In food circles, Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood might be best known for two things: it's patchwork of urban farms, and the unlikely collection of quality restaurants lining Northeast 42nd Avenue.
A new food center coming to the old Delphina's Bakery seeks to unite these two elements with a restaurant, a bakery, a green grocer and more.
The business that perhaps most completely encapsulates this new center's mission is a "community supported kitchen" from "Chopped" Champion and noted urban farmer Stacey Givens, whose goal is to bring neighborhood food producers, chefs and farmers into one economically equitable space.
"This will give more direct access to a kitchen for farms and artisan producers," Givens says. "Prices have gone up to rent kitchens, to rent commissary space, even just to rent your apartment."
Bakers, farmers, food truck owners and caterers have all been part of the conversation for future tenants for the kitchen project which will take up 2,400 square feet of the former bakery's 13,500 square feet.
Once construction is complete, the space will function as a very well-equipped commissary kitchen, featuring both a massive walk-in fridge and freezer, an extensive cookbook library, double dish pits and a separated baker's stall — stuff some cooks who are used to the spartan confines of many commissary kitchens salivate over.
What Givens says makes this commissary kitchen unique is the sliding pay scale designed to fit into a broad range of budgets. The rental prices and web-based scheduling system were designed so that low-income family businesses will have guaranteed kitchen time alongside businesses with greater economic resources.
The community can get in on the action, too. Just under a mile away at Givens' original project, The Side Yard Farm and Kitchen, a vast network of volunteers exchange work on the farm for fresh produce, bolted seeds, curious roots and edible flowers for which the farm has become known. All of those will make it onto plates at pop up dinners held at the farm, or into the curriculum of cooking classes hosted in the kitchen by chefs, farmers and food industry pros.
Stacey Givens picks produce at her Side Yard Farm in Northeast Portland Givens hopes to launch the business in April of 2018. On Wednesday, she launched a crowdfunding campaign with a $50,000 goal to cover some of the costs for equipment.
Part of the reason the project is able to offer variable pricing is that Givens is opening the space with the help of landlord Carolyn Mistell. Givens' kitchen project is only one of multiple tenants that will one day fill the former bakery and leases for other food related businesses are still being finalized. Mistell, who owned the influential Delphina's Bakery from 2004 until she sold it in 2012 (she kept ownership of the building), hopes the entire center will be occupied by businesses that give back to the community in food-adjacent ways.
While Givens' Community Supported Kitchen and a new artisan bakery project from Little T American Baker alum Dillon DeBauche are slated for the building's back two spaces, three front spaces still need to be filled. She's currently in negotiations with a green grocer, the new brick-and-mortar iteration of chef Maya Lovelace's hit pop-up Mae and a yet-to-be-determined food retail business for the other spots.
The complex will add to the growing number of restaurants that call this stretch of Northeast 42nd Avenue home, including Pizza Jerk, Old Salt Market and, until their lease ended, the original Pollo Norte.
"It's always been about community," says Givens. "Coming from a restaurant background, you start feeling like a family. You end up spending more time with them than your normal family. So many people don't see how much time goes into making the food that goes on your plate."
Perhaps now a few more people will.
-- Zach Middleton, Special to The Oregonian/OregonLive