Lincoln’s Fine Meats Will Open on NE Alberta in Portland

There’s a new butcher shop preparing to open in the Alberta Arts District: Lincoln’s Fine Meats. Founded and helmed by owner Lincoln Clevenson, it will open in the former home of Pasture PDX, a well-regarded butcher and deli that closed in early August 2026. Lincoln’s Fine Meats will be a “nose to tail” butchery with an emphasis on minimizing food waste.

We chatted with the titular Lincoln last month, and learned about what he plans to bring to Portland in his work with meat. Here are some of the things we talked about.

Lincoln’s Fine Meats: What’s in a Name?

So was “Lincoln’s Fine Meats” his first choice as far as the name of the business? The answer is no. “I actually wanted a different name, but my wife and my friends all told me it was a bad idea,” he explained. That name would have been “Kid’s Play,” a reference to his childhood growing up with his mother’s goats in Southern California.

The “Kid” in “Kid’s Play” has to do with baby goats, AKA “kids.” The name was a playful choice of his.

“My friends pointed out that somer people may not know that a young goat is called a kid,” he said. Honestly, this surprised me. Plus, pairing “kid” and butchery could be a questionable combination. “‘Kid’ has multiple meanings, so it I can see how they thought it might be confusing,” said Lincoln.

He feels good about the current name. “I think it’s a classic name for a butcher shop,” he remarked. “And I like my first name, Lincoln. It’s a somewhat uncommon name for people, but a really popular name for places and things.”

Note: The goat eventually found its way into the business via the logo.

Lincoln Clevenson of Lincoln’s Fine Meats

Lincoln spent his youth in Southern California in the area near the Ojai Valley. Eventually he made his way to New York’s Hudson Valley, where he attended the Culinary Institute of America. He spent some time in NYC, cooking in Brooklyn. And in the past year he and his wife moved back to the west coast.

The Way Home

They started their return to the west with a possible business venture in mind and a consideration of a handful of places in California where they’d want to settle. “I had an old friend who I thought might be a business partner, so my wife and I were looking to leave New York and move back to the west coast,” he explained. While his parents still live somewhat inland, and had hoped their son would move close by, Lincoln and his wife wanted to be closer to the California coast.

They started looking in Santa Monica. Then they looked at Venice and greater LA but they found it impossible to find a house in their budget that could accommodate their needs. Additionally, the potential business partnership dissolved.

“There was one house, but it was several million dollars over our budget,” he remarked. So, they expanded their search up the California coast … and ran into a similar situation. “There just aren’t any homes for sale where we’d want to live or were remotely within our budget.”

Hello, Portland

Enter, Portland: “I had been considering Portland to live for years!” he exclaimed. And that was, in part, because of the robust food scene here (“It is a very food-centric city.”) and its proximity to nature. “One of the things I really missed while living in New York for over a decade was access to natural environments,” he said. Getting out into nature from NYC without a car can be a challenge.

Lincoln grew up in an area of California I’m very familiar with and could see in my mind’s eye his description of a childhood where he lived near a creek and spent time catching lizards and snakes, hiking near his home. “Portland has this sort of duality of both a vibrant food scene and being surrounded with tons of natural environments that are accessible to easily explore.”

Inspiration For and Philosophy of Lincoln’s Fine Meats

One of the places I remember from my time in NYC was Brooklyn’s The Meat Hook. When they first opened, they were notable for focusing on high-quality meats they sourced as locally as they could. Lincoln expressed an interest in working at The Meat Hook, but found his way instead to Ends Meat, where he learned majority of his butchery skills in their Sunset Park location.

“I worked directly with John Ratliff, who’s the founder, for the years I was there,” explained Lincoln. “He took on that project by himself. One of his big things was he didn’t want any outside money—he wanted to be free to operate the shop as he liked.”

He continued, “So I was there right at the beginning. He was really inspiring to me because I had come from a fine dining background, and there was so much waste in those environments.” Fine dining can tend to focus on only certain cuts of meat—perhaps the “nicest” cuts—and choices like that can result in food going into the trash.

A Food Waste Lesson

Lincoln spoke of a lesson he learned about food waste.

“When I first started working for John at Ends Meat, I threw some cabbage cores out, and he reprimanded me,” he explained. “He said, ‘We could run these through the meat grinder, salt them, ferment them, and then dehydrate them. And it could be a crunchy umami topping for rice.'”

“That really struck a chord with me,” Lincoln remarked. “That’s one of the big things I want to employ at Lincoln’s Fine Meats. Everyone wants ribeye and tenderloin, and together they represent maybe 50 pounds out of the 600 or 700 pounds of meat that a cow gives you. 

“So what do we do with the other 550, 600 pounds of meat there? It’s not always as easy to convince someone to try a different steak that they haven’t heard of—like a Denver or Flat Iron of Picanha. There has to be effort on my part to make things appealing to people to want to try it—and obviously, to some degree, to make it profitable so that I can stay in business and keep doing it. 

“So I think a lot of what I got from Ends Meet was this notion of total utilization, which is the ideal of nose to tail, but almost a step further.”

Pork Fat: 20 Percent in Excess

With all their effort at Ends Meat to use the entire animal, there was one thing they found particularly challenging to figure out: What to do with all the pork fat? There was a lot of it.

“Basically, the only thing we couldn’t really sell at the shop was pork fat,” he explained. “We always had about 20% of our pork fat in excess at the end of the day. And we had outlets for pork fat—like whipped Lardo, we made nduja all the time, which is like 50% fat. And we still had this excess.”

Eventually they came up with a solution: making soap, which he is going to do here, too.”I’m going to make beef tallow soap and lard soaps in an effort to make sure I can use all my fat and have an outlet for that,” he said. He also wants to do dehydrated beef liver for dog treats.

Lincoln’s Additional Work in Food

As I mentioned earlier, Lincoln gained a lot of experience in fine dining spaces. “I went to the Culinary Institute of America in the Hudson Valley, and then after graduating,” he said. “I started my career in San Francisco at a restaurant named Spruce, which was a really wonderful environment.”

He continued, “The team that was there when I came in were just an amazing group of people. They were not only just good people, but they’re all really talented cooks, and they showed me the path forward from what I learned in school to actually applying it in the real world.

“Then I moved to New York to work at Corton. Spruce got a Michelin star in the first year I was there, and I liked that— it felt good. I wanted to set my sights a little higher, so I moved to New York to work at a two-Michelin-Star restaurant, which was Corton. I was very excited for that … and then the restaurant closed five weeks after I got there.”

He found even that short time at Corton to be a good experience, though Chef Paul Liebrandt wasn’t around much. However, his chef de cuisine, Victoria Blamey, was, and has become a really good friend and a mentor to Lincoln over the years since he met her. She helped him find some work when he needed it. 

We also talked briefly about kitchen culture and the brigade system, and the abuses that can develop there. A chef could have an amazing approach to food, but could lead a kitchen into abuse. Lincoln is committed to creating a better environment for his future employees, than some of the ones he saw and experienced. “I’m not going tolerate it anymore,” he said.

The Location of Lincoln’s Fine Meats

As I mentioned, this space was previously that of Pasture PDX, and Lincoln said that there was not much to do as far as any kind of buildout. “The main changes are aesthetic,” he said. “I want to tile the walls because I like that kind of like classic butcher shop tiled wall look.

He added, “I want to set up a little checkout station. And that’s kind of it.”

Lincoln’s Fine Meats Concept

Again, Lincoln describes his shop as a whole animal, nose-to-tail butcher shop, primarily. While he will, of course, sell a variety of muscle meats, there will also be things like offal/variety cuts, different fats and bones for sale. “I can cut the meats for myself the way I want to, and know that the rest of the animal is being used well,” he said.

Prepared Foods and Special Orders

“My big goal is to sell not only meat, but some prepared goods and some value-added products,” Lincoln explained. “Which would be things like like pates or sausages, bacon and ham. I also want to have a small selection of raw produce.” This way people can pick up groceries, as well as what he calls, “Dinner on the Table,” which is prepared reheatable dishes: e.g., mashed potatoes, meatballs that have already been braised in tomato sauces, roasted carrots.

He’d also like to offer potato salad and chicken salad, roasted carrots—prepared food so a customer can easily take home with them. A small cheese section is also in the plans, as well as stocking canned beer and bottles of wine. He may also offer a very limited sandwich menu.

Eventually he’d like to be able to do special orders. “So if you want like a deboned chicken stuffed with sausage that you can roast at home, I’ll have that,” he explained. “Or if you want a porchetta that’s tied and ready to roast at home, you’ll be able to call in and order that a few days in advance.”

Dinners

“One of the things that I’m really excited for, which probably won’t happen for maybe a year or so, is that I really want to hold ticketed dinners in the butcher shop,” he said. “They would be small, maybe 10 or 12 people, maybe two seatings, and probably just once a month.” But to start he would like to add a counter by the window with a handful of stools.

As far as staffing goes, it will be just him for a while, with employees to follow once it make sense financially.

Oregon Products

He also wants to used as much as he can from within the state of Oregon. “So the meats, all of them are going to come from Oregon, and the produce will come from Oregon,” he explained. There will be a few things he’ll have to source from outside the state—salt and certain spices were two that he mentioned.

Sources for the Meat

Lincoln will be selling mostly grass-fed, pastured meats. “For my beef and my pork, I’m working with Vorfreude Dairy Beef and Coastland Cattle Company, and they both practice massively regenerative ranching practices.”

Lincoln told me that the owner of Coastland Cattle, Kurt Mizee, just bought his neighbor’s farm, and he said he’s trying to buy another neighbor’s farm, and the third farm is going to be just to grow his own grains and grass for his cattle to pasture on.

Kurt is a fourth generation dairy farmer transitioning to beef.  

On the Topic of Silage

Coastland Cattle uses silage in the winter, which is a fermented product made from the grass they grow. Some would not consider this product to qualify as part of a fully grass-fed diet. However, in order for the animals to be eating fresh grass year-round, the grass would have to be imported.

Importing grass does not fit in with Lincoln’s dedication to sustainability and local sourcing. “It sort of changed my perspective of what is important about being local,” he explained. “This buzzy concept of grass-fed/grass-finished is a cool idea, but if you’re importing grass to make sure you feed them grass, it’s a step backwards.”

The Value of an Animal’s Life

This is definitely a sensitive topic—the value we put on an animal and how we treat its death. Vegans and omnivores will not see eye to eye on this topic, but there is one thing I believe we can all agree on, and that is that the CAFO system is barbaric. I also believe that humans are going to continue to eat meat, and giving the animal a good life while it is alive is the least we can do before eating it.

Lincoln grew up around goats and they did eat them in certain cases. His mother cared for the goats and was as gentle as she could with them in those days leading up to slaughter. “I believe this process also impacted how I feel today about respecting the death of an animal for the sake of furthering our own lives. This, of course, ties into the inherent responsibility of putting as much of that death to use as food, dog treats, or soap.” said Lincoln.

He continued, “I believe the ranchers I’ll work with hold this same respect in their hearts. Half my cows will come from Vorfreude Dairy Beef, which not only is delicious beef, but gives so much more nobility to the lives of these cows, that upon retiring from milk production would otherwise be ground in their entirety into dog food. Dairy cows retire around six or seven years old, so there is a element of human responsibility to use all the resources that were poured into each cow for years for something more than dog food.”

Connection and Education

To start, Lincoln will be “the face of the place” and he is really looking forward to having conversations with customers about what they are looking for, their budget, what they are cooking, if they are cooking for themselves or a group. He’s also looking forward to sharing his thoughts on what it is to try some unfamiliar cuts that may become a customer’s new favorite.

That educational element is important to him. Look to their website (still in the works) for info, plus they will likely do a “featured cut of the week/month” with instruction on how to prepare it.

“Maybe a year from now, I’d like to host classes in the shop, whether they are how to braise, or how to do some basic butchery, or how to make sausage,” he said. “Where I can help people who are interested and want to expand their knowledge base for what they can do at home, and give them that sort of resource— and, I hope, a fun environment.”

Opening Lincoln’s Fine Meats

Lincoln hopes to open on November 27 (Black Friday). He’d like to be there daily from 11am to 7pm. He’ll also gauge customer demand and make any adjustments with that in mind regarding the days/times he’ll be open.

Wishing Lincoln all the best as he gets ready to open Lincoln’s Fine Meats next month!

Lincoln’s Fine Meats [projected opening November 27, 2026]
1413 NE Alberta Street, Portland
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