It’s Saturday, and Gregory Gourdet has just finished sending off 500 pounds of food for an upcoming Peking Duck dinner at Manhattan’s James Beard House.

He’s also packing some bombshell news. The star chef, who gathered legions of adoring fans during a finalist run on “Top Chef,” is stepping down from his executive chef position at Departure, the Nines Hotel restaurant where he made his name, to focus on opening a restaurant of his own.

As first reported by Portland Monthly, the new wood-fired restaurant -- which has yet to pick a name or land a space -- will focus on the Haitian dishes that Gourdet grew up eating, and has spent time dialing in at his occasional Haiti in my Heart pop-ups, on a menu rounded out by dishes from around the globe.

“It’s going to be a signature Gregory restaurant,” Gourdet says. “I think Portland really understands me. I have a very solid base here. This has been my home for the past 13 years...I do have a signature style. It’s not just Asian cuisine. It’s not just tapping into Haitian routes. It’s representing the global table, and being inspired by countries all around the world.”

Gourdet, who will stay on as Departure’s culinary director of menus and special events, has a characteristically packed schedule next year, starting with a five-month sprint to finish his upcoming book, “Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health” (Harper Wave Books expects a manuscript by May).

From there, the influential chef, who embraced veganism and sobriety before they became the cooking world’s next big things, plans to travel the globe, starting with three weeks in Haiti. From there, he’ll spend a fortnight in Thailand, swing through Mexico, make a smoke-filled pass through the barbecue capitals of the American south then tour the top seafood restaurants from Massachusetts to Maine, visiting as many wood-fired restaurants as he can along the way.

Meanwhile, he’ll keep up with his usual heavy schedule of events. Tuesday’s duck dinner was Gourdet’s fourth trip to the Beard House in as many years -- a possible record for a Portland chef. (Portlanders looking for a taste should book a spot for Gourdet’s annual duck month, happening now at Departure). And there are plans in the works to reopen Departure’s Denver location, which closed earlier this year, in “a much cooler neighborhood" (if I remember my Denver geography, that’s code for RiNo).

Whew.

Right now, Gourdet doesn’t know where the restaurant will be, but he does know where it won’t (new construction, or a hotel) and how many seats it will have (around 60, not including the bar). The perfect location would have room not just for a wood-fired grill or oven, those signature Portland cooking sources, but for an entire wood-fired cooking line, including wok and saute stations.

“I really want quite the opposite spectrum of what I’ve done,” Gourdet says. “I want something smaller where I can see everything all at once and be able to have the bandwidth to have complete control.

"All the Haitian food I’ve been cooking over the past three years has been working up toward this.”

Gregory Gourdet plans to open his new restaurant -- name and space TBD -- in late 2020. Stay tuned.

-- Michael Russell

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