Okta, Oregon’s Most Ambitious Tasting Restaurant Closes

Okta fine dining restaurant, The Pacific Northwest’s most ambitious restaurant closed its doors this weekend, just two years after its highly anticipated opening. The restaurant served as a companion to the ultra-luxury Tributary Hotel, supported by a dedicated regenerative farm, fermentation lab, and food pantry. The team announced the restaurant’s closure via Instagram, noting that Okta chef Matthew Lightner, a Castagna alum who ran the two-Michelin-starred Atera in New York City, was leaving the project. The post suggested that Okta would continue in some form; how is not yet clear. “The Tributary Hotel and our farm and food pantry will continue to advance our vision of combining excellence in hospitality and regenerative agriculture to share the story of this incredible place,” the caption reads.

Okta Wholesale was unlike anything in Oregon. Despite the state’s reputation, no restaurant here combined a world-class fine-dining structure with a dedicated farm, like Blue Hill at Stone Barns or the French Laundry. For many, the restaurant proved that McMinnville had the potential to become a celebrated wine town like Napa. It also offered an adaptive vision of what fine dining can look like when cultural mores shift away from often rigid traditions—not just in Oregon but around the world.

Reviews were almost unanimously positive, and Lightner was a semifinalist for a James Beard Award this year. His poetic menu of a dozen or so courses was served on precious and ornate plates by servers in matching suits, but also with a semi-casual grace. It was both comfortable and elegant. It was fun. (I once ate next to Brick House winemaker Doug Tunnell, who wore flip-flops.) Lightner’s time-traveling dishes, with names like “friendship” and “pollinator,” focused on storytelling and aimed to engage diners more deeply with the local ecology. The mission was to “capture the soul and biology of the Willamette Valley on plates,” wrote our critic Karen Brooks.

It’s unclear why the restaurant closed, or at least changed its name. But it’s hard to keep a restaurant afloat when its tasting menu starts at close to $300 per person, excluding wine and tip. As outrageous as that number may sound, it’s comparable to prices elsewhere in the country—tasting menus at Nomas and Eleven Madison Parks around the world often cost similarly, if not more.

And the comparison is apt, given the cast: In addition to Lightner, Okta CEO Christine Langelier came from storied East Coast restaurants, including Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Eleven Madison Park. Her sommelier, Ron Acierto, formerly of Departure and Jory at Newberg’s Allison Inn, is also one of the region’s most respected wine professionals.

The project also marked Lightner’s return to Oregon, and with it a new—perhaps radically optimistic—attempt at building a fine-dining restaurant tailored to Oregonian sensibilities. Lightner first made waves years ago cooking at Castagna, one of Portland’s most revered tasting-menu restaurants. It was one of the city’s last fine-dining restaurants, but it closed in 2023. Tercet, another restaurant with a similar format, closed around the same time. And Berlu, after chef Vince Nguyen won a James Beard Award for his highly refined Vietnamese tasting menu, pivoted to a more casual feel in late 2023.

The city’s surviving tasting menus tend to reference traditional song and dance. Le Pigeon switched to a tasting-menu-only format during the pandemic, but it always plays by its own punky set of rules, far removed from the Michelin format. Langbaan, which has been booked for a decade, is similarly thriving, serving a radically adapted version of the tasting menu, with raucous energy and an ever-changing emphasis on regional Thai cuisines.

Okta could have been a chance to find something similar at the highest level. We’re eager to see what Lightner does next and what the team has planned after his departure. But the closure certainly says a lot about the state of fine dining.

Lightner and the entire Okta team have not yet responded to requests for comment.