Diners at Duckfat in March. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer The owners of Duckfat, whose Belgian frites and paninis drew some of the first lines of food-loving tourists to Portland, are retiring and have sold the Middle Street restaurant and its sister operation on Washington Avenue to Texas-based investors. The restaurants will be managed by the current staff, who don’t plan to make many changes.
Chef Rob Evans of Hugo’s in Portland with his award for the best chef in the Northeast from the James Beard Foundation in his kitchen at Hugo’s in 2009. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer Rob Evans and Nancy Pugh opened Duckfat in 2005, a year after Evans was named one of Food & Wine’s best new chefs for his work at Hugo’s. The couple had bought that restaurant in 2000 and quickly turned it into one of the country’s most acclaimed showcases of avant-garde fine dining, starting to make their indelible mark on the Portland food scene.
In 2009, Evans won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast. They sold Hugo’s in 2012 to employees who went on to open tourist hot spot Eventide and The Honey Paw and earned a James Beard Award of their own. Former employees of the couple at Hugo’s, which has since closed, also include the founders of popular restaurants East Ender and Rose Foods, as well as Ian Driscoll of Bar Futo, who was named a semifinalist this year for a James Beard Award.
“We have other former cooks who’ve made it out in the U.K. and Australia, too,” Evans.
