McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside, one of Portland’s signature waterfront restaurants and the once sprawling chain’s last remaining location in the city where it was founded, will close after service on Sunday, a restaurant employee confirmed.
“It’s been a long tenure here, the community is fantastic, it’s been a great two-way relationship, and it’s going to be a bittersweet moment when we close our doors for good on Sunday,” a McCormick & Schmick’s employee said Friday, asking not to be named as speaking publicly is a violation of company policy.
Landry’s, the Houston-based restaurant giant that agreed to buy McCormick & Schmick’s in 2011, did not respond to calls or emails requesting comment Thursday and Friday.
Neighbors and regulars first heard the news Wednesday, learning from longtime employees that they had been given five days notice before the restaurant’s imminent closure. Willamette Week first reported the news Thursday.
Opened in the early 1990s, McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside went through several name tweaks and menu overhauls over the decades, with the bar once specializing in pizza and craft brews from the adjacent Pilsener Room, including an on-site pilot brewery from Hood River’s Full Sail Brewing.
McCormick and Schmick’s Harborside at the Marina in Portland Friday, March 29, 2024.Mark Graves/The Oregonian
But seafood and river views were always central to the concept, with crowds swelling on the promenade each summer, and reservations hard to come by when the Christmas Ships bobbed by the terraced dining room each holiday season.
McCormick & Schmick’s was born a few years after Bill McCormick bought one of Portland’s oldest restaurants, Jake’s Famous Crawfish, hiring Douglas Schmick as a manager. In 1979, the duo opened the original McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant in downtown Portland, then quickly set their sights on a national expansion.
Five years after opening their First Avenue restaurant, McCormick and Schmick opened a restaurant in Seattle. They expanded to Denver three years later, then Southern California, with an opening in Irvine in 1989.
Early on, the restaurants were known for menus printed daily with as many as 110 made-to-order dishes and a signature “Fresh List” of 30 to 40 varieties of fresh seafood.
McCormick and Schmick’s Harborside at the Marina in Portland Friday, March 29, 2024.Mark Graves/The Oregonian
In 2004, after selling then buying back their namesake chain from the parent company of Applebee’s, McCormick and Schmick took their company public, with an initial public offering valued at $172.5 million. At the time, the group had 49 restaurants spread across the country.
Before an ill-fated push into the suburbs, most McCormick & Schmick’s restaurants were primarily located in urban cores, with an estimated 50 percent of its restaurants in buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Eventually, the company grew to nearly 100 restaurants, including several Portland landmarks such as Jake’s and The Heathman.
After a hostile takeover bid, Landry’s finalized their purchase of the company in 2012, with owner Tillman Fertitta promising that he “wouldn’t touch” some of the company’s better known restaurants, including Jake’s Famous Crawfish, Jake’s Grill or The Heathman. The Heathman restaurant closed in 2016.
The company continues to operate both Jake’s locations and a McCormick & Schmick’s Grill in Tigard.
Visit McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside between now and Sunday at 309 S. Montgomery St., 503-220-1865 mccormickandschmicks.com
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com