The owner of a Vietnamese restaurant that closed earlier this year rather than face mounting municipal fines over the smell of its food has filed a lawsuit seeking up to $2.4 million from the city of Portland.
According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday by Pho Gabo owner Eddie Dong, the city’s selective targeting of his Northeast Portland restaurant was based at least in part on Dong’s “race or national original” and “the types of food Pho Gabo served.”
The city declined to comment on the pending litigation Wednesday.
Pho Gabo, which continues to operate locations in Happy Valley and Hillsboro, opened its Northeast Portland restaurant at 7330 N.E. Fremont Ave. in 2018. Various Vietnamese restaurants have occupied the storefront since 1992.
In March 2022, the city’s Bureau of Development Services began to receive complaints that the restaurant was “repeatedly produced the odors of grilled meat,” according to the lawsuit. The anonymous complainant continued to file reports with the city, leaving at least four voicemails, an email and a monthly observation log.
A bureau inspector began visiting the Roseway neighborhood restaurant in September 2022 and determined that the restaurant was in violation of the city’s “odor code,” a 1991 regulation prohibiting “continuous, frequent, or repetitive odors” detectible for more than “15 minutes per day.”
Notes taken by the inspector described the smells emanating from the restaurant as “like a wok dish,” or “like a wok meal,” according to the lawsuit. After more than a year of off-and-on inspections, the city began issuing fines in November 2023.
Along the way, Dong had the restaurant’s air filtration and exhaust systems professionally cleaned, shortened the time food was cooked at the restaurant and eventually moved meat grilling operations to another Pho Gabo location. Food was then transported to the Northeast Portland location pre-cooked, which “resulted in various costs and a decline in food quality and sales.” Nonetheless, complaints persisted.
According to the lawsuit, a city inspector suggested Dong install a new air filtration system at a cost of $40,000. But he was given no assurances that doing so would stop the escalating fines. Dong closed Pho Gabo’s Northeast Portland location in February, taping a sign to the door pinning the blame on “the city’s and the neighborhood’s complaints about the smell of the food.”
The restaurant’s lease runs through January 2025.
After an uproar, the city announced in March it had put a pause on investigating odor complaints at restaurants. After a six month investigation, the Portland City Council made that pause permanent, exempting restaurants, bakeries, cafes and other “retail sales and service businesses” from the city’s odor code.
According to the lawsuit, that code was flawed from the start, providing “no standard for what constitutes an odor” or “any other direction to ascertain how an entity could comply with its requirements.”
“If taken literally, virtually any restaurant that cooked food on location would be in violation of the Odor Code,” the lawsuit claimed.
— Michael Russell; [email protected]
