Kyle Christy
Street Disco | Portland, OR
JULY 2023
Growing up, Kyle Christy’s father, who found Buddhism later in his life, worked in a butcher shop in Portland and began gathering recipes from his friends at the temple. He would bring home off-cuts and offal, cook them Szechuan-style, and feed them to Christy, who initially wasn’t interested. But after learning more about the hustle and chaos of kitchens from Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour, he became fascinated with kitchen culture. After working as a mental health professional until he was 22, Christy felt burnt out, and enrolled in culinary school. Cooking didn’t come easy to him, but after graduating, he got a job at Laurelhurst Market. He moved up to Seattle to take the lead line cook job at Poquitos, then back to Portland where he cooked in kitchens around town. At age 26, Christy felt his love for the industry waning, so he relocated to Arkansas to learn bladesmithing, while working as a bar back to pay the bills.
In 2017, he returned to Portland and started at the locally focused Ava Gene’s, the first seasonal kitchen Christy had worked in. And while he initially joined the team just to help out and fill in, the kitchen bug bit him again. Christy moved over to Dame to broaden his knowledge of seafood, and was offered the sous chef position within months of starting. He was eventually made head chef, a position he held for two years. During the pandemic, things started to feel stagnant to Christy: he wanted to start testing out his own concepts. In the two years before his Foster-Powell restaurant opened, Christy, and 2023 Rising Star Sommelier Jessie Manning, ran their pop-up Street Disco, rotating through a number of different concepts. The one that stuck was a casual wine bar that serves sophisticated, seasonal food alongside refreshing wine, with a healthy dose of disco party vibes on the side. Dishes like his charred octopus with chorizo-fried potatoes and green harissa are an excellent example of Christy’s cooking: local, unpretentious, and downright delicious.
