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One of Portland’s most underrated restaurants lost its chef. Bill Wallender, an alum of Ava Gene’s and Little Bird, has decided to leave the restaurant he opened in 2016, and an DOC alum has taken his place in the open-format kitchen. The new chef de cuisine, Ryley Eckersley, has worked in kitchens since he was 13, jumping around the globe in his whites from Belize to Barcelona. He got his start in Oregon at restaurants like Drake in Bend and Jen’s Garden in Sisters. Most recently he served as the head chef at DOC, until he left in 2017.
Wallender is taking some personal time off, but devotees concerned about the fate of his dreamy sheep’s cheese dumplings, never fear: Those beauties will stay on the menu... for now. So will the rest of the ownership team, including Emily Everett and Sandi and Dan Wilkens.
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