After odor complaints shut down Pho Gabo, a Portland Vietnamese restaurant, the city revisits a potentially discriminatory policy

A pho restaurant in Portland, Oregon, has shuttered due to anonymous odor complaints, sparking a firestorm of backlash against the city’s smell codes, which residents and lawmakers slammed as potentially discriminatory.

A pho restaurant in Portland, Oregon, has shuttered due to anonymous odor complaints, sparking a firestorm of backlash against the city’s smell codes, which residents and lawmakers slammed as potentially discriminatory.

After repeated anonymous odor complaints filed to the city and the threat of a hefty fine, Pho Gabo’s northeast Portland location closed its doors to customers Feb. 3. Once city officials learned about the issue in early March, they halted all subsequent investigations of odor code violations related to food establishments in order to re-examine the policy.

Pho Gabo owner Eddie Dong told NBC News that he first received notice that a neighbor had complained of the restaurant’s “cooking odors” in September 2022. The complaint caught him off guard; by then, Dong had been serving Vietnamese food at the restaurant for more than five years without incident. The sole complainer, a neighbor who lived several houses down from the restaurant, has not been identified.

“They complained to the city, and the city came down,” Dong said. “They say ‘odor,’ but it’s just food, grilling meat.”

The restaurant is one of three Pho Gabo locations Dong owns, but it is the only one in a mixed-use residential area of the city.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/pho-gabo-odor-complaints-portland-rcna143921

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