Kee’s Loaded Kitchen Will Serve Free Meals All Weekend

As the COVID-19 outbreak in Oregon continues to impact the local restaurant market, stories are popping up across the city, from food cart owners giving away free meals to chefs starting Instagram cooking classes. In this new version of AM Intel, we dive into different ways the state’s food service industry has been responding to the global pandemic. For more COVID-19 stories, check out our larger story stream.

Feeding Black Portland Continues

For two months now, Kiauna Nelson has spent various days serving free meals to Black Portlanders, fueled by donations from everyone from mayoral write-in candidate and longtime activist Teressa Raiford to local pizzeria Red Sauce Pizza. The Oregon Hospitality Foundation is keeping things going in a serious way, donating $6,400 to Nelson to continue feeding Black Portlanders — protesters in particular — for free. All meals will be free from today, July 31, to Sunday, August 2, starting at 1 p.m. each day.

What’s in a Name

Gregory Gourdet, the Top Chef darling and Departure culinary director, is still fine-tuning the restaurant he’s planning on opening next year, but it looks like he has landed on a name: Kann, which means “cane” (referring to sugar cane) in Haitian Creole. At a sold-out pop-up preview for the restaurant, Gourdet will serve dishes like frozen melon soup with Dungeness crab, braised oxtails, and a charred pineapple upside-down cake at Mama Bird; that menu seems like another good indication of what’s to come.

In Other News...

• For the first time in decades, Alpenrose Dairy will be offering milk delivery starting August 5. [BizJo]
• BarFly — the Portland bar zine, website, and party bus — has called it quits in response to the COVID-19 crisis. [WWeek]
• APANO has started its own hunger relief program, distributing food boxes to food-insecure people of color experiencing financial strain related to COVID-19. All of the food comes from BIPOC-owned restaurants and farms. [EaterWire]