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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.

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.

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.

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.