Roasted Beet Carpaccio
$14Golden & red beets, whipped cashew ricotta, pickled mustard seeds, microgreens, smoked paprika oil.
GF NF
Our Story
From one small garden to sixty covers
Chef Maya Okafor grew up in a household where the garden was the pantry. Her grandmother kept a half-acre plot in Lagos, and every meal began not with a recipe but with a walk outside. Maya carried that instinct through culinary school in Paris and a decade cooking in New York, until she arrived in Portland in 2017 and found a farming community that reminded her of home.
Verdant Table opened on a wet Tuesday in March 2019, with a 40-seat dining room, a daily-changing blackboard menu, and a very short list of farm partners. Five years on, we've grown to 60 covers, added a natural wine list, and deepened relationships with eleven regional farms — but the blackboard is still how every week starts.
We believe that plant-based cooking at its best is not about what you remove, but about what you reveal: the sweetness of a carrot slow-roasted for two hours, the umami depth of a properly aged miso, the brightness that only perfectly ripe fruit can provide. Come hungry. Leave changed.
Chef Maya Okafor
Founder & Executive Chef
Trained in Paris, refined in New York
Opened Verdant Table in Portland, 2019
Two-time James Beard nominated
Teaching zero-waste cooking workshops
"Every dish starts with a question: what does this ingredient want to become?"
— Maya Okafor