It starts with great ingredients. it’s a cliché, but true.
We believe in the mantra that “everything matters”. This extends from each spice, carrot, sturgeon, or bottle of wine that we source.
We purchase from purveyors and distributors that we have had long standing relationships with. This familiarity and trust helps to keep consistency, freshness, and deliciousness in what is on our menus.
OUR Community outreach
We were introduced to Learning gardens laboratory by one of our former cooks. This educational extension offered by Portland State University aims to provide experiential garden-based education to learners of all ages. Their programs include K-12 garden-based field trips, professional development opportunities for educators, community engaged learning projects with 100+ PSU students a year, and hands-on gardening and sustainable living skills with local community members.
The Learning Gardens Lab is a 2-acre educational community-garden located on the 12-acre Green Thumb site in SE Portland. Their mission is to foster sustainable leadership and lifelong learning for people of all ages through garden-based education, reciprocal relationships with the land, and collaborative engagement in regenerative food systems.
CHef Joel has volunteered for many years to the annual Fundraiser dinner series that Urban Cleaners puts on. Urban Gleaners strives to eliminate all barriers to accessing nourishing food to ultimately create a resilient system that celebrates food as a fundamental right in a just society.
Urban Gleaners successfully addresses two of the major systemic issues plaguing our country during these unprecedented times: eliminating food waste while simultaneously redistributing this food to our community members who need it most. We proudly identify not only as a hunger-relief organization but also as a highly successful environmental sustainability agency.
Their role is to provide a critical link between businesses like l’orange or farms that have excess food and the food insecure people who need it. Wasted food degrades the human experience and damages lives; they are committed to repairing that harm and preventing it from afflicting others.
Unlike traditional food banks and food pantries, they offer a range of nutritious, healthy foods (produce, meat, dairy, grains) that children need for healthy development directly to food-insecure families, and they do it in an equitable way that celebrates food as a fundamental right in a just society.
