When Canard opened in 2018, it was the precise restaurant Portland didn’t know it needed, an all-day cafe-bar with the look of a smart Paris cave à manger and the same anarchic approach to menu development originally found at sister restaurant Le Pigeon next door. The dining room was narrow and often packed, especially after it was named Portland’s 2018 Restaurant of the Year, but you could usually squeeze in for a breakfast duck stack, or find standing room for a happy hour steam burger. As we wrote at the time, Canard “tries to be something for everyone and … succeeds beautifully.”
Owners Gabriel Rucker and Andy Fortgang want to keep that approach at Canard’s second location, which will open in early summer in the lower Oregon City storefront last home to Grano Bakery, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned. Joined by Canard chef de cuisine (and now partner) Taylor Daugherty, the trio hope to start serving steam burgers, Salisbury steak frites and soft serve sundaes by June or July to a dining room that, along with a new permanent patio, will nearly double the original’s 45 seats.
“Canard has always been what you make of it,” said Fortgang. “Come in for a cocktail, come in for a snack, have dinner, make it your birthday, make it a Tuesday. This will be the same.”
Rucker and Fortgang have talked about opening a second Canard since early 2020, a few months after closing downtown’s Little Bird Bistro. But while other Portland restaurateurs have focused on new development in Beaverton or Lake Oswego, the longtime partners honed in on Oregon City, a Clackamas County city once known for the sprawling paper mills surrounding nearby Willamette Falls.
“When we first started looking outside of Portland, it wouldn’t have been right to be in some strip mall or new development,” Fortgang said. “Restaurants are about the food and the service, but also the feel of the street, the feel of the room.”
The site they found was previously home to Grano, a great sourdough bakery that pivoted to wholesaling two years ago, then closed for good in November. The building has big windows overlooking the corner of 15th and Washington streets, a block from the steaming crab pot at Tony’s Fish Market and the surprisingly busy lunch rush at Oregon City Brewing and the Corner 14 food cart pod. It’s also less than a 10 minute drive from Rucker’s Milwaukie home. A large parking lot shared with wedding venue Abernethy Center was a selling point, as was the proximity to West Linn, Lake Oswego and Tualatin.
“We didn’t design it this way, but we found a restaurant that’s actually replicable,” Rucker said. “Le Pigeon doesn’t work coming out here, or anywhere else. Little Bird wouldn’t. But Canard has these core menu items that are craveable and work no matter who you are.”
Daugherty — wearing a Hama Hama oyster cap with a logo reminiscent of Oregon City’s own Arch Bridge — will work alongside chef de cuisine Jacob Soule (Little Bird) as the group’s “boots on the ground.” He says the new menu will highlight Canard staples, including the signature buttermilk pancakes cooked in duck fat and available all day with a pat of seared foie gras for those looking to break their fast with a bottle of Bordeaux. Steam burgers — our favorite new Portland burger the year they debuted — French fries and soft serve sundaes will be passed to the patio through a window carved into the side of the new restaurant’s building. Canard’s lunch service, suspended during the pandemic, will make a return here, as will the ring-shaped Paris-Brest dessert.
But Rucker and Daugherty are leaving room to experiment. Menu ideas being tossed around right now include a Thai-style shrimp cocktail, duck confit quesadillas, a dry-aged Kobe beef Salisbury steak frites with morel gravy, togarashi-dusted Tokyo hot fried chicken and a smoked pork ribeye served with a scallion pancake.
Rucker says the group plans to listen to locals to figure out what works and what doesn’t, building a restaurant that “doesn’t bring Portland to Oregon City, but that Oregon City wants for itself.”
“What I would love to have happen is kids get done with soccer or baseball practice, then they’re sitting outside with their parents having ice cream and steam burgers and fries, but there can still be people having oysters or Salisbury steak with a nice bottle of wine,” Rucker said. “We want to keep this as an everybody’s restaurant.”
Canard hopes to open its second location at 1500 Washington St. in Oregon City in June or July of this year.
Read more:
The making of chef Gabriel Rucker: talent, hard work and ‘Ruck Luck’
Why downtown Oregon City’s food scene has become so appealing
Channeling Paris (and White Castle), Canard opens next door to Le Pigeon
Portland’s 2018 Restaurant of the Year: Canard
Willamette Falls remains a place of spiritual importance for Northwest tribes
— Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com @tdmrussell