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David Machado talks with Andi Prewitt of the Willamette Week

November 19, 2020 by DMR

David Machado, photo by Christine Dong, Willamette Week

Closing Time: David Machado worked in the restaurant industry for over 40 years, 30 of them in Portland.

From the Willamette Week:

David Machado Closed All Five of His Restaurants Because of the Virus, Ending His Career In the Restaurant Industry. But He’s Not Bitter.


Machado worked in the restaurant industry for more than 40 years, and was considered a pillar of the city’s culinary scene. It took only two months for COVID-19 to topple everything.

by Andi Prewitt
November 18, 2020

David Machado is still astounded by how rapidly it all went downhill.

In the days leading up to the mid-March lockdown, business was booming at his five restaurants. You would have been lucky to snag a barstool at Altabira on March 11. The dining room on the top floor of Hotel Eastlund was packed with people pregaming before heading a few blocks west to Moda Center for Tool’s Portland stop on their 2020 tour.

The scene was similar downtown at Nel Centro. Waits for tables were normal at the 11-year-old, French-meets-Italian eatery, but were made longer in early March thanks to a staging of Frozen at nearby Keller Auditorium.

One evening, things were so hectic that when Machado made his regular round of calls to the restaurants checking in, no one had time to talk.

And just like that, every single one of those businesses went dark.

“It ended abruptly,” Machado explains. “I often ask myself, if the industry was so strong—if we were so vital to the success of Portland as a municipality, for tourism, for conventions—how come we ended so fast? It was like we were knocked over with a feather.”

Machado, who has worked in the restaurant industry for more than 40 years, 30 of those in Portland, was considered a pillar of the city’s culinary scene. It took only two months for COVID-19 to topple everything.

The restaurateur permanently closed his entire portfolio—Nel Centro, Altabira, Citizen Baker, Tanner Creek Tavern, and Pullman Wine Bar & Merchant—in May. The announcement knocked the wind out of anyone who took even a casual interest in the local food landscape. Up until that point of the pandemic, around a dozen independent bars, cafes and restaurants based in Portland had called it quits. Machado’s was the first big restaurant group to fold, serving as the first big sign that the global health crisis could cripple the service industry, particularly those businesses reliant on traffic from large-scale events. Because of the virus, no one is a ticketholder for the foreseeable future.

“We were part of a greater societal fabric,” says Machado. “We were bigger places and busy places because we had a lot of people coming for reasons. They were traveling, they were going to a show, they were going to a Blazer game. All of those feeders stopped working.”

At the start of this past unsettled spring, Machado remained optimistic. With the governor-ordered shutdown looming, he began devising contingency plans for every property: shrinking the menus, lopping an hour off of operating times, sending employees home a little early. But all of that juking wasn’t getting him anywhere.

“Each day that the plan was written,” Machado says, “in a few days it was obsolete.”

So he decided to temporarily close rather than experiment with—and potentially botch—takeout service.

“You’ve gotta know what your strengths are,” Machado explains, “and that wasn’t one of our strengths.”

Without customers to bring plates to, his crews doubled down on the other half of their training: giving the restaurants a thorough scrub.

“The expectation was that if we continued to clean and fix and organize, that by the time we were done we would have a horizon,” he says. “I remember saying to people, ‘I’ll see you back here in…,’ and I think I even gave a stupid date that was, like, three or four weeks away.”

But a month came and went, and the restaurants didn’t reopen. Machado’s longtime director of operations delivered the sobering news.

“He came to me and said, ‘I did the math. There’s no pathway back,'” Machado recalls. “‘If we move all the tables and we change the hours and we shorten the menu, it doesn’t work. We can’t get back.'”

Every tool available to try to increase sales under normal conditions—revamp the dishes, improve hospitality—wouldn’t help in a pandemic. And so Machado, at 65 years old, decided to call it a career.

When everything he worked for his entire adult life was suddenly gone, it would be easy to assume that Machado is despondent, or even resentful. But when asked about the staggering loss, his response takes a buoyant turn.

“You walk around in pajamas for about two months,” he says with a laugh. “I had to make a decision early on whether I was going to be devastated or angry. I had a really good run. I had a lot of success and great relationships.”

While he may not be bitter, Machado is worried. Even before the newly instituted on-premises dining “freeze,” he saw a city teetering on the edge and no clear solutions to shore up institutions like restaurants and bars that have enhanced its character and way of life.

“I’m more troubled about what’s happened to Portland,” Machado says. “I’m more unhappy about the prospects of fixing this, for going forward. I’m unhappy about the collapse of the industry I helped build. I’m at a bit of a loss for a path back.”

He can, however, point to who is most likely to find the way: scrappy, young chefs and restaurant owners. Machado believes they are best poised to develop new models that those who’ve been in the field for decades may be too set in their ways to discover.

Machado puts himself in the latter group. And he’s OK with that. The restaurateur will retire knowing that he kept people fed and boozed during some of their happiest moments: before plays, during birthday celebrations, after Blazer game wins. That’s more than enough for him to find no need to dwell on the final two months of business.

“I didn’t get into too much crying or bellyaching about the bad things that happened,” he says. “I would then be destining myself to be an older, upset person. I just couldn’t do that, because everything has been so great up until it ended.”

Read the article on the Willamette Week website here.

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Filed Under: Blog, News

Last Call for the Restaurant Business? Good for Now talks with David Machado

October 13, 2020 by DMR

Good For Now Podcast: Last Call for the Restaurant Industry?
Good for Now Podcast August 23, 2020
Guest: Chef & Restaurant Owner David Machado

The restaurant industry, and it’s estimated 11 million employees, have suffered devastating consequences from the Covid-19 pandemic and it’s response; from the abrupt closures to inconsistent federal public health guidelines. This industry is a unique victim of the pandemic in that it’s inherent vulnerabilities before COVID makes it increasingly difficult to recover from this pandemic, potentially forever changing the American main-street landscape and our economy.

With little to no financial assistance to date, the largest impact has been felt by your local, independent restaurant owners and the estimated 11 million people the industry employs.

Listen to the Podcast on the GFN website or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & Google Podcasts.

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David Machado Restaurants to Be Honored for Exceptional Commitment to the Arts

May 15, 2019 by DMR

Portland, OR, May 13, 2019 — Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education in America, announced today that David Machado Restaurants will be honored this fall with Americans for the Arts’ national Arts and Business Partnership Award.

Read the entire article here>>

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Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: Americans for the Arts, Arts and Business Partnership Award, David Machado Restaurants, Third Angle New Music

Storyteller-in-chief: David Machado

May 15, 2017 by DMR

People always want to know how I became a chef.

Was my mother a fantastic cook? Did I spend time with her in the kitchen? Was food preparation an important part of my family’s life? The simple answer is far from it.

When I was growing up, the massive marketing of convenience food was at its height in America. Think canned. Think frozen. Think packaged. Time was more important than quality, and everyone seemed to enjoy the novel practice of eating in front of the television. Finally, my mother’s cooking skills ranged between acceptable and terrible.

w the rest. America was saturated with speedy and convenient food choices, but I grew up in a rich melting pot of ethnic cuisines and old-world choices.

Even as a small child, I was able to publicly dine (without adults) in places of my own choosing. Today this would be considered dangerous and irresponsible, but at 10, I was a regular at neighborhood establishments serving Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Polish, Lebanese and French-Canadian dishes.

I’m certain this real-world exposure tempered the effect of the giant food monoculture. It definitely left me with strong emotional ties to many of my childhood food favorites.

My culinary career began in the early 1980s after relocating to San Francisco from Massachusetts for the same reasons as everyone else: self-expression, freedom and to escape East Coast winters. My restaurant career began behind the bar, but I moved into a job as a restaurant manager out of financial need. I became passionate for an industry that was exploding all around me.

In the Bay Area, this was the era of culinary pioneers like Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower, who were inspired by the accessibility of fresh produce and abundance of sunshine.

Equally inspired, I entered the first graduating class of the California Culinary Academy at its new, state-of-the-art San Francisco campus in 1986, right as the concept of “California cuisine” emerged.

My first restaurant in San Francisco, Bottom of the Hill Cafe, was a “rock-and-roll” self-expression concept that lasted six months. At the time, both my wife and I had night jobs and spent all our extra time at the restaurant.

During the restaurant’s brief life, we served eclectic world cuisine to San Francisco notables like Bruce Aidells and Mario Batali. While closing Bottom of the Hill, I realized a successful restaurant needs to be more inclusive of the customer.

I had to think about what they wanted to eat more than my personal passions. I’ve always been inspired by veteran New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer, who believes a successful concept is about enduring qualities like value, hospitality, cleanliness and good food. After this epiphany, I vowed to never fail again.

I moved my young family to Portland in 1991 to lead the opening team at Pazzo Ristorante as the executive chef. I honed my belief that professional management, a well-trained staff and a buzz in the dining room were just as critical as great food. As I accepted more responsibilities, my role shifted to general manager, and I went on to open six more restaurants in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco for Pazzo’s parent company, Kimpton, as a senior chef.

At that time, Portland was beginning its own food renaissance, driven by the profusion of local ingredients. Soon enough, chefs were opening small independent restaurants in every neighborhood.

Unlike the classic chef, I found myself more interested in understanding the relationship between a restaurant’s economies and consistent, high-quality cuisine. I joined a rival restaurant group in 1997 as vice president of restaurants for the Stevenson family, who owned the Heathman Restaurant.

As an independent concept within a hotel, we asked ourselves, “What if we challenge the ‘hotel food’ stigma and create something that rivals any of Portland’s boutique restaurants?” Without really realizing it at the time, this would become a guiding philosophy in how I run restaurants today.

As I embark upon opening my fifth restaurant, I remind myself how far Portland has come as a food city and how much I have enjoyed being a part of this wonderful evolution. My managers like to repeat my homespun philosophy for restaurant success: “Give a little more, charge a little less.”

David Machado is the owner of David Machado Restaurants.

Oregon Business
by David Machado
May 4, 2017

You can read the article online here.

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Restaurateur David Machado knows who’s in charge of the kitchen

May 9, 2017 by DMR

David Machado atop Altabira, his Lloyd District restaurant. Photo by Chad Walsh

An Interview with chef & restauranteur David Machado

NW Examiner
May 2017
By Chad Walsh

“Restaurateur David Machado will open Tanner Creek Tavern at 875 NW Everett St. this summer. Machado still doesn’t know what the menu will look like, but he’s not sweating it. He said the neighborhood, nearby restaurants and the space itself, will determine what he’ll cook up.

On the rooftop deck of Altabira City Tavern, his Lloyd District restaurant next to the Hotel Eastlund, Machado talked about his 30-plus year career in restaurants.”

I think we’re going back to the fundamental food,” Machado said. “We’re anxious as a society. We’re tired. We’re nervous. We’re afraid. So I think we all become a little kid when we’re afraid, so we’ve gotta have some foods that we really like. It makes us feel good, we eat, we go to bed and we feel okay, and so I think society—politics, stressors in society—dictate what the food trends are going to be.

Read Chad Walsh’s full interview here in the NW Examiner. It starts on page 16.

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David Machado contributes to discussion on PDX dining scene. Oregon Business Magazine / Oct 2016

October 4, 2016 by DMR

Hannah Wallace of the Oregon Business Magazine talks with Chef David Machado and others about the Portland dining scene and why everyone you know is eating out. Read what Chef Machado has to say below.

Generation Diner

Oregon Business Magazine / October edition
September 23, 2016
Written by Hannah Wallace

from the Oregon Business Magazine, Oct. 2016
from the Oregon Business Magazine, Oct. 2016

“The Portland dining public is way more sophisticated today than it was 25 years ago,” observes longtime Portland chef David Machado, whose former restaurants Lauro Kitchen and Vindalho were the first to colonize Southeast Division (in 2003 and 2005, respectively). Today, at his two restaurants Nel Centro and Altabira City Tavern, he sees chiefly two main demographics: boomers and millennials.

“Those boomers have traveled. They’ve had that pasta that you serve on the menu — they’ve had it in Italy,” Machado notes. Many of these boomers have also taken cooking classes and watch more than one cooking show, he says. Portland millennials, too, are well traveled; they’ve been to all the latest restaurants in New York and San Francisco, and they want to stay on top of the latest spots in their hometown, too.

“They are college educated, have a good job, are married — or not. But they’re experimenting with food, ordering hand made cocktails and wines.” Add these two groups together and you get a group of curious, adventurous eaters who want to eat out all the time.

“Everyone is just so much damn smarter about food,” says Machado. On-demand and sharing economy trends are also helping fuel the frenzy; today, when people want food, they want it now. Restaurants — co-eating venues, as collaborative economists might say — fit the bill.

There’s no authoritative statistic on which demographics eat out the most in Portland. But Zach Hull, vice president of business development at Boulevard — the software company that designed Chew, Kurt Huffman’s new restaurant loyalty app — says almost 50% of Chew’s 6,000 active users are between the ages of 25 and 35 (25% are in the 35 to 45 age group).

It doesn’t hurt that the price of eating out at a nice restaurant (or food cart) is still relatively affordable in Portland, when compared to other major American cities. “The price that you pay for a meal, an entree in a restaurant today, is the same or less than you did 10 or so years ago,” says Machado. In Portland, he adds, there are certain benchmarks you can’t exceed.

“Portlanders don’t like to spend more than $30 on an entree, or $14 or $15 on an appetizer.”

You can read the entire Oregon Business Magazine article here.

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Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: Chef David Machado, Portland dining

Chef David Machado serves Artslandia his Warm Ricotta and Beet Salad

July 27, 2015 by DMR

Artslandia at the Performance
May / June 2015

“Other restaurants and hotels were pulling back their arts support, and arts groups were struggling,” says Machado. “I knew Nel Centro’s long-term fate would be tied to the performing arts groups downtown. We wouldn’t make it unless they made it, so we did a lot more than just feed people before and after shows. We offered restaurant patron programs, donor receptions, anything the arts groups needed.”

Warm Ricotta and Beet Salad
Chef David Machado

Serves Four

“Nel Centro” is Italian for “in the center,” and the perfect description for the restaurant David Machado opened in the heart of Portland’s theatre district at the depths of the nation’s recession. “It was a hard time to start something,” Machado notes, but what seemed like a risky business decision was actually the restaurant-business veteran and Jazz Festival board president’s calculated vote of confidence in the performing arts.

“Other restaurants and hotels were pulling back their arts support, and arts groups were struggling,” says Machado. “I knew Nel Centro’s long-term fate would be tied to the performing arts groups downtown. We wouldn’t make it unless they made it, so we did a lot more than just feed people before and after shows. We offered restaurant patron programs, donor receptions, anything the arts groups needed.” As the arts groups have revived, refilling the nearby Keller, Lincoln Hall, Portland’5 and the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with eager patrons, Nel Centro has thrived.

photo: Chef David Machado's warm ricotta and beet salad
Chef David Machado’s warm ricotta and beet salad

Ingredients

1/2 pound ricotta
1/2 pound large red beets
1/2 pound large gold or chiogga beets
3 large oranges, either cara cara or blood oranges, skin and pith removed, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
1 cup baby arugula
1/4 cup citrus vinaigrette (recipe below)
1/2 cup whole hazelnuts, toasted
Salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spread hazelnuts out on a baking sheet in an even layer, place in oven, and toast until golden brown and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Once cooled, lightly crush hazelnuts with the flat side of a knife.

Scrub beets under cold running water to remove any dirt. Lightly coat beets with olive oil and place in a large baking dish, cover with foil and bake until beets are tender and easily pierced with a fork, about 1 hour.

Remove from oven and cool at room temperature. Slice both ends of the beets. Gently rub a damp towel over skins to remove. Cut into 2 inch pieces and set aside.

Turn oven broiler to high. Place ricotta into a small glass baking dish, season liberally with salt and fresh cracked pepper, and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

Place under broiler until a deep, golden curst is formed and cheese is warmed through, about 5 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine beets, orange segments and baby arugula. Toss with citrus vinaigrette, and season to taste with salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

Mound the tossed salad in the center of a chilled plate, top with warmed arugula and garnish with toasted hazelnuts.

Citrus Vinaigrette for Beet Salad

Makes 1 Quart

1/2 cup champagne vinegar
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 each large shallot, minced
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine vinegar, orange and lemon juice, minced shallot and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Slowly whisk in olive oil until fully incorporated. Cover with either plastic wrap or a tight fitting lid and refrigerate. Store for up to 2 weeks.

Read the full article and see the photos here.

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Portland Monthly Inteviews David Machado

June 18, 2015 by DMR

The Portland food pro on his new Hotel Eastlund eateries, beer, and why hotels love chefs.
By Kelly Clarke

Owner David Machado with Cara Powell, executive chef, pastry chef Natalie Harkness. photo by Whitney Price
Image: Whitney Price — Altabira and Citizen Baker owner David Machado with Cara Powell, the executive chef of both restaurants, and Citizen pastry chef Natalie Harkness.

For three decades now, David Machado has been building and running large-scale food operations that strike a balance between serving as a home away from home for travelers and a destination for locals.

He’s best known as the man behind Hotel Modera’s successful pre-theater haunt Nel Centro; others trade memories of drinks at his Southpark wine bar or Italian grub at Pazzo, the venerable downtown fine diner he built and ran for Hotel Vintage Plaza in the 1990s (just one of six Kimpton properties he launched). And longtimers still get positively weepy reminiscing over the chef’s independent project, Lauro Mediterranean Kitchen, the neighborhood bistro that made SE Division Street a destination before Pok Pok charcoal-fired its first game hen.

His latest salvo is the sky-high beer-centric restaurant Altabira City Tavern and smaller Citizen Baker cafe, a double-barreled blast for the Modera team’s new Hotel Eastlund, located right across the street the Oregon Convention Center. The two eateries may help transform the rapidly changing Lloyd District from a fast food wasteland to a chic dining go-to. On the eve of Altabira’s debut, we asked the food insider about beer, bread, and why a chef can be a hotel’s best friend.

1. YOU’VE BEEN IN THE HOTEL FOOD GAME FOR YEARS. WHAT DO ALTABIRA AND CITIZEN BAKER BRING TO THE TABLE?

With Altabira, I wanted to move out of the euro-centric, wine-based Mediterranean thing I’ve been doing for years. Every time there’s beer, for the most part, it’s in a brewpub or sports bar setting—very burly or clubby. What about a real restaurant that does dinner and a nice job with the menu, creative and fresh, but that aligns with beer? We’re working with dishes from some traditional beer cultures—England, Belgium, Germany—you can’t not do that. Pork schnitzel, a rabbit pot pie, smoked brisket…homey stuff that goes with beer and has connection with beer culture. Also, charcuterie—pate and rilletes, duck liver mousse. I’ve had to caution the kitchen about sugar and salt. It’s easy to start salting and curing and brining everything and soon enough everything becomes a ham! I’m trying to strike a balance.

We’ve gone as micro as we could on our 16 taps: Commons, Coalition, Breakside….We didn’t do any national brands, didn’t even do the regional brands that made Portland famous. We tried to choose producers in NE and SE Portland; operations that are around [the hotel]. There’s some people doing incredible work in beer right now—the balance and quality of the beers, making old recipes contemporary. My model customer knows some things about food, about beer and wine, and is traveled and educated. But when it comes to these young people making beer in Portland that I have on tap, they’ll be, “I just didn’t know.”

2. WHAT ABOUT CITIZEN BAKER?

I hadn’t opened a cafe since Pazzoria in 1994 or ’95. And I felt that if we were gonna do a café, we might as well do everything from the ground up—baguette, levain, beer bread, focaccia… It’s a tight program, we’re doing five or six things really well and we’ll leave it at that. Our pastry chef Natalie Harkness’ work is incredible—the apple strudel; her strawberry rhubarb hand pie. It’s tough to kick off an artisan baking program, but we got the starters right and figured the ovens out already. A bakery is very much a live operation; it’s a whole different world.

3. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OPENING A NEIGHBORHOOD AND A HOTEL RESTAURANT?

They are completely different experiences—the lifestyle, who comes in and eats there. At Lauro, we came in as fundamentalists: we cooked what we wanted, said hi to everybody, and then went home. When you get in these bigger situations, you have to think of travelers, business people, people going to shows and sporting events…it’s a different model.

When the Modera owners came to me in 2008 to open Nel Centro, they had some criteria: they wanted a local chef that could come in and operate as a draw from the community. They wanted more than a service for guests, they wanted to create a destination for the city. That’s becoming more and more common. It’s often said that a hotel is a very profitable capitalist model except for food and beverage. But we’re in a cycle where savvy hoteliers are looking for independents [chef-operators] to lure in because a hotel is enhanced by the chef. That’s a big shift.

4. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR NEW NEIGHBORHOOD?

Hotel Eastlund is in a neighborhood that’s never had any fresh or real food—just formulaic chains. Having to eat here for the last two months while overseeing restaurant construction has been brutal—it’s just Red Robin and Denny’s; remnants from the Portland’s old Highway 99 of 30 years ago. But now, the whole neighborhood is in this massive state of flux. There was no master plan, it just happened that we got in right before all this major development. I hope it all works out; that we did the right thing. That saying is true: opening a restaurant is like birthing a baby, you say you’ll never do it again. And then you do.

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Filed Under: Altabira Press, Blog, News Tagged With: Altabira City Tavern, Chef David Machado, citizen baker

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