Lauro, Vindalho owner to open downtown restaurant
by Christina Melander, special to The Oregonian
Wednesday November 05, 2008, 10:03 AM
When he opened Lauro Kitchen in 2003 and found overnight success in the restaurant desert of Southeast Division Street, chef and restaurateur David Machado -- who helped establish the downtown restaurant scene in the 1990s -- upended Portland's westside dominated dining equation.
Lauro became a new model: a buzzy eatery where nearby residents could drop in for a downtown-quality meal at a reasonable price. Eastside neighborhood restaurants became the talk of the city ever-after, and Machado was hailed as one of the smartest minds in the business. He took another risk going into the Clinton neighborhood with a contemporary Indian restaurant, Vindalho, and quickly established a following there, too.
Now Machado plans to return to his roots -- downtown Portland -- and apply his winning formula at the new Hotel Modera at 515 S.W. Clay St.
"The hotel owners said to me, 'Don't come down here and give me a hotel restaurant,'" Machado says. "They want to capture what I've done in eastside neighborhoods."
As yet unnamed, the 100-seat restaurant is scheduled to open next April, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner and providing room service to the hotel's 177 rooms.
Machado's concept is a French-Italian hybrid, drawing on the cuisine of the Riviera. "It will borrow from the cities of Nice and Genoa, which grew out of the House of Savoy and have parallel traditions. In Genoa, the focus is on pasta and focaccia, where in Nice you have beef daubes and gratins."
Machado has deep hotel experience. He came here in 1991 to open Pazzo for the San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group, and later became a senior executive chef for the company, opening other Kimpton hotel restaurants, including Portland's Red Star Tavern & Roast House and Sazerac in Seattle. In 1998, he jumped to The Heathman Group and spent five years as its restaurant director, and later opened Southpark, also in downtown Portland.
David Machado
At the Modera, Machado will serve as culinary director, honing ideas and direction and working in tandem with a chef de cuisine. Local firm Holst Architecture is on board to design the glass-walled space, and Machado is focusing his search for a chef and general manager (with hotel experience) in San Francisco and New York.
Machado says Hotel Modera gave him a very generous deal on the lease, which alleviated his concerns about opening a marquee restaurant in the midst of economic bedlam. He sees great potential in the locale, which is near arts venues, on the new MAX line and has few competing restaurants within walking distance.
As for his existing restaurants, he believes the combination of fair prices and regular patrons who haven't overextended themselves is buoying Lauro and Vindalho -- though he concedes they are not immune to the pressures of a downturn.
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Side Dish • Sweet news plied along with bitter
By audrey van buskirk
The Portland Tribune, Nov 13, 2008
Take it as a positive sign that accomplished restaurateur David Machado announced plans last week to open an ambitious 4,700-square-feet, upscale Italian and French restaurant in the Hotel Modera (515 S.W. Clay St.) next spring.
Machado, who also owns Lauro Kitchen (3377 S.E. Division St., 503-239-7000) and Vindalho (2038 S.E. Clinton St., 503-467-4550), is clearly sensitive to the economic climate. If you visit the Vindalho Web site (www.vindalho.com), you’ll find a 20-percent-off Sunday night dinner coupon in the Fall 2008 newsletter.
"Covers are going away incrementally everywhere," he says. "Anyone who says they aren't is lying."
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Rain or shine, Portland beckons
PORTLAND, Ore.—Why everyone in the world hasn't up and moved to Portland is a mystery.
Beyond being virtually pollution-free, surrounded by lush greenery and, at 568,300 people, a manageable size, it's home to the kinds of people many folks would want as neighbors: laid back, eco-conscious city dwellers who love quality restaurants and art galleries and are as game for an evening in with a bottle of pinot as a morning hike through the woods.
Chicagoans, especially, seem to be Portlanders' kindred spirits. Between the two cities, we've got our priorities straight: We love organic food, strong coffee, independent bookstores and locally brewed beer. We like our cities near the water, preferably with a river running through them, and we don't let poor weather stand in the way of going out. We support the arts; we support our home teams. And we have killer independent music and arts scenes.
Chi-town and P-town may be two peas in a pod, but there's one defining characteristic associated with the City of Roses: rain. While sun worshipers may balk at the idea of visiting the Pacific Northwest at any time other than in its glorious 80-degree summers, Portland is arguably a year-round destination.
Here's our Whirlwind Weekend in Portland.
Friday
Portland
is divided into five districts—Northeast, Northwest,
Southwest/Downtown, Southeast and North Portland—each with its own
neighborhoods and personality. Your best bet for lodging is downtown.
Recommended: the boutique Hotel Modera
(515 SW Clay St.; 877-484-1084; www.hotelmodera.com), in the historic
South Park Blocks. The gut-rehabbed Modera emerged last spring with a
luxe lobby, spacious, souped-up guest rooms (starting at $139) and a
courtyard with native plants and shrubs furnished with inviting fire
pits.
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Karen Brooks ~ The Oregonian
"What I'm excited about for 2009: Meanwhile, biz whiz David Machado (Lauro/Vindahlo) will do his vision thing at the new Hotel Modera (515 S.W. Clay St.), giving upper downtown Broadway serious hope for, among other things, a savvy breakfast spot."
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Deston Nokes ~ The Seattle Post Intelligencer ~ 3.11.09
"The outdoor patio is dwarfed by a large, vertically planted garden wall. Visitors can relax around the fire pits and enjoy wine tasting Monday through Saturday, and the hotel's new restaurant, nel Centro, opens in April. (editor's note: nel Centro opens in May.) David Machado, who created the popular fish eatery South Park, and the Italian Pazzo's, is designing nel Centro with a menu inspired by cuisine from Nice and Genoa."
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Gossip Should Have No Friends ~ Willamette Week 3.18.07
DINNERTIME: David Machado —the former executive chef of both Pazzo and Southpark restaurants—is making another grand downtown entrance in May. Already a hit across the river with his solo projects Vindalho and Lauro Kitchen, Machado will open his striking Italian kitchen, Nel Centro, at 408 SW 6th Ave., adjacent to Hotel Modera.
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Optimism at Its Finest ~ Open Kitchen/Restaurants & Institutions 3.11.09
In May, Chef-owner David Machado of Vindalho and Lauro Kitchen in Portland, Ore., is opening his third concept, Nel Centro, inspired by the cuisines of the Italian-French Riviera.
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The Wall Street Journal picks up the Nel Centro story.
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Bread & Butter
The Portland Tribune, Apr 30, 2009
Machado strikes again
Southeast Portland has been good to David Machado, who owns Lauro Kitchen, 3377 S.E. Division St., and Vindalho, just a few blocks away at 2038 S.E. Clinton St.
For his next venture, he’s moving into the restaurant space inside the new-ish Hotel Modera (1408 S.W. Sixth Ave.) The name is Nel Centro, and the focus will be food from the Italian-French Riviera around Genoa and Nice, with dishes like salt cod croquettes, tuna carpaccio, and bouillabaisse.
The spot is under construction. Machado and his team have taken on the task of turning a yucky motel diner into an airy space that will sync up with the mod look of the hotel.
Machado has made the best of the stylish patio that leads from the street to the lobby of the hotel. Looking out, diners will see a row of firepits creating an effect that Machado calls “Fellini-esque.”
There are raised coves in the ceiling and a big wrap-around bar. There are also two rows of deep booths, because, Machado says, one thing he’s learned in his years as a restaurateur is that Portlanders love to sit in booths. They find it comforting, he says, and maybe they’re less interested in being publicly seen than city-dwellers elsewhere.
Nel Centro is slated to open in mid-May.
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History, Trade, Commerce, Warfare: “In the Center” with Dave Machado
Posted May 4, 2009 at 11:32 pm by Nancy Rommelmann. Last updated: May 5, 2009
Dave Machado
Nel Centro, Dave Machado’s latest venture, is a hard-hat-only area in late March. Standing amid buckets of grout and workers using acetylene torches, Machado explains how he came to open his third Portland restaurant in the eight-thousand-square-foot space on the ground floor of the Hotel Modera.
“You remember what this place was, that skuzzy Days Inn bar?” he asks. I tell him, I do, and how depending on your mood, the purple lighting and soiled carpet and solo drinkers put you one step closer to either writing the Great American Novel or suicide.
“It was pretty bad,” he agrees. “And the space - everybody in town looked at it and nobody wanted it.”
Everybody?
“Greg Higgins, Bruce Carey and in between,” he says. “It was under demolition and everybody went, ooh, location!”
The location, on SW Clay and Sixth, is pretty amazing.
“It is. But then you walk through the space and think: it’s just too damn big. I looked at it back in March of ‘08; did a walk through, went home and forgot about it.”
The people behind the hotel, however, convinced him to take another look. “They also own Hotel Andra, up in Seattle,” he says. “Tom Douglas has a restaurant there.”
Tom Douglas who owns Serious Pie?
“Yeah, and also a bunch of other restaurants,” says Machado, who also owns Lauro and Vindaloo. “So I came back and looked again, and look at this.” He turns north, west and south, toward the hi-rises just beyond the floor to ceiling windows. “You have the Portland Building, you have the Oregonian across the street, and PSU owns all those buildings,” he says. “And if you look on Sixth and Fifth [Avenues], you will be absolutely blown away by the number of brand new buildings. It’s staggering.”
Machado’s eyes ask, are you seeing what I see?
I am; the landscape is monolithic. I don’t think there’s a restaurant
in Portland with this kind of big city view. “And one block over you
have the Wells Fargo Building,” he adds. “You have six thousand
tenants, including [a hundred] attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine, and
they have to eat lunch somewhere.”
Where do they eat now?
“It’s not that there aren’t other restaurants in this end of downtown. You have Higgins and Carafe and Veritable Quandary, and they’re busy,” he says. “But there aren’t enough restaurant seats at this end of downtown, not with the arts scene you have around here. It’s a five-iron shot to the Schnitz, a two-iron to the Keller. I’ve got a hundred and twenty parking spots underneath me, and a hundred and seventy-four hotel rooms above - you have a built in breakfast crowd.”
He’s going to need a breakfast crowd if he plans to fill Nel Cento’s planned two hundred and seventy-five seats.
“Yeah, but not all of them are in the restaurant,” he says, mentioning the five discrete dining areas, the private room with the big slab of Doug fir at which folks can dine communally, the three thousand square feet devoted to banquet rooms.
Banquet rooms?
“In hotels, banquets always make up for loss leaders,” he says. “Like room service; you always lose money on room service.”
Machado knows about hotel dining. He spent years working for Kimpton, first in San Francisco and then in Portland, where in 1991 he opened Pazzo in the Vintage Plaza Hotel. “Opening [in Hotel Modera] is like coming home for me,” he says, leading a tour of the spaces that will become Nel Cento’s two kitchens, its rotisserie; pointing out where the Calcutta marble walls will be, and the leather booths, and the giant four-sided bar.
“And
if there’s a better public space in Portland, I don’t know what it is,”
he says, walking directly from the bar to the courtyard, with its
oblong fire-pits and slated wood partitions and thirteen-foot-high
“living wall” of stone and steel and lichen-like plants. Designed by Holst Architecture in conjunction with Lango Hansen,
the courtyard is urban in a way other Portland public spaces have not
yet tried to be, both spectacular and serene, looking more like an
adjunct to a museum.
“And it’s open to anyone,” he says, taking a seat at one of the fire-pits. “You can just sit here and read a book.” Which, in fact, a woman is doing as Aubrey Lindley, owner of the certifiably chic Cacao, wanders in.
“What is this place?” he asks, mentioning he’s on his way to a meeting but had to check out the courtyard “because it’s just so gorgeous.”
Not as gorgeous is the current economic climate. While any restaurant venture is risky, at any time, right now it’s especially fearsome. Yet Machado seems remarkably poised about the prospects of Nel Centro, which means “in the center,” perhaps because at fifty-four, he is without illusion.
“Look, restaurants are always real estate deals,” he says. “You can window dress them to be something else; they’re food, they’re cuisine, they’re feelings, they’re good times. But they’re always real estate deals, because it’s a space, and a lease, and equipment, and debt. This deal [Nel Centro] comes at a time when not many people want to take a risk. The deal to get into this hotel space is extremely… beneficent.”
They want to make it nice for you.
“They want me to succeed in the worst way.”
Success, he says, is not about being “a market leader or an educator or innovator”; about foams and hemp and menu arcana that make the customer feel ill equipped to order. “You make food and open restaurants for those that will come in and purchase food and enjoy the restaurant,” says Machado. “Since I don’t use investors, I don’t use partners and it’s all tied up in my own house and my own money, I can’t afford to have failure, or even a near-miss. I can only live in a world where they’re open and they’re generally full. And Lauro and Vindaloo generally are.”
The menu at Lauro is heavily Portuguese and Spanish, with some Arabic influences, and Vindaloo is “Spice Route” cuisine, broad swathes of land and peoples and cultures and time. While Nel Centro is equally informed by history, its locus, Machado says, “is very, very finite.”
“Both sides of the border in Italy and France, the city of Nice and the city of Genoa, really kind of make up what we do,” he says. “I’m taking classical recipes from those cuisines. An example: a beef daube the same way it’s done in Nice, the same orange peel, the same thyme; we’re putting a pig’s foot in it. The same giant, twenty-five pounds of chuck cut in cubes. It’s classical.”
Also on the menu: salt cod croquettes, bouillabaisse with red pepper rouille, and breads, pastas and desserts from pastry chef Lee Posey.
“She was my pastry chef at Pazzo for five years, and she’s spent the last decade running Pearl Bakery,” he says. “Her boyfriend is Willie Vlautin, the author and also in the band Richmond Fontaine. Willy’s gone a lot, either on book or music tour so, she’s looking for a challenge.”
Speaking of a challenge: the press release says the wines at Nel Centro, put together by David Holstrom, are going to be “playful” and “cerebral.” What does that mean?
Machado chuckles. “Dave is a cerebral guy; he’s got a degree in Slavic languages. He’s very smart, and also very impish and I try to keep Dave in a box. I say, ‘Dave, you can’t say what you just said…”
Because no one will understand…
“He’s just weird that way but I love him because he’s really smart,” he says. “Dave comes to me and goes, ‘I’m having a trouble with the price points, but if you allow me to go to Sicily, everything is going to change.’ So I said, you know, in Genoa, a lot of Sardinians and Sicilians came up to do trade, especially in their cheeses; so I said, if they have trade, and they have cheese that gets transported up there, we’re going to go on it.”
Because you demand a proper historical connection before you put an item or a wine on the menu?
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m very, very historical; everything is history, trade, commerce, warfare: what is the tie-in? As Americans, we’re so…” He pauses. “We don’t know that the port of Venice and the port of Genoa control almost all food products from the Arab and Asian world in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They control everything because they have finance. They’re supplanted by the Portuguese and the Spanish, and later by the Dutch, and later by the English-and the only reason is that each one has finance! The Portuguese and the Spanish, through the Inquisition, get rid of all of the Jews, who are all of their financiers. And guess where they go? They go up to the Netherlands, so the next era of discovery and the next era of trade is the Dutch! It’s all about trade, it’s all about finance; it’s all about warfare: who fought for who could control whom.
“That’s what makers me crazy about Portland and the bloggers,” he continues. “They get all fundamentalist, about authenticity and food. It’s like, where do you think that food came from? Where do you think a dish in Italy came from? It came because some Portuguese explorer put in tomatoes or fava beans. It was a result of trade and commerce that you get cuisine. You didn’t get cuisine in a vacuum; you got cuisine because people brought you products.”
I tell him, don’t get me started on provinciality, as though we should only eat foods from within ten miles of here. That I’m a little more curious than that, actually, curious about coffee and chocolate and chiles and other things that do not grow in the 97_ _ _ zip code.
“You get to a Luddite way of dealing with the world,” he says. “People become fundamentalist about food; you want to say, stop; stop. Stop. Be a little more open.”
So you’ve got your eager pastry gal and your wacky wine guy. Who’s the chef?
Machado measures his answer. “I’m writing all the recipes and developing all the food in conjunction with my team,” he says, but I’ve talked with him enough to know, there’s going to be an addendum.
“This is an often asked question, and it’s a difficult one to explain,” he says. “People like to identify with the chef, so they look at a white coat or chopping in the kitchen; they have these images they need to have validated. But a lot of the stuff I’m doing, I’m the editor. I’m running the business, every aspect, from the cocktails to the menu to the uniforms to the logo; I’m doing all of it.”
Machado looks toward the bar area. “I built and positioned that bar so that if you come into the hotel, and you walk down the lobby, the first person you see is a bartender who says, ‘Hi. Welcome.’ The other bartender is the first person you see from the other door [on Sixth]. I hate when you go into a restaurant and you say, ‘How does this work? Where do we go? Who are we and how do these people feel about us?’ There are so many details in a business like this. Will I go in [the kitchen] and cut something or sauce something or flip something over? Absolutely. But that’s a young man’s game; it’s for twenty-five-year olds.”
Speaking of young men, how did the hiring go?
“First Craigslist ad got five hundred in twenty-four hours,” he says. “Before this particular economy, [we'd get] twenty, sixty, maybe eighty. I have mixed feelings about this: it’s good for any employer; plenty of supply. In terms of pure capitalism, it’s a buyers market. But it’s not a good situation, because it says that the economy is contracting at a rapid rate. When you have qualified chefs saying, I’ll be a cook, or qualified managers saying, I’ll wait tables, then everybody’s throwing their hats in and saying, I’ll take whatever I can take.”
And some are throwing in the towel.
“Yeah,” says Machado, and we talk off the record about who in the restaurant business is on top and who will go under. Which extremely well known restaurants are on rent abatement and which one owes $480,000 in back taxes.
“I’ve had people apply for jobs behind their bosses’ backs because the restaurant stopped paying staff altogether,” he says. When I ask how this is possible, why employees would stay without being paid, he likens it to the Stockholm Syndrome. “They still have a job, the bosses are nice…” Machado shrugs.
Before he heads to a pasta tasting, I ask if there are any new restaurants he’s excited about. Personally, I want to check out Morgan Brownlow’s new spot.
“Have you been to Toast?” he asks.
I haven’t.
“You gotta go, 52nd and Stark,” he says. “One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most this year, my breakfasts at Toast.”
Nel Centro opens in May
At the Hotel Modera
1408 SW Sixth Avenue
Portland, OR 97201
503-484-1099
www.nelcentro.com
Nancy Rommelmann writes for the LA Weekly, Reason, Bon Appetit and other publications. She is the author of several books, as well as business manager for Ristretto Roasters, her husband’s coffee roastery and cafes in NE Portland. Her personal blog can be found here.
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Platter: Machado takes a chance downtown
by Christina Melander, Special to The Oregonian
Tuesday May 05, 2009, 1:37 PM
Next Week, David Machado, who helped spark downtown's fine dining scene in the 1990s, then pioneered an eastside neighborhood style, returns to the West Side to open Nel Centro (pronounced nell chen-tro). The 115-seat restaurant (plus 55 outdoors) focuses on the twin cuisines of Nice and Genoa, the Riviera cities ruled by the House of Savoy before France and Italy divvied up the coast.
It took David Machado several passes to see the potential for a restaurant at the Hotel Modera,
a new boutique hotel near Portland State University. The location, left
of downtown's center, is largely untested for upmarket restaurants--the
closest are Carafe, Veritable Quandary and Higgins--and there are no
other hotels within a few blocks. Add to that a whopping
8,000-square-foot restaurant footprint, which makes for a lot of seats
to fill even with 174 hotel rooms under the same roof.
"I pride myself in understanding what a location will become," says Machado, who opened popular Lauro Kitchen on Southeast Division Street when it was dining desert, then spurred the Clinton neighborhood with the contemporary Indian spot Vindalho. "And I just didn't see how it would work."
Then he took a closer look at the nearby Park Blocks, museums and concert halls. He realized the new MAX line runs right in front of the hotel and liked the open feeling of the property, thanks in part to the hotel's swell patio. When Modera's owners came through with an accommodating lease (and shrunk the restaurant space by nearly half), the deal was sealed.
Why two cuisines? "French is tricky," he says, "because it carries so many different meanings and straight Genovese just seemed too narrow. "Uniting two cuisines that came out of the same tradition made a lot of sense. When you come right down to it, Portlanders love this kind of food."
The seasonal, north-Med menu will feature pansotti pasta with walnut sauce; steamed mussels in Pernod and cream; rotisserie leg of lamb with garlic custard; a Swiss chard tart with pine nuts and raisins; and bouillabaisse. Starters and salads run $7-$12, pasta and entrees $14-$24, and bar items around $10. Desserts and baked goods are in the hands of ace pastry chef Lee Posey, who made her name at Pearl Bakery.
Machado, who will serve as culinary director, wrote the menu but hired New Orleans native Paul Hyman as head chef and co-collaborator. Hyman worked at several Big Easy restaurants, including the famed Commander's Palace, and was executive chef at celeb chef Todd English's Bonfire Steakhouse in Boston. "He knows French cooking and he's worked in hotels -- that really mattered," Machado says. "I had to have someone who could do banquets."
It's a dicey proposition to open a high-end spot when hotel occupancy is soft and diners are spending less and staying home. "I understand what the challenges are but I'm hoping the location, design and (my) reputation will be enough," Machado says. "Once we get people in the door, all we need to do is deliver."
Nel Centro will be open daily for breakfast, lunch, dinner and brunch, starting May 13. 1408 S.W. 6th Ave.; 503-484-1099.
Christina Melander is a Portland freelance writer; cm@christinamelander.com
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Nel Centro
Nel Centro: A Preview
David Machado's showcase eatery opens Wednesday.
Those unlucky enough to have visited the former Days Inn restaurant and bar would never recognize its latest incarnation. Veteran restaurateur David Machado, along with the Hotel Modera and Holst Architecture, have transformed the former dingy Days Inn eatery into a showcase dining room. From the dramatic views of downtown looking north through giant floor-to-ceiling windows, to vistas of the award-winning hotel courtyard to the south, Nel Centro has street-level views unmatched by any other restaurant in downtown Portland. What’s more, the food’s not bad either.
It’s exactly the type of fare you’d expect from Machado, whose offerings are known to be both approachable for everyday folk and interesting enough to pique the interest of more serious foodies. This is no small feat. Standouts included the braised beef daube with olives and fingerling potatoes, the Ligurian seafood stew, and the chocolate souffle, the creation of longtime Pearl Bakery-ite Lee Posey, Nel Centro’s pastry chef.
While it’s way too early to make an assessment (Nel Centro hasn’t even opened to the public yet), it seems that Machado could be poised for yet another home run despite the foul economy. Machado, who also owns East Side restaurants Lauro and Vindalho, has a bit of a reputation for beating the odds and staying slightly ahead of the curve.
When he opened Lauro in 2003, some detractors called him crazy to debut an upscale neighborhood restaurant at SE 34th and Division. Machado, who had been the executive chef and creative force behind then-landmark downtown restaurants Pazzo, Red Star, and Southpark, was among Portland’s preeminent West Side chefs. And though there are plenty now, at that time chef-inspired, neighborhood-oriented East Side dining rooms were seen as risky ventures.
The critics were wrong.
Lauro was named Willamette Week‘s Restaurant of the Year in 2003, and just six years later, Division Street is home to some of the most worthy destinations for food and drink in the city. Within a mile from Lauro are Pok Pok, Nuestra Cucina, Bar Avignon, Little T American Baker, Broder, Vindalho, Victory, Savoy, and several other restaurants. While it wouldn’t be fair to give Machado all of the credit for the East Side restaurant explosion, he is almost universally thought of as its early pioneer.
And so with Nel Centro, Machado is landing an upscale yet affordable restaurant in a part of town dominated by increasingly popular midcentury architecture, a huge daytime working population, corporate expense accounts, and a growing university of nearly 30,000 students. By September of this year, the brand-new MAX Green Line will stop directly in front of the doors to Nel Centro’s corner dining room.
Plus, there’s the emotional appeal. “It’s great to have a Machado restaurant back on the West Side,” said renowned Portland architect Rick Potestio, who was among the eager crowd of diners Monday night. Also in the mix were chef Cory Schreiber, wine expert Cole Danhauer, and scores of other folks welcoming Machado back to the Willamette’s western shore.
Will Nel Centro succeed? Machado’s proven record of success and the excitement of the community are certainly on his side.
See for yourself when Nel Centro (1408 SW Sixth Ave) at the Hotel Modera opens to the public on Wednesday.
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