Chef in My Garden

This summer dinner series brings Portland's most innovative chefs to Portland's most interesting gardens.

Download 2009 Invite (pdf)

Support Growing Gardens!  Join Portland’s most innovative chefs as they create exquisite meals using seasonal, local ingredients paired with the region’s best wines, in the intimate settings of Portland’s most interesting gardens. Time  Sundays, 4 to 9 pm  Tickets  $125 per dinner ($80 is tax-deductible).   Seating is limited and advance purchase is required. Tickets are not refundable.                                                                     Email info@growing-gardens.org  or call 503.284.8420. Directions Will be provided with ticket.

JULY 12 | What a treat! Chef Morgan Brownlow introduces his newest venture, Tails and Trotters, and sows the seeds of local food in this exclusive opportunity. The SE Colonial Heights garden of Linda and Ralph Schmoldt, features permaculture and edible landscaping with vegetables elegantly dispersed among the flowers, shrubs and trees throughout their peaceful garden setting.

JULY 19 | Chef Micah Camden, enterprising owner of Beast, Yakuza, DOC and Fats, showcases his inventive and diverse cuisine specialties at the Waverly home of Cindy and Lyndon Murray. The park like setting includes firs, rhododendron, magnolia and witch-hazel and an almost 100 year old cultivated vegetable garden. SOLD OUT

AUGUST 2 | Chef Elias Cairo of Castagna Restaurant features his worldly culinary background along with his use of local, seasonal ingredients at the Portland Heights home of Annie and Ernie Munch. Dine on the lawn overlooking the city and tour Annie’s intensely planted kitchen garden combining fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and flowers, as well as a hydrangea path and a woodland trail. SOLD OUT

AUGUST 16 | Chef Adam Sappington of The Country Cat highlights the American food traditions that bring to life the taste memories this country was founded on, at the Forest Grove homestead of Charlene and Richard Murdock White.  Their food gardener's paradise includes apple, pear, plum, quince, cherry, peach, persimmon, pomegranate and mulberry trees as well as chickens and ducks, honey bees and specialty and heirloom vegetables, including their namesake cardoons.

AUGUST 23 | Chef Jenn Louis of Lincoln Restaurant showcases her direct and elemental, yet sophisticated, Portland cuisine, featuring seasonal Northwest fare at the urban homestead of Paul Pitkin & Jim Hardcastle and neighbors David Kerr & Robert Abbott. Growing as much of their own food as possible, the vegetable and fruit garden contains an heirloom pear gazebo, every berry and grape variety you can imagine, an artichoke “avenue” in the orchard, and turkeys.SOLD OUT

AUGUST 30 | Chef Patrick Miller of 50 plates delights guests with his comforting American regional cuisine at Barbara Baker's Southwest Portland garden, featuring a variety of shrubs, vegetables, fruits, and most importantly, her impressive and diverse collection of 400 rose bushes. As an added bonus, local garden celebrity, Mike Darcy, joins the evening revelry. SOLD OUT