Kann
Gregory Gourdet cooks Haitian food over live fire. Kann is Creole for cane, after the vendors he listened for as a boy in Haiti. It won Best New Restaurant at the 2023 James Beard Awards, and Willamette Week's critic panned it three months after it opened.
Why go
Gourdet built the menu out of a Haitian pantry and says so plainly: Scotch bonnet chili, coconut, plantains, root vegetables, and aromatics like djon djon, sour orange, thyme, clove, cinnamon, allspice, and vanilla.
3 Djon djon is the black mushroom that turns Haitian rice grey and tastes of the woods. The hearth runs the protein side, and the room watches it work. Gourdet also cooks the whole menu without gluten and without dairy, which is the constraint everything else is built around.2 The James Beard Foundation gave the room Best New Restaurant in 2023.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the griyo. Michael C. Zusman took the place apart and still wrote this:
Perhaps the best-tasting item was Haiti's national dish: griyo ($14), chunks of succulent braised pork.
2 - Order: the smoked beef rib. It was $92 in 2022 and it is the dish Zusman conceded was fine.2
- Avoid: ordering the pikliz for the pickling rather than the burn. Zusman found it
all blister and no deliciousness.
2
What locals & experts say
- Willamette Week (Michael C. Zusman, 15 November 2022):
The new Haitian sensation from celebrity chef Gregory Gourdet is not a great restaurant; it is not even a good restaurant judging by the things that matter: the quality of food and experience diners can expect there.
2 - James Beard Foundation, 2023: Best New Restaurant, awarded to Kann, Portland, OR.1
Good to know
- The room is loud. Zusman measured a steady 85 decibels in September 2022 and wrote that Gourdet acknowledged the problem.2
- Seating favors four and six. Most seats are at the kitchen counter or at larger tables, so a table for two takes asking.2
- Drinks: the zero-proof list is a full program here, built on Caribbean fruit and spice rather than assembled as an afterthought.3
- Booking: book ahead.
Verdict
should-visit — The evidence pulls two ways and both halves are strong, which is what holds this at should-visit rather than the top rung. The James Beard Foundation gave it Best New Restaurant in 2023, and that is the award body's own roster, not a listing. Against it sits Michael C. Zusman on two September 2022 visits, finding the habanero monotonous and the plantains sodden, in a review Willamette Week readers then wrote in to argue with. Nobody has scored the room since, so the pan is four years old and the win is three. Go for the griyo and the hearth, and book knowing the room is loud.