PORTLAND, Oregon — The owner of Vietnamese restaurant Phở Gabo intends to file a lawsuit against the city of Portland over alleged civil rights violations.
Eddie Dong's restaurant on Northeast Fremont and Northeast 74th closed on Feb. 3 after nearly six years in business. Dong said a nearby resident's repeated complaints about the smell of grilled meat coming from the restaurant turned into a $900 fine for violating city code.
“The foods of his culture shut down his business just because somebody complained, so I think he’s just struggling with that,” said Julie Parrish, the attorney representing Dong.
According to a city ordinance, "Continuous, frequent or repetitive odors may not be produced" by restaurants.
Parrish claims the odor code is subjective: “One inspector can come out, smell around and say this restaurant is or isn’t in compliance.”
On April 9, an attorney representing Dong filed a tort claim, which is a notice of intent to sue. The document says his claims for damages include "economic and noneconomic damages related to the City's subjective, selective and disproportionate enforcement of city codes."
An anonymous person began complaining to the city about the smell around September 2022, and continued to complain for more than a year, according to the tort claim. There were at least a dozen inspections of Dong's restaurants during that time frame. The tort claim says the city's enforcement of the ordinance "disproportionately affected restaurants serving ethnically diverse foods, such as Vietnamese cuisine."
"Mr. Dong has suffered both economic damages resulting from monetary losses due to the closure of his business and non-economic damage resulting from reputational harm, fear, humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, and loss of his community that he built as a Vietnamese restaurant in the Portland community," the tort claim says.
Dong owns two other Phở Gabo locations, one in Hillsboro and the other in Happy Valley.
In March, Portland Commissioner Carmen Rubio put odor complaints relating to food establishments on hold. Rubio's office had said she was looking to adjust the city's code. Around the same time, five Vietnamese American state legislators released a statement and called Portland's odor code "discriminatory" toward minority-owned small businesses.
Parrish said the tort claim’s main objective is to bring the city to the table and figure out how Dong can get back in business.
“He’d love to be able to be out from under everything he has going on and consider where he could set back up," said Parrish. "Dong wants to continue to serve the community that he spent years building."