Pasture PDX

Retired dairy cows at the block

Retired dairy cows set the first decision for Kei Ohdera, chef at Pasture PDX in Portland, before a sandwich reaches the counter. The project began as a butcher shop and restaurant pop-up in 2019, and Ohdera has kept that butcher’s logic inside the restaurant: source the animal with care, cut with purpose, cook with the whole body in mind. He has described the starting point plainly: “Our whole project was inspired by sourcing retired dairy cows.”

Ohdera’s route to this bench runs through Ichikawa, childhood years divided between Japan and the United States, and kitchens in Tokyo and New York. By 2014, he was cooking at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Stone Barns, New York, a named stop in a career shaped by movement rather than a single local inheritance. Portland became the place where that movement settled into a method. At Pasture PDX, the chef’s role is not separated from sourcing or butchery; it sits beside them. His own account of the work gives the animal a longer arc than purchase and portion: “The thought is that the animal is raised to live a longer life and provides a product to the community that has value through the milk and everything else, and then the meat.”

Whole-animal work in sandwich form

The discipline here is European-style butchery translated into a sandwich shop, not as a simplification of the craft but as its daily form. House-cured meats carry the program, with pastrami, mortadella, salami, smoked ham, roasted beef, smoked pork shoulder, and braised beef appearing in different combinations across the counter. The O.G. Pastrami Sandwich, Ohdera’s signature, is built in the manner of a bánh mì: house-smoked pastrami, pickled vegetables, hazelnut chile oil, chile oil-dressed cabbage, and ciabatta from Dos Hermanos Bakery.

That construction tells the reader how Pasture PDX thinks. Fat, smoke, acid, heat, bread, and crunch all have a job. The Reuben keeps pastrami with Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing, and kraut. The Grind folds roasted beef mortadella, salami, provolone, pickled peppers, onions, and cabbage into a hot sandwich. The C.O.G. turns roasted chicken toward chile oil and Oregon hazelnuts. Nothing in that list requires theatrical plating; the craft sits in curing, smoking, slicing, dressing, and the final pressure of a filled roll held together long enough to eat.

The counter on Northeast Alberta

The room at 1413 NE Alberta St works at the scale of a butcher shop and cafe, with the counter carrying the exchange between hands and customer. It is a small, airy space rather than a hushed dining room, and that matters to the feeling of the work. Sandwiches arrive with dressed cabbage, pickled vegetables, aioli, cultured cream, salsa verde, or hot sauce doing the bright work around the meat. The bench-side decisions remain visible in the finished food.

There are also retail goods, beer, wine, and Pacific Northwest products, but the center of gravity stays with the cut and the sandwich. The house has been named among Portland’s best new restaurants by The Oregonian and among the city’s sandwich shops by Eater Portland. Awards can point a reader to the door. They do not explain the method.

Food as the shared language

Ohdera has said that “all people, regardless of who they are and where they’re from, can connect over food.” At Pasture PDX, that sentence has a practical shape: retired dairy cow sourcing, whole-animal use, Japanese and American references, Oregon bread, hazelnut chile oil, and a counter where the craft lands in both hands. If the work needs a final image, let it be the O.G. Pastrami Sandwich, held together by smoke, pickle, cabbage, and ciabatta.