Volume 17. Wednesday, August 6, 2026 · Welcome to the 8,715 souls at this table · (please share with friends)
Happy Wednesday.
Although, looking outside, I’m not sure there is much to feel happy about.
If you’re here in Portland, anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, or honestly almost anywhere in the world right now, you know how bad everything looks. The sky is wrong. The air is wrong. It’s a difficult time to be outside, and an even harder time for the people whose work depends on being there.
For those of us who care deeply about what we consume, this reaches everything. The wine made here. The fruit. The vegetables. The farmers and field workers growing and harvesting all of it. None of this exists in isolation.
We are part of an ecosystem, even when we forget.
So yes — this week we’re going to ask you to come see us. At República. At Lilia. You already knew that part was coming. But when you support us, you’re also supporting the producers, farmers, winemakers, and people whose work makes our work possible. And more than anything, we’d love to share a little of that care with you indoors.
With that said, Humble Kitchen, Episode Two is now open to everyone subscribed to this newsletter. Paid or unpaid, you have access. More on why below — but go watch it as soon as you finish reading.
Let’s begin.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Inflation Eats: The Paper Bridge
Katrina at the northern Vietnamese spot everyone’s been talking about, sweating into her soup at a tiny plastic table and getting pulled back to eating alone in Hanoi and Hoi An. But this one’s really about math: what a solo diner can and can’t reach when the whole point of a place is family-style eating. She held the line at $36 after tip — and left thinking about everything the table keeps from you when you come to it alone.
Mise En Place: Chef Jocelyn Chacón
Bellpine’s chef de cuisine on the thing most cooks learn too late: master leadership before you chase a title. Katrina sat with Chacón on empathy over perfection, on being the only woman in the kitchen and working twice as hard to prove a point that shouldn’t need proving, on getting boxed into one cuisine and cooking her way out of it. A clear-eyed conversation with someone who figured out that great chefs cook well, but leaders build teams.
HUMBLE KITCHEN: EPISODE TWO
Minneapolis. Nixta and Oro. Chef Gustavo Romero. Three pieces from three voices — Angel, Emmanuel, and Gustavo himself — on the same episode, the same city, the same word. Read them together.
Curada: Minnesota in the Dead of Winter
Emmanuel on landing in Minneapolis in a minus-teens arctic blast to film Gustavo and Kate Romero — and finding, inside Nixta/Oro, the exact warmth you’d feel walking into a relative’s home in Mexico. Handmade tortillas, Latin rhythms off the speakers, Café de Olla the prep cooks pressed into your hands. Then the turn: what came for that community the following winter, and why hospitality stopped being a posture and became survival.
Yes And No…
Angel on why this episode felt less like a production than a visit with family. Gustavo Romero is the cousin of the late Lauro Romero — once Angel’s best friend, his chef, his business partner. Meeting Gustavo was meeting a long-lost primo from a town whose stories he already knew. And then Gustavo answered a question the way Lauro always used to, the answer that drove Angel insane for years, and for a second the man was back at the table.
A Reminder That The Hard Isn’t Over
Gustavo Romero, in his own words, on watching himself on film — and on what “humble” actually means. Not modesty. Tentative and delicate: the condition of building something you can’t protect, in a business that’s always a couple bad months from a “permanently closed” sign. Written after a winter his city spent under siege. A restaurateur’s account of what it costs to keep the doors open, and why he does it anyway.
Why we moved it away from the paid wall: Humble Kitchen, Episode Two is now available without a paid subscription. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support us — you should, and a paid subscription still matters more than we can say. But right now we feel it’s important to get these stories in front of as many people as we can. Gustavo’s story. The team at Nixta and Oro. Minneapolis. Some things are bigger than the paywall.
ONE LAST THING…
Illness of Kings
Three weeks in one. A Her Way shoot through Sonoma with Kelsey and Juanjo — the man whose entire production fits on his back. A market run, a Sunday service survived, Chef Hanna Ruth carrying República while the town underrates her. A Humble Kitchen episode reshot at the last minute. A hundred plates cooked for Pickathon on a leg that had quietly caught fire. Angel on systems, on two shows at once, on getting so good at the work that it becomes process — and on the one vote the body cast that no system could override. The illness of kings, they call it. Gout. It picked a hell of a week.
A NOTE ON WHAT’S NEXT
Humble Kitchen continues, one episode a week. After the run, Her Way — hosted by Kelsey Glasser — follows in the rotation, and if Illness of Kings is any indication, we’ve been bleeding to make it good.
Paid subscribers keep this whole thing running. $8 a month or $80 a year. If you’ve been meaning to convert, the work in front of you this week is the argument. Watch it. Share it. Send it to someone who needs to see it.
— TODOS Media & República & Co.
DON’T FORGET
República — The $40 tasting menu is up. Whatever’s in season, whatever’s ready. Thursday through Sunday, 10am to 2:30pm. Chef Hanna-Ruth Joy in the kitchen — one of the most underrated chefs in this town, and you can taste it.
Lilia Comedor — Dinner. Summer produce at peak, straight from families like the Martinezes at Sunrise Organics. Chef Juan Gomez doing what he does.
Bar Comala — 422 NW 8th. Pour something neat. Let the bartender lead.
All part of the República & Co. family. Still here. Still building.
SUBSCRIBE: One Last Thing · Humble Kitchen · Pichon · SORBIDO · Cocina Noroeste · Portraits of a City · CURADA · MISE En Place · TODOS Media
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