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Story: PORTLAND LOCATION OF PHO GABO CLOSES AFTER 18-MONTH BATTLE WITH NEIGHBOR
Date: Feb. 24
What happened: Pho Gabo, a Vietnamese restaurant at Northeast 73rd Avenue and Fremont Street, closed after one persistent neighbor complained to the city for almost two years about the smell of meat cooking. “The odors detected smell like a wok dish,” a city inspector wrote in October 2023. According to the city’s odor code, which had been on the books for decades, the threshold for a violation was “any detectable odor” based solely on the inspector’s nose. The restaurant owner, Eddie Dong, couldn’t afford a $40,000 air filtration system that was still no guarantee against the sensitive olfactory nerves of the anonymous neighbor. With complaints from the neighbor continuing to pour in and unpaid fines by the city threatening to double, Pho Gabo closed Feb. 3.
What’s happened since: After public outcry that the city’s odor code itself didn’t smell quite right, considering that a single neighbor took down a small, Asian-owned business on their own, City Commissioner Carmen Rubio championed reform of the odor code. The Portland City Council passed the amendment Nov. 13. Now, five or more people who live within 150 feet of the business must complain about odors within 30 days to open an investigation. Restaurants will be exempt from the code, which goes into effect March 1. Dong was happy to see the law change, but it was too late for Pho Gabo. The city never waived his accrued fines of about $5,000, he says. “It happened to me and then they changed the code, like I’m the decoy or the bait or something,” Dong says. He hopes to have the last word: On Dec. 11, Dong sued the city for $2.4 million.