After closing her influential tasting menu restaurant Beast and her follow-up, Ripe Cooperative, James Beard Award-winning chef Naomi Pomeroy began to tip-toe her way out of the restaurant world, save a few consulting gigs. Instead, she focused on making frozen custard, which she sold out of the flower shop she co-founded on Northeast Prescott.
It appears Pomeroy will go all-in on custard in the near future. Recent reports by Portland Monthly and the Oregonian have confirmed that the Richmond neighborhood will soon get its own chef-made frozen custard scoop shop, Cornet Custard, which she will run with former Beast pastry chef Mika Paredes. Here’s what we know so far:
Who’s Naomi Pomeroy?
Naomi Pomeroy is a James Beard Award-winning chef whose former fine-dining restaurant Beast helped put Portland on the national map as a food destination. Pomeroy introduced herself to Portland via her Family Suppers, a pop-up before pop-ups became a part of Portland’s culinary identity. Once Beast opened in 2007, it quickly became one of Portland’s most famous restaurants; Pomeroy accrued several James Beard Award nominations for her time at Beast, and an eventually won in 2014. Beast closed, initially temporarily, at the beginning of the pandemic; Pomeroy became heavily involved with the Independent Restaurant Coalition, helping develop legislation like the CARES Act. Toward the end of 2020, Pomeroy announced that the restaurant would not reopen. In its place, she ran a market and casual restaurant called Ripe Cooperative, eventually closing the business in 2022.
What is frozen custard?
Frozen custard is like ice cream, but not quite. It has a denser consistency than ice cream due to the addition of egg yolks — in fact, it has to have a 1.4 percent yolk content to be considered frozen custard per the Food and Drug Administration.
Okay, then what’s Cornet Custard?
Cornet Custard emerged as a pandemic-era project of Pomeroy and Paredes, scooping flavors filled with farmers market produce like Pablo Munoz strawberries atop gelato cones imported from Italy.
Paredes and Pomeroy’s journey with frozen custard first began when they adapted a recipe from The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern at Beast. When Pomeroy’s specialty market Ripe Cooperative took Beast’s place, she began selling pints of custard alongside prix fixe meal boxes. After Ripe closed, Paredes and Pomeroy would sell pints with dessert-y flavors like grasshopper pie, blueberry cheesecake, and cinnamon caramel blondie out of flower shop Colibri, founded by Pomeroy and partner Kyle Linden Webster; the shop is now under new ownership.
Where will Cornet Custard be located?
The shop will occupy the old Woodsman Market space at 4537 Southeast Division Street — it will reportedly share the building with another upcoming restaurant from Pomeroy and former Submarine Hospitality owner Luke Dirks. Northeast Portlanders will still be able to get a quick fix of Cornet as they will continue to serve scoops on the weekends and sell pints during the week at Colibri.
When can I go?
The shop’s projected opening date is June 14 — from then on, it will open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 8:30 p.m. The Cornet team plans to stick to their current schedule of releasing three or four new flavors biweekly.
