How to book Kann

Kann is a live-fire restaurant at 548 SE Ash Street in Portland from chef and founder Gregory Gourdet, a Queens native of Haitian heritage who trained under Jean-Georges Vongerichten and ran the kitchen at Departure for ten years before leaving in 2019 to focus on Kann^1,2. The name means "cane" in Haitian Creole, a nod to the sugar cane vendors Gourdet remembers from childhood visits to Haiti¹.

It opened on August 4, 2022, to a sold-out house, and Portland Monthly described it as the city's first sit-down Haitian restaurant³. The menu pairs traditional Haitian flavors and dishes from the wider African and Caribbean diaspora with Oregon produce, meat and seafood, cooked over open fire¹. The whole kitchen is gluten- and dairy-free, there is a full vegan menu, and the bar puts real effort into zero-proof cocktails alongside a short wine list built around spiced food and Oregon labels^1,3.

The room is anchored by a lit open kitchen and chef's counter that takes up almost half the space, with white oak cabinetry and an eight-foot hearth⁴. Portland Monthly named Kann its Restaurant of the Year for 2022, and the James Beard Foundation gave it the award for Best New Restaurant in 2023^4,5. Tables have been hard to get since opening; a 2026 Axios review notes that early seatings around 4 pm are the easier way in^3,6.