PASSIONATE IN PORTLAND

Let's drop the modesty right from the start. Peter Hochman '75 says the food in his restaurant, the inventive and funky Alberta Street Oyster Bar & Grill, in Portland, Ore., is better than sex.

“When you walk through the room, people are in heaven,” he adds.“It's Like Water for Chocolate.”

How did this happen? And how did Hochman come to a life in the restaurant business, hailing from a long line of physicians?

Well it's certainly true that Hochman came to Haverford looking to extend that line. He'd grown up in Annapolis, relished the cobbled small-town charms of the place, and wanted to replicate that kind of community-minded approach in his college experience. He found what he wanted at Haverford, though when it came time for medical school, his GPA didn't measure up. So it was off to Columbia for postgraduate work and then to George Washington University for medical school. It was during his second year at GW, waiting tables to support himself, when he fell in love with the restaurant business. He'd actually been initiated at Haverford, waiting tables at alumni events. But this was serious. New York serious. He left D.C. and found himself working in the some of the most important kitchens and dining rooms in Manhattan: Windows on the World, Maxwell's Plum, Fiorello's. In the back of his mind during this grind of work was a dream to open his own place.

He kept the dream going after a move to San Francisco, where he learned at the feet of“the people who were the best at what they do” at the Kimpton Group, a small hotel and restaurant group founded by a junk-bond trader and specializing in snatching up old-world hotels and turning them into boutique properties. He then worked for Oritalia, a Puccini Group restaurant property headed up by a former Kimpton VP with outposts in Vancouver, BC, and San Francisco. When it came time for an Oritalia in Portland, Hochman got in on the ground floor and the city reminded him of his Annapolis roots.“It's a city with a small-town head,” he says,“and it really reminded me of where I grew up, with the rivers, the small-town feel. I see people I know all the time. And it's affordable. You can buy a home and start a business for a quarter to a half of the cost of San Francisco or New York.”

To this day, Hochman's approach to cooking and food resonates with his childhood experiences along the Chesapeake. Alberta Street capitalizes on a region rich with organic farmers accustomed to delivering the kind of freshness, quality, and innovation demanded by notoriously persnickety chefs. And if he can't find the ingredients locally, he's close to California, the mecca for organic and artisanal products of all kinds.“My love of food and seafood certainly comes from growing up where I did,” he admits,“but cooking was not a great love of my mother's. I started cooking early because I didn't like what was going on in the kitchen.”

Hochman was working in management at Oritalia when 9/11 hit. Like most American cities, Portland's economy was hit hard – and the high-end restaurants probably suffered the hardest blows. And, as it turned out, The Puccini Group had expanded the mini-chain of Oritalia restaurants too quickly. Three years in, Hochman gradually became aware that this was his chance to make the leap in an affordable place that appreciates great food. He was going to pursue the dream.

It wasn't easy.

“There were many false starts,” he recalls,“and many investors fell by the wayside.” One encounter, in particular, was especially chilling. Hochman showed up for a meeting with a key investor, but his business partner did not show. Worried, Hochman summoned the police to his business partner's house to investigate, and, out of options, he apologized to the investor.“He looked at me and said, ‘What do you need?', and ended up carrying the note for me, which is unheard of, and he built the note out so they would not compromise my cash flow. That was a bit of kismet.”

Alberta Street will celebrate its one-year anniversary next month. It has been a roaring success, a“top-drawer newcomer [that] moves like good jazz: warm and lively and balanced and grown-up,” according to The Oregonian. This is a Tiki Barber of a restaurant—a ton of performance in a tiny package. At 1,500 square feet, Alberta Street's 36 seats (with room for 10 at the bar, a concrete slab repurposed from its sushi-bar days, the previous tenant before Hochman took out his lease) have managed to make his $1-million first-year gross sales goal a real possibility. It's a usual night when 400 dinners leave the kitchen.“It's been a blur,” he says.

This is not a generic oyster house by any means, and it's quite possible that anything cookie-cutter would have a mighty tough time making a go of it in this part of Portland. The city is split by the Willamette River; the west side is more traditional downtown and the east side is where the edginess and the arts are thriving most.“It's really undergoing a huge rejuvenation,” Hochman says.“I'm in the Alberta Arts District, which is a vibrant and energetic part of town.” Every month, a“Last Thursday” event attracts a crowd with its carnival-like atmosphere and energy. Alberta Street reflects that vibrancy with an eclectic menu and décor—and with a real devotion to diversity and the arts.

To get what he really wanted, Hochman brought in the right people. From his Kimpton days, he imported a manager from Oritalia, a colleague who joined him in a holding pattern during that restaurant's final months. She also shares Hochman's love of food and wine. The original concept for Alberta Street was a comfortable place serving comfort food at modest price points. But then he met Eric Bechard. A graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, Bechard went to work at several venues in Palm Springs before he became head line cook at The Heathman Hotel in Portland.

“I think it's all about passion and talent and after meeting Eric, we just took the whole concept to a higher notch,” Hochman explains.“With sophisticated food, there are only so many niches, especially in a town this size.”

Hochman has found his niche with Alberta Street. Not only did he get his cherished comfort items (a delicious burger, French fries, breast of chicken, fried oysters), but he also managed to assemble, with Bechard's creative input, a tantalizing array of foods you wouldn't normally encounter. Sweetbreads. Salt-roasted beets. Braised pork belly. And of course there are wonderful oysters of all kinds, and the wine list is studded with the minerally whites that suit them best. R.W. Apple would have loved this place.“Some of Eric's dishes, when we write the descriptions, to be honest, you read them, scratch your head, and say, ‘What?' But there is a wonderful interplay of textures and flavors, a real French style using lots of purees and exquisite presentation.” The menu changes every week-and-a-half to two weeks. No entrée exceeds $25, though the“Chef's Whim” five-course tasting menu will set you back $50—still extremely reasonable in the realm of tasting menus. For $20 more, you will have wines to complement those courses. And the wine list is continually evolving.“It's a living thing,” Hochman says.

The head bartender, imported from San Francisco, turns out 25 house drinks. But the eclectic, artsy nature of the community is reflected here, too. In July, just eight months in, Alberta Street was on its 10th bottle of Chartreuse. Prior to Alberta Street, Hochman had never sold a single serving of the stuff. To solidify things in the front of the house, he hired a backup barkeep and a stellar bar manager; there has been virtually no turnover in the service staff. Not so in the kitchen, where it has been difficult to keep sous chefs and others. Desserts needed work, so Hochman poached a“dessert guy” from another Portland restaurant.

But this is a neighborhood place, first and foremost. Hochman serves the local Stumptown Coffee, regular and decaf. There is no espresso machine.“We need faster turns,” he explains,“and a cappuccino adds half an hour to a 1.5-hour dining period. And with those machines, you have five different people making espresso through the night and it never tastes the same.” The upstairs gallery changes every two months and features the work of local artists. There is no commission to hang work. This approach, along with countless other deft touches and attention to detail, has cultivated a loyal, mostly local following: Hochman sees some patrons once, sometimes twice a week. There is a summer concert series in a nearby park, which Hochman supports. He wrote a check so that a local kid could play basketball. Alberta Street is part of the community.

Hochman designed the space himself. It is simple and austere with its off-white metallic walls looking like the inside of an oyster shell. The other color players are red and black.“I really wanted a place that has glowing windows as people drive by or walk by at night,” he says. The first purchase was an order of 24 red pendant lights (“Everything flowed from that.”). He had to be inventive with such a small space. When you enter, the 7'-by-8' walk-in fridge lurks unseen, incorporated in the design of the doorway. He ripped out all of the old kitchen equipment from the sushi bar and replaced it with gleaming new stock, including a larger stove. It's a relaxed décor, with cheap, simple stainless-steel flatware and buck-a-plate china (watch that breakage). Again, the emphasis is on simplicity. The food is the star.“Everything is designed to be as simple operationally as possible. Shirts and ties for your wait staff mean drycleaning bills.” Instead, servers at Alberta Street wear jeans and t-shirts, a different color every three months. There is no live music.“It's all chill,” Hochman says,“and it's all run from an iPod. Live music would be a whole 'nother job, and I've done that in San Francisco, but here the art space upstairs is the big ‘extra'.”

Alberta Street has been so successful that Hochman, when he does come up for air, considers a second place in the city, one where he owns the building and gets something going on a larger scale. A bigger place with more comfort food than anything else. A big bar. But it will still come down to the people who make it happen. Hochman truly believes he has hired people who are the best at what they do, in every position. They are passionate performers.

“This is called the hospitality industry for a reason,” he says.“When I grew into it, it was the restaurant business. Period. I do not forget that, and the people I work with do not forget that. Everyone here is best at what they do. There is a passion. And the patron comes first.”

—Steve Heacock