At new bistro L’Echelle, a tribute to Naomi Pomeroy looks a lot like Portland’s best new restaurant

How many restaurants count carrots as an essential dish? L’Echelle is one. Here on Southeast Division Street, carrots bought at the downtown farmer’s markets are peeled but left whole, cooked through in salted water, glazed with honey and good butter and flecked with parsley in the Vichy style, then stacked into a little pyramid on a handsome plate. They’re simple yet elegant. Elegant, in fact, because of their simplicity.

L’Echelle was conceived as Naomi Pomeroy’s culinary return some five years after closing Beast, her influential Northeast Portland restaurant. But after the chef’s tragic death last year , the project was seen to fruition this spring by her business partner, Luke Dirks, and her longtime lieutenant, Mika Paredes. After four early visits, two things have become clear