Longtime Portland resident Linda Jaramillo sat around a large table inside Higgins restaurant Friday waiting to reunite with friends for lunch, something she hadn’t done in years since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When I heard that Higgins was having some financial difficulties, I got right on it,” Jaramillo said. “We said, ‘We are going to help. We are going to do what we can do to support Higgins.’”

Jaramillo heard the restaurant’s plea for help and and joined many others to show support.

Higgins, located in downtown Portland, is known for its sustainable local menus. Since opening in 1994, the restaurant has prioritized using local produce and meat, becoming one of the city’s premier farm-to-table restaurants.

In 2002, co-owner Greg Higgins won the James Beard Award for best chef in the Northwest and Pacific region. Three years later, the restaurant was inducted into Nation’s Restaurant News’ Fine Dining Hall of Fame.

Despite all the accolades, the restaurant is on the brink of closure. In a social media post two weeks ago, Higgins announced it was struggling to stay afloat due to decreased business following the pandemic.

Portland area residents responded with a dramatic spike in reservations, keeping the business alive for now.

The downtown Portland restaurant has seen a drop in customers since the pandemic, a trend driven by remote work and office vacancy.

“For independent restaurants like ours, who’ve poured everything into this city for decades, it’s become nearly impossible to keep going,” read their social media post.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Portland currently holds one the highest downtown office vacancy rates in the country.

Greg Higgins said the restaurant has been serving nearly 200 dinners a night since they posted online.

“We expected a big boost, but nothing quite as extreme as this,” he said. “On the first weekend after we put that out, we went from very modest reservations to maximum immediately. That’s pretty much continued day after day.”

Friday’s lunch rush was no different. Customers packed in to relive past meals at Higgins and exchange laughs with staff members who they hadn’t seen in years.

Manager Dylan Schmitt said staff had their “running shoes on” keeping up with the influx of diners.

Before the post, Schmitt said, their regular customers were barely keeping them afloat.

“I would say that we were treading water and now we are swimming across the entire ocean,” he said.

Higgins and co-owner Paul Mallory said they are not yet free from financial difficulty, however.

“The momentum of [the community’s] support is building and the potential can’t be understated,” Mallory said.

Higgins saw the recent rush of activity as a reflection of Portlanders’ affection for farm-to-table ingredients, fine dining and the city’s downtown.

“Obviously, the people who live in this town care about all three of those things in bigger ways than I could have imagined,” he said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/25/portland-higgins-restaurant-gets-support/