When Greg Higgins came to the Pacific Northwest in the early ’80s, he wasn’t expecting to stay long.

“I thought Portland was going to be the great launching pad for me,” he said. “I was in my twenties and getting ready to be an upstart young chef.”

Instead, Greg Higgins ended up at the forefront of Oregon’s farm-to-table movement, co-founding the legendary Higgins Restaurant with friend Paul Mallory.

Higgins has been plugged into the food world as long as he can remember. “I grew up in upstate New York,” he said. “My family had a garden and I worked on farms and stuff as a kid, so I had a lot of that in my blood.”

After working in kitchens in Europe, he made his way back stateside, working in Sun Valley and then Seattle, where he says he fell in love with the Pacific Northwest.

“I moved to Seattle and I was just shocked,” Higgins said. “I was like, ‘Wow, there’s stuff blooming here in December and January?’”

A job at the historic Heathman Hotel brought him to Portland in 1984 and after almost a decade as their Executive Chef, he opened Higgins Restaurant just a stone’s throw away.

“We opened in 1994 with the philosophy that we were going to source all of our ingredients from local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and foragers… focusing on sustainable practices, organic whenever possible,” he said.

In 2002, Greg Higgins became one of the first few Oregon chefs to win a James Beard Award and now three decades later, he wants to hang up his chef whites — but not before shepherding in a new owner for the restaurant.

Last month, OPB’s “All Things Considered” host Crystal Ligori sat down with Higgins ahead of lunch service and started by asking the question on everyone’s mind:

Crystal Ligori: Why is now the right time to retire?

Greg Higgins: [laughing] Well, I, I’m not as young as I used to be, and I guess we all can say that I’m having some health issues that are just part of aging. I’m almost 70. I’m in my late 60s, and being a chef is a hard, hard occupation. We’re kind of an endangered species, old chefs, there’s just not a lot of us out there. Your body wears out eventually, and I’d like to save some of that for my garden and for spending time with my wife and my puppy at home and all that kind of good stuff…

Ligori: How do you see Higgins fitting into the larger culinary scene in Portland and 32 years ago, did you and Paul even have an idea that it would have the legacy that it does?

Higgins: If you told me then that we’d be here 32 years later, I’d probably be surprised, but I think it’s a tribute to people responding to what we’re trying to provide and how we fit into the community. We think of ourselves as part of this big web, this food community, and it’s our role to help bring these incredible ingredients to people and let them enjoy them and educate them about them. And so in doing that, you know, time’s flown by.

Ligori: Coming back from the pandemic, the restaurant was in kind of dire straits and you put out a call to the community, and the community really rallied in support. Can you talk going into the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic and what that was like for you?

Higgins: Like everybody, it was terrifying…downtown was literally shuttered. Our first attempt to weather the storm was to open Piggins, our food cart out on the plaza at the Oregon Historical Society and that kept us going for those 2 years when things were really dire. After that, dining opened back up and we did our best to make people feel comfortable and safe. We all kind of expected when the pandemic was over, things would get right back to normal, but that wasn’t the case at all.

The bottom of the curve was about a year ago when we realized that downtown was not bouncing back the way everybody hoped it would. So we put out a plea on social media and it was like an overnight response – it was staggering actually. I was at every farmers market in town that week because, sourcing the food the way we source it, you can’t just say, “Hey, bring me another 15 of those” or “Bring me another 50 pounds of that” because they may not have it or it might not be in the field that day.

We scrambled over the course of those first three to four weeks, and then we adjusted with our growers and providers so that we could handle the volume, and then that buoyed us right back up to where we’re at a good level of business again.

When I put the plea out, I didn’t know that we’d have quite the response it did, and it was it was really heartening to know that the community really thought that we had a place here and wanted to support us. That’s kind of where we’re at today, to see what the next step, what the new chapter is gonna bring.

Ligori: So, let’s talk a little bit about the new chapter because you’ve made the decision to pass Higgins along to a future owner. Can you talk about that decision, because I feel like some folks might be cynical and say, “Oh well, a year ago they said they were doing poorly.”

Higgins: When we opened Higgins, our intention was to create a place that had staying power and then we would fit into the community over a long period of time. It’s always fun to try the next newest, shiniest thing, but when you travel, you want a combination of the new and the really classic traditional stuff to see the foundation of the food in that area. And I think Higgins has established that kind of legacy here. We’ve established ourselves as a progressive but, at the same time, really solid, foundational restaurant.

And I’d like to see that legacy continue… It’s going to take some time, Higgins isn’t going to just change and what we’re trying to do is, is create a transition that allows all the great things that we like about Higgins to continue.

Ligori: What do you see for the future of the Portland restaurant industry and the food scene?

Higgins: I’ve been on the board for the James Beard Public Market like 25 years now, and finally it’s come to fruition. Miraculously, through the hard work of Jessica Elkan, we’re like a year away from the market and I’m not sure the public totally is aware of just what a remarkable thing this is going to be and what a big deal it’s gonna be for the Portland food scene. It’s gonna make Portland even a bigger mecca for food people, so I see that as just kind of the next thing that’s gonna be a catalyst to take the food scene here up to another level yet again.

So I’m very, very excited about that. I think that if the transition here at Higgins goes well, I’ll have some kind of role teaching classes or doing some things there at the market. I want to stay active in food because it’s my life, but I want to just kind of step back a little bit.

As we finished our conversation, Greg Higgins walked me towards the open kitchen at the front of the restaurant and put his chef coat on to get ready for lunch service.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/03/greg-higgins-restaurant-portland-retires/