OK Omens, the final form of Portland culinary legend Castagna, will close Saturday, October 17. Owner Monique Siu announced the impending closure on Instagram Saturday, September 26, saying that she is “wrapping up this chapter and heading into retirement!”
While Siu acknowledged the challenges of operating a restaurant at this moment in history, OK Omens’s impending closure seems less to do with the success of the restaurant and more to do with Siu’s well-earned desire to rest. “Well, I am 74,” she said in a phone call Saturday morning. “It’s a really challenging time to be in the restaurant industry. It’s a young person’s game.”
OK Omens’s legacy began next door, in one of Portland’s most significant fine dining restaurants, Castagna. Siu — who cofounded another culinary kingmaker, Zefiro — opened the restaurant in 1999, with chef Kevin Gibson (Davenport) holding things down in the kitchen. Soon afterward, Cafe Castagna opened next door, a casual counterpart with a famed burger and butter lettuce salad (peak early-aughts weeknight dinner material). Over the course of its life, Castagna was home to several Portland chefs who went on to open their own projects: Elias Cairo, who founded groundbreaking domestic salumeria Olympia Provisions; modernist Mugaritz alum Matthew Lightner, who helped New York’s Atera nab a few Michelin stars before opening the ambitious Okta in wine country. Even Nate Tilden, a onetime Castagna general manager, became one of Portland’s most prolific restaurateurs, helping shape places like Clyde Common, Pepe le Moko, and Bar Casa Vale.
Castagna’s final chef was the late Justin Woodward, a seven-time James Beard Award semifinalist with a wd~50 pedigree and serious pastry chops — a particularly famous Woodward dessert involved ice cream made with potato skins and curls of meringue (which, of course, resembled potato skins). In 2018, Woodward helped Siu turn the increasingly tired Cafe Castagna into neo-bistro OK Omens, one of the few places where a diner would see Woodward relax: think cheddar beignets and a Caesar salad inspired by the California chain El Torito’s. Castagna sommelier Brent Braun shaped the wine list, with acid freak natural wines and grand dame Mosel rieslings and cellar picks that would make the snootiest oenophile blush, all presented with descriptions straight out of a Marissa A. Ross column. Over time, Woodward let himself expand the menu’s scope, adding beautiful house pastas and spiced-and-cured duck leg confit. Castagna, which had shuttered indefinitely during the 2020 coronavirus shutdown, announced its permanent closure in 2023, leaving OK Omens to carry the Castagna torch. In 2024, Woodward left OK Omens, and the following year died of liver failure, a complication of alcoholism according to his family…