It takes a lot to make a cheap burger.
A rancher needs to raise the cows. A butcher needs to ground the meat. A chef mix and form the patties. A farmer needs to grow, thresh and mill the wheat, then mix and bake the buns. Others need to grow onions, tomatoes, lettuce, sesame seeds, cucumbers and more. All for a sandwich many customers expect to cost less than $10.
That was the economic reality facing Fermenter, according to chef Aaron Adams. Despite being a plant-based restaurant, their veggie burger — the restaurant’s top-selling item — was similarly labor-intensive, made using fermented grains and legumes, koji and rice and smoked onions slathered with a house-made miso mayo and topped with scratch-made pickles.
“You can pay $14 for a tempeh burger that takes a ton of work or go to a smash burger place and get something for $8, and it tastes better, since it’s meat,” Adams said during a phone interview last month. “We can’t appeal to meat eaters. We need to appeal to health-obsessed people, or tempeh fans, or vegans, all in a town with 52 full-time vegan restaurants. And we have to compete with places that are using a Beyond or Impossible burgers, which are made in a factory.”
So Adams is pivoting. The former Portobello chef, who opened the fine-dining focused Astera in January and closed Fermenter at the end of March, is returning to Italian food with a new pasta joint aiming for an April 16 opening.
“It’s going to be called Il Paffuto, which means the fat guy,” Adams said, “That’s me, by the way.”
According to Adams, the new restaurant will use local ingredients in its vegan scratch cooking, be more “Italian-inspired” than traditionally Italian and continue to play with the fermentation techniques honed at Fermenter, including “vegan cheesemaking and lactic acid bacteria fermentation.” Produce for Il Paffuto will come from the likes of Groundwork Organics and Gathering Together Farm, while grains for pasta will be bought directly from local mills. Adams is growing herbs for the restaurant in his own backyard farm.
An early look at Il Paffuto’s menu shows house-made pickles, vegan cheeses and vinegars abounding on a short menu of snacks, pastas, salads, “not pasta” veggies dishes and desserts. Those first through the door in April can expect koji focaccia, green olives with fennel, a pickle plate, a tagliatelle with smoked carrots, some green garlic pesto ravioli and a sprouted grain pappardelle with maitake mushrooms and lacto-fermented turnip sauce. Spring sweets include a chocolate-hazelnut tart, a rhubarb olive oil cake with strawberries and a carrot ice cream and cookie sandwich. Drinks include Portland coffee, tea, beer, Northwest wine as well as house kefirs, tepaches and kombuchas.
Pasta prices will likely land in the $20 range, which is the same price Adams thinks he should have been charging for Fermenter’s tempeh burger. And moving away from burgers and beet reubens also means giving his cooks a little more creative freedom in the kitchen.
“We had four years of sales data at Fermenter,” Adams said. “What sold was our hamburger, our reuben and our bowl. We had soups and specials and fries and salads, but if you were looking at any sales day, it would be 15 specials and 120 hamburgers. I’m going to leave the sandwich scene for the people who make sandwiches.”
Look for Il Pafutto to open on Tuesday, April 16 in the former Fermenter space at 1403 S.E. Belmont St., 971-229-1465, ilpaffuto.com
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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