Acclaimed chef Sarah Pliner was killed last week while riding her bike in southeast Portland. A three-time James Beard Award semifinalist, she co-founded the Portland restaurant Aviary in 2011 along with chefs Jasper Shen and Kat Whitehead. Pliner herself described Aviary’s cuisine as modern French technique with global flavors and it opened to high praise, winning Restaurant of the Year in 2012 just months after a fire nearly destroyed it.
A veteran chef, Pliner got her start cooking in Portland in the ‘90s at the Heathman Hotel and Giorgio’s, before returning home to New York to carve out a name for herself at Michelin-starred restaurants like Aquavit and Aldea. A decade after Pliner and Shen worked together in New York, they reconnected and discovered they both were ready to leave the city. The pair, along with fellow chef and Shen’s wife Kat Whitehead, decided to move to Portland to open Aviary.
Sarah Pliner holds a pork belly tea sandwich as part of pairing menu she created this past summer for Fullerton Wines. Pliner was the former co-owner of the acclaimed Aviary restaurant. She was killed while riding her bike in Portland on Oct. 4, 2022.
Photo by Susanne Fullerton, courtesy of Lauren Hill
Like many restaurants during the pandemic, Aviary closed in 2020, but that couldn’t keep Pliner out of the culinary zeitgeist. This summer, she joined Fullerton Wines, creating seasonal, bi-monthly pairing dinners at their wine bar in northwest Portland. She was also cooking at the newly opened Greek-inspired Bluto’s and was in the process of opening her own new restaurant.
This week, friends and colleagues shared their memories of Pliner with “All Things Considered” host Crystal Ligori.
The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
Andy Diaz, owner Blackbird Wine Shop
We met on the first day of school in seventh grade. It was my first day, and I had to take a public bus across the Bronx to get to the school, and the last leg of the bus ride went right through her neighborhood, and she and her older sister got on. The nature of the school that we went to was really extravagant, it was a campus in the Bronx. It was a really closed off and somewhat wealthy community and I was one of the kids that they had a scholarship program for. Even back then — you know how the kids of color always sit together in the lunchroom? It was really evident. And it wasn’t just the kids of color, it would be the kids that didn’t have the means would sit together in the lunchroom. Sarah could sit with us, and Sarah didn’t have any issues with it, and Sarah could ride the bus, and Sarah could take the train, and Sarah could be the city kid. And she was able to do it because she had, really early on, shrugged those conventions of wealth.
You know, when I came back to meet Sarah as an adult, and over the years I realized, that her strength was that she had mopped the floors for somebody, that she had stuck her hand in the drain and wasn’t afraid to pull nasty stuff out of it. She was the one that could do anything. She also, as the restaurateur, learned how to get the best out of people, and how to communicate that she had faith in people. By being the person in the middle that was constantly taking on the most heat, making sure that it was exactly the way she wanted. [She was] so present at it that everybody around her was willing to put in more than I think at any other place, where they would grow a little more frustrated about the circumstances of the job. She was completely consumed by the business and making it perfect, so that when people came in, they felt special and they felt that the food was delightful and that when they ate it, they smiled.
Everything that’s already been written about her will make her seem constantly driven or constantly working, and kind of serious. But I would also include that she could have a great sense of humor. She had her head down working all the time, but when she stopped, it was always with great satisfaction for a job well done at the end of the day,
Chef Sarah Pliner plating food for her seasonal pairing menu for Fullerton Wines in August 2022. Pliner was the former co-owner of the acclaimed Aviary restaurant. She was killed while riding her bike in Portland on Oct. 4, 2022.
Photo by Susanne Fullerton, courtesy of Lauren Hill
Lauren Hill, former Aviary server
My first job in Portland was working catering at the Heathman, that’s kind of how Sarah and I had crossed paths. I was hired at Aviary [as part of their] opening team, brought on as a server and my eyes were wide open to what she was doing with all these innovative dishes that coming from the Midwest I’d never seen or heard of before. Things like monkfish and duck tongue and elevating chicken skins... She had really beautiful creations and I never worked somewhere where I’ve seen so many people cry, you know have tears [in their eyes] because the dish tasted so good.
I left Aviary in 2017, but Sarah and I maintained friendship, so she was doing these pop-ups at Fullerton Wines every other Thursday and she knew I was in between jobs and she asked me to come help out. And that was a lot of fun to work with Sarah again, I think after the first dinner is when I kind of got this anxious rush of like, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m actually serving Sarah Pliner’s food again.”
In my life, it’s kind of like the six degrees of Sarah Pliner, everybody in my life is somehow connected to her. She was my mentor and she is still my mentor. And I’ve just been trying to navigate what it’s like to not have that mentor in my life, but kind of reflect on what her legacy is... and it’s huge and I don’t really know how to put in words how gigantic her legacy is that she left.
Michael Zusman, freelance food critic
Aviary opened early in 2011, and I first met Sarah when I interviewed her and her then-business partners, Jasper Shen and Kat Whitehead. And I’m always amazed, because back in 2011, there were not a lot of chefs who were taking Asian ingredients and melding them with classic European technique. She was one of the first, and she did an amazing job with it. She was undoubtedly one of the best chefs of her time. I always considered her one of the top five chefs in Portland. You know, the biggest problem that she had in terms of gaining notoriety, even locally, was her personality. She was shy, she was introverted, she was amazingly ego-less. She just wanted to cook great food, and she accomplished every bit of that.
Most people will tell you that the crispy pig ear dish that she had on her menu from day one, and to the last day that Aviary was open — crispy pig ear, coconut rice, avocado and Chinese sausage — was the most memorable dish. And it was fantastic, don’t get me wrong. But she also did a dish, and in fact, it’s one of the last ones I was able to taste of hers, which was a lobster fat spaghetti. Lobster fat, or tomalley, is a not-very-often used ingredient, but it added a richness to spaghetti, to which she ... I guess you could say ‘gilded the lily’ with trout roe. It was the most marvelous dish.
She did have plans to open a new place, and it was going to be as idiosyncratic as she is. I think she wanted it to be maybe [600] or 800 square feet, and maybe 20 seats, maybe 15 seats. It was gonna be a one-woman show. And when I got the news, beyond just the mere fact of her death, it pained me that this dream that she had of getting back into the business on her own was not going to be realized.