Bonnie Morales

The Climb

Culinary Institute of America provided the formal training before Bonnie Morales moved through adjacent food and design work: product designer at product design, design consultant at design consultancy in New York City, and chef at Tru in Chicago. That path put design thinking and restaurant work in the same frame before Kachka. Today, Bonnie Morales is chef and co-owner and head chef of Kachka in Portland, Oregon, since 2014.

Today

Since 2014, Kachka has been the place where ownership and kitchen leadership meet in Bonnie Morales’s work. In the restaurant’s first year, she also held the title of executive chef and co-owner, keeping the role tied directly to the food and the business at once. Brindza Pashtet is the named signature most closely attached to Morales’s cooking: a classic Russian cheese spread, specific rather than general, and a useful marker of the restaurant’s register. Morales has said, “We felt if we don’t, nobody will.” She has also said, “I’m cooking food I love to eat. I’m not Vladimir Putin. Just because I cook this food doesn’t mean I’m colluding!”

Signature

Pelmeni, cabbage rolls, and Brindza Pashtet are the signatures named in Bonnie Morales’s work at Kachka. The range is plain in the best sense: dumpling craft, cabbage preparation, and a cheese spread that gives the kitchen a defined Russian idiom.

In Their Words “I’m cooking food I love to eat. I’m not Vladimir Putin. Just because I cook this food doesn’t mean I’m colluding!” “We felt if we don’t, nobody will.”

Recognition

Recognition here sits less in awards than in position and specificity. Since 2014, Bonnie Morales has been identified with Kachka as chef and co-owner, and in the restaurant’s first year as executive chef and co-owner. Brindza Pashtet gives that recognition a concrete reference point: a classic Russian cheese spread named as her signature, and enough to anchor the work to a particular style of cooking in Portland.