Portland Chefs Turn Scraps Into Gourmet Bites for Urban Gleaners' 20th Year

More than a dozen Portland chefs will spend Sunday, September 13, 2026, turning food that would otherwise be thrown away into gourmet small plates at The Redd on Salmon, all in the name of fighting hunger. The Summer Supper, running from 5 to 8 p.m. at 831 SE Salmon St., is Urban Gleaners' third annual walk-around tasting fundraiser, and it lands during the nonprofit's 20th anniversary year.

Urban Gleaners executive director Haris Kuljancic and chef Jose “Lalo” Camarena, executive chef at The Malarkey, shared details about the event, according to KATU. The event brings together what organizers describe as some of Oregon's most revered chefs to create dishes using ingredients that would otherwise be discarded, according to the station. Tickets are available online through Urban Gleaners' own site.

This year's lineup includes Salt & Straw co-founder Tyler Malek, Sugarpine Drive-In chefs Emily Cafazzo and Ryan Domingo, and Akadi PDX chef Fatou Ouattara, according to New School Beer + Cider. Past editions of the event have featured chefs Gregory Gourdet and Bonnie Morales, the outlet notes. General admission tickets run $85 and include a drink token and reusable cup, while VIP tickets are $128 and offer 30 minutes of early entry plus two drink tokens, per Bridgetown Bites. Early-bird pricing closed July 2, though regular sales continued through the day of the event.

A Food Hub Built From an Old Foundry

The setting itself carries its own history. The Redd on Salmon Street sits in Portland's Central Eastside Industrial District inside a reclaimed 1918 ironworks foundry, transformed by nonprofit Ecotrust into a 16,000-square-foot sustainable food hub and event space, according to Ticket Fairy. The campus supports regional agricultural producers and food entrepreneurs, the listing notes.

Last year's Summer Supper offers a preview of the kind of impact organizers hope to repeat. During the 2025 event, participating chefs gleaned more than 1,100 pounds of food for 550 attendees, with 123 pounds of leftovers re-donated back to Urban Gleaners for community distribution, according to New School Beer + Cider's earlier coverage. Even the non-edible scraps didn't go to waste — they were composted by goats on site, the outlet reported.

Two Decades of Rescuing Food Across Portland

Urban Gleaners traces its roots back to 2006, when Portlander Tracy Oseran was inspired by an NPR broadcast about food waste to start picking up unsold meals from local restaurants, according to OPB. She reportedly began by collecting leftovers in small plastic containers from fine-dining spots like Bluehour. Two decades later, the organization now rescues nearly 1.2 million pounds of fresh surplus food each year and delivers free groceries to more than 8,000 food-insecure families weekly across the Portland metro area, per New School Beer + Cider. That food reaches people with no questions asked at school pantries and mobile markets, the outlet notes.

Institutional partnerships have helped fuel that scale. Since 2013, Portland International Airport concessions have donated unsold ready-to-eat meals to Urban Gleaners, diverting roughly 325 tons of food — equal to 541,000 meals — from landfills, according to the Port of Portland. Airport vendors donate sandwiches, salads, and baked goods twice weekly under the arrangement, the agency says.

Hunger and Waste Rising Together

The fundraiser arrives against a difficult backdrop for Oregon families. A USDA report released in December 2025 found that roughly 1 in 8 Oregonians experienced food insecurity, while Oregon Food Bank network visits climbed 51% over two years to a record 2.9 million visits, according to the Oregon Hunger Task Force. Recent federal cuts to SNAP have further strained local relief networks, the group reports.

At the same time, food waste remains a persistent environmental problem. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality reports that food waste is the single largest category of material in Oregon landfills and the second-largest contributor to the state's greenhouse gas emissions, with nearly 40% of food in the U.S. going uneaten. Urban Gleaners' Summer Supper sits at the intersection of those two problems, using chefs' creativity to funnel discarded ingredients toward people who need them rather than into a dumpster.

Organizers describe the September 13 event simply as raising money for a good cause, according to KATU's report. Updates and additional details are being shared on Urban Gleaners' Instagram account, @urbangleanerspdx, as the event approaches.