-blowing studio, where oysters were cooked in a 2,000-degree furnace.
Even as he became part of the local restaurant establishment, Mr. Hebberoy, a one-time design student with movie-star blond hair and a Barnum-like knack for hype, still fashioned himself an outsider. Between ballyhooing his line of seasonal gins or the latest monograph by Ripe’s writer-in-residence, Mr. Hebberoy claimed to be writing his own manifesto, on the underground dining movement. He called it “Kill the Restaurant.” Before long Mr. Hebberoy did just that, though not quite in the way his manuscript envisioned.
“In retrospect, it was a glorious moment where dining out was about more than just sustenance,” said Jim Riswold, a consultant, artist and former creative director of the Portland advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy. “An evening with the Hebberoys offered a Roman Empire-style mix of art, argument, interesting flavors and remarkable booze. Then Michael Nero’d it.”
The end came on April 27, 2006. Mr. Hebberoy, who three months earlier had been the subject of an eight-page article in Food & Wine magazine that called him a “food provocateur,” told equity investors he could no longer make payroll for a company that had grown to 95 employees. Ripe had been hemorrhaging money, something he hadn’t told the staff, financiers and suppliers.
“There was little or no talk of food costs the whole time we were in operation, and they were using very expensive products,” said Mr. MacLarty, who was the chef at Family Supper.
"...dining out was about more than just sustenance,” (!)
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((wow i didnt know))
- Skinny 11-07-2007 1:20 pm
THE meal was open to just 40 people. They had to sign up before they could learn the address, that of a vacant bank in this city’s industrial-chic Georgetown neighborhood.
Inside, a video projection played an endless loop of two women kissing. Diners sat at a long table lighted by votive candles and covered with a tablecloth made of blouses from the Salvation Army. As they passed dishes from “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook,” guests read aloud from Gertrude Stein’s “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.”
The event was one of a movable series of theme dinners in clandestine locations around Seattle. Called “One Pot,” the series is run by Michael Hebberoy, underground restaurateur, impresario and provocateur.
In Seattle, this blending of roles has stirred excitement. But many people elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest would find it uncomfortably familiar. Dinners like this were exactly how Mr. Hebberoy got his start in Portland, Ore. Those evenings generated enough good will and even national celebrity that, by the time he moved up from the underground and opened three restaurants, he almost had to turn away investors.
Then one April day last year, he disappeared, leaving behind a wife, a ruined restaurant empire, a welter of debt and an angry herd of creditors and business partners.
“What’s most despicable is that Michael just left,” said Tommy Habetz, the chef and a partner at Mr. Hebberoy’s Gotham Building Tavern in Portland, which closed after the crackup. “It was so immature. I had put my heart and soul into the restaurant, and to have my partner leave without a warning or a conversation about how we could fix things — it was pretty heartbreaking.”
Mr. Hebberoy, 31, began his career as a culinary showman in 2001. Michael Hebb, as he was known then, began holding meals for the public in the Portland bungalow he rented with his girlfriend, Naomi Pomeroy. (They would combine their names the following year and marry in 2004.) Later held at a changing series of secret locations, those “Family Supper” gatherings — dinners that mixed food, art and anarchy without the overhead, licenses or health inspectors required of restaurants — became the talk of the city.
Diners who could wrangle an invitation and find the e-mailed address would gather at a 24-foot-long table, where, typically, bankers, farmers and tattooed baristas shared platters of whatever was fresh from the markets. Mr. Hebberoy washed lettuce in the bathtub, Ms. Pomeroy cooked on backyard barbecue grills, and nights might end with strangers-turned-friends singing John Denver songs.
As Family Supper’s e-mail list swelled to nearly 10,000, Portland investors lined up to back a couple that W Magazine had crowned “prince and princess of the Pacific Northwest food scene.”
By 2004, the Hebberoys were overseeing a catering company, Ripe, and three highly acclaimed restaurants: Family Supper, Clarklewis and the Gotham Building Tavern. The Hebberoys had limited restaurant experience themselves, but they recruited pedigreed chefs like Morgan Brownlow, who trained at Rubicon in San Francisco; Mr. Habetz, who had cooked alongside Bobby Flay and Mario Batali in New York; and Troy MacLarty, straight from Chez Panisse.
The glow around Ripe, as the businesses were known collectively, was so bright that The Oregonian, the Portland newspaper, named Clarklewis the 2004 restaurant of the year before it even opened. Meanwhile, the Hebberoys continued below-the-radar gatherings, like ones in an industrial glass-blowing studio, where oysters were cooked in a 2,000-degree furnace.
Even as he became part of the local restaurant establishment, Mr. Hebberoy, a one-time design student with movie-star blond hair and a Barnum-like knack for hype, still fashioned himself an outsider. Between ballyhooing his line of seasonal gins or the latest monograph by Ripe’s writer-in-residence, Mr. Hebberoy claimed to be writing his own manifesto, on the underground dining movement. He called it “Kill the Restaurant.” Before long Mr. Hebberoy did just that, though not quite in the way his manuscript envisioned.
“In retrospect, it was a glorious moment where dining out was about more than just sustenance,” said Jim Riswold, a consultant, artist and former creative director of the Portland advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy. “An evening with the Hebberoys offered a Roman Empire-style mix of art, argument, interesting flavors and remarkable booze. Then Michael Nero’d it.”
The end came on April 27, 2006. Mr. Hebberoy, who three months earlier had been the subject of an eight-page article in Food & Wine magazine that called him a “food provocateur,” told equity investors he could no longer make payroll for a company that had grown to 95 employees. Ripe had been hemorrhaging money, something he hadn’t told the staff, financiers and suppliers.
“There was little or no talk of food costs the whole time we were in operation, and they were using very expensive products,” said Mr. MacLarty, who was the chef at Family Supper.
- Skinny 11-07-2007 1:20 pm [add a comment]
"...dining out was about more than just sustenance,” (!)
- bill 11-07-2007 4:08 pm [add a comment]