Portland’s final McCormick & Schmick’s to shut Sunday

McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside, considered one of Portland’s signature waterfront eating places and the as soon as sprawling chain’s final remaining location within the metropolis the place it was based, will shut after service on Sunday, a restaurant worker confirmed.

“It’s been a protracted tenure right here, the group is unbelievable, it’s been an awesome two-way relationship, and it’s going to be a bittersweet second once we shut our doorways for good on Sunday,” a McCormick & Schmick’s worker mentioned Friday, asking to not be named as talking publicly is a violation of firm coverage.

Landry’s, the Houston-based restaurant big that agreed to purchase McCormick & Schmick’s in 2011, didn’t reply to calls or emails requesting remark Thursday and Friday.

Neighbors and regulars first heard the information Wednesday, studying from longtime workers that that they had been given 5 days discover earlier than the restaurant’s imminent closure. Willamette Week first reported the news Thursday.

Opened within the early Nineteen Nineties, McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside went by a number of identify tweaks and menu overhauls over the a long time, with the bar as soon as specializing in pizza and craft brews from the adjoining Pilsener Room, together with an on-site pilot brewery from Hood River’s Full Sail Brewing.

However seafood and river views had been all the time central to the idea, with crowds swelling on the promenade every summer time, and reservations onerous to return by when the Christmas Ships bobbed by the terraced eating room every vacation season.

McCormick & Schmick’s was born just a few years after Invoice McCormick purchased considered one of Portland’s oldest eating places, Jake’s Well-known Crawfish, hiring Douglas Schmick as a supervisor. In 1979, the duo opened the unique McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant in downtown Portland, then rapidly set their sights on a nationwide growth.

5 years after opening their First Avenue restaurant, McCormick and Schmick opened a restaurant in Seattle. They expanded to Denver three years later, then Southern California, with a gap in Irvine in 1989.

Early on, the eating places had been identified for menus printed every day with as many as 110 made-to-order dishes and a signature “Contemporary Record” of 30 to 40 kinds of recent seafood.

In 2004, after promoting then shopping for again their namesake chain from the mother or father firm of Applebee’s, McCormick and Schmick took their firm public, with an preliminary public providing valued at $172.5 million. On the time, the group had 49 eating places unfold throughout the nation.

Earlier than an ill-fated push into the suburbs, most McCormick & Schmick’s eating places had been primarily situated in city cores, with an estimated 50 p.c of its eating places in buildings on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations. Ultimately, the corporate grew to almost 100 eating places, together with a number of Portland landmarks resembling Jake’s and The Heathman.

After a hostile takeover bid, Landry’s finalized their purchase of the company in 2012, with proprietor Tillman Fertitta promising that he “wouldn’t contact” a few of the firm’s higher identified eating places, together with Jake’s Well-known Crawfish, Jake’s Grill or The Heathman. The Heathman restaurant closed in 2016.

The corporate continues to function each Jake’s areas and a McCormick & Schmick’s Grill in Tigard.

Go to McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside between now and Sunday at 309 S. Montgomery St., 503-220-1865 mccormickandschmicks.com

— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com