Gregory Gourdet

Chef

Portland’s chef all-star has been on the rise for a long time. He’s the former Executive Chef at downtown Portland’s Departure and has worked at a slew of Jean-Gorges restaurants, cooking up everything from French to Thai. Gregory’s true break-out was becoming a finalist on Top Chef in 2015, and returning to the show as a competitor in 2020 and a Top Chef judge in 2021. He is a three-time James Beard Award semifinalist, and, in 2022, won the award for his Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health.

How do you top that? Easy. You open one of the most popular restaurants in the country. Gregory’s new Haitian influenced, Portland-based restaurant, Kann, earned the No. 1 spot on Esquire‘s 2022 list of best new restaurants in the USA, and was a New York Times Top 50 Restaurant in 2022.

Meals at home consist of the traditional flavors his Haitian mom brought to the states with their family. Through his tenure, he’s worked to bring this food more in the forefront: he’s staged Haitian pop-up dinners, cooked at the James Beard House, traveled to Haiti to cook. Gregory is a passionate traveler and one of Modern Adventure’s most popular Tastemakers. He’s somebody we’re deeply honored to call a friend and travel co-conspirator.