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Ken Gordon has opened and closed at least 10 restaurants in his 48-year career, including his most famous, the iconic Portland institution Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen. In the 16 months since Kenny & Zuke’s closed, Gordon separated from his wife of 37 years and, since September, has run the deli at Sheridan Fruit Company. You might think it’s hard times for one of the city’s most infamous restaurateurs, but Gordon says he is exactly where he wants to be, cooking at Oregon’s oldest grocery store with its own storied legacy to uphold.
Like most opinionated creatives, you only have to pepper Gordon with a few friendly questions to get him salty. The revelations come fast and easy like skin falling off a bone—and Gordon may have a few bones to pick. From lightly castigating the press for not following up about the Kenny & Zuke’s bankruptcy (“we didn’t go through with it”) and a civil lawsuit for $184,494 (“no debts that I am aware of”) that made headlines in 2019, to why he decided to become a cook (“I was a political science major during Watergate…do the math!”). Then, there are semi-hot takes like what Portland restaurants were lacking when he arrived in 1991 (“I am pretty sure there was a sign on the freeway that says, ‘You are entering a no-salt zone.’ It was like, ‘Put some fuckin’ salt in it, dude,’ and then they make you ask for a salt shaker. It’s like, ‘Blow me, put a damn salt shaker on the table!’”); and personal revelations like how he is now on a dating service (“you learn a lot about yourself”).
Gordon’s first big success in Portland was with gourmet Americana comfort food hot spots 28 East in 1995 and Ken’s Home Plate in ’98, followed by the restaurant Ken’s Place on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. At the time, fellow chef Rodney Muirhead was running LOW BBQ at the Portland Farmers Market and popping up once a week at Apizza Scholls. When Muirhead decided to open Podnah’s Pit, he sold the biz, including the smoker, to Gordon, and that eventually led to him teaming up with Nick Zukin to start Body by Pastrami LLC and then Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen in 2007.
Kenny & Zuke’s was an immediate hit: Bon Appetit called it one of the 10 Best Sandwich Shops; The New York Times referenced it as the future of the Jewish deli. Its pastrami was some of the best in the country thanks to a custom smoking process dialed in after months of preparing first for the Hillsdale Farmers Market and then at Ken’s Place.
But Gordon’s politics, which he describes as “as liberal as it gets without throwing Molotov cocktails,” quickly ran into Zukin’s form of aggressive libertarianism (he once wrote “Antifa = left-wing fascist” in a Facebook post). Gordon doesn’t want to talk about Zukin on the record (but is more than happy to do so off), but he does say, “Up until my partnership with him, I had never gotten a review that wasn’t positive.”
Zukin left the business a couple of years after opening.
At one time, Kenny & Zuke’s had three restaurants and 90-plus employees. By 2020, they were down to one, and Gordon decided to scale it back from a spacious downtown Portland cafe to a smaller counter-service space on North Williams Street. It closed after 11 months in the new location. Still, Gordon says he has no regrets and, unlike many of his colleagues, he doesn’t blame Portland, the economy, or local government for his failure: “It was great while it lasted, but now that is kind of done,” Gordon says. “After a while, that thrill goes away and you have to feed people.”
After closing the deli in December 2023, Gordon spent nearly nine months licking his wounds before getting on poached jobs and to look for a new gig. He toyed with the idea of opening up his own pastrami food truck, or a tiny 10-seat restaurant where he could be left to his own whims (he still might do that). But ultimately he is too old to be a line cook, and too burnt out to run a kitchen. Eventually, Gordon dialed up Sheridan Fruit Company owner Anne Barwick who was game to bring on an overqualified serial restaurateur who talks too much in an effort to freshen up its eclectic deli case for regulars and local foodies alike.
Sheridan opened in 1916, a remnant of Old Portland and the produce row packing district that was once bustling with iconic competitors like Corno’s and Strohecker’s. Sheridan is the only one to survive, an unassuming little market near the Morrison Bridge on the eastside, covered in window paint. The boarded, hand-painted interior feels like the retail arm of a wholesale operation because it is. The family staff, some of which have been there for 25 years or more, loads trucks in the alley and retail shelves in the front. If you are a home cook, this place is heaven. Special emphasis is placed on hard-to-find items, from small-batch cheeses, nuts and berries, to dried fruit and premium oils, and arguably the best butchery department in town.
Barwick grew up here, inheriting the business from her parents, and then becoming company president following her husband who died in 2020.
“I know where we [Sheridan] have been, and that there are certain items and traditions to hold on to—yet we have to change with the times,” she says. “Ken had some really good ideas and recipes, and he has been really gracious about sharing that.”
For Barwick, it’s all about customer service and selection. Bringing Gordon onboard was a personnel decision, and she doesn’t hesitate to half-kid him not to fuck it up for this article.
On Fridays, Gordon stocks the deli case with his famous lard or duck-fat buttermilk fried chicken he’s been making for 25 years ($9.99 per pound). And although he is in the process of bringing back his pastrami (made to spec in Los Angeles), he is mostly uninterested in rehashing the past. “I like change and being able to make the kinds of things I want to make,” he says. “I come in and mostly I cook what I want. Everyone else here is like, ‘You gotta follow these recipes,’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t follow recipes, I write recipes.’”
The Sheridan legacy and his own are never far from Gordon’s mind. Yet even at 70 years of age, he, unlike Sheridan, thrives on change.
“Fuck retirement, you retire you die,” he says. “I hate the heat. I don’t like card games or golf. I hate them both. As long as I can be on my feet and use my hands, why would I want to retire?”
By the time you read this, Gordon may have already moved on to write his Portland-set detective novel about a chef whose best customers are getting murdered, or his memoirs chronicling each of the restaurants he has worked at or opened (“I don’t think there will be much mean-spirited stuff unless it’s well deserved”).
Gordon says he doesn’t want to open another restaurant: “I just wanna do the part that’s fun,” he says, but then his mind drifts toward a 10-seat countertop restaurant where he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and he adds, “But I’m saying that today, and I have said that before…and then I have opened restaurants.”
GO: Sheridan Fruit Company, 409 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-236-2114, sheridanfruit.com. 8 am–8 pm daily.