Perlée Dundee Hills Brings Smyth’s Chef to Wine Country

Perlée Dundee Hills is a new all-sparkling wine estate in Oregon’s Willamette Valley where chef Brian Barker, formerly head chef at three-Michelin-starred Smyth in Chicago, now leads an eight-course lunch program. According to Eater Portland, Barker left Smyth in March to run the kitchen at Perlée, a Worden Hill Road estate founded by Tiffany and Grant Austin. For Oregon wine travelers accustomed to Pinot Noir appointments followed by a cheese board, this is a sharper proposition: a long lunch, a glass of Krug before you sit, and a chef whose last kitchen belonged to one of only 14 restaurants in the United States holding three Michelin stars in 2023 (Eater¹).

The timing matters. The Willamette Valley has spent decades proving Pinot Noir and Chardonnay can carry Oregon onto serious cellar lists; Perlée arrives with sparkling wine at the center of the estate and a restaurant format that asks you to give the middle of the day to the table. Lunch, not dinner. Dundee, not downtown Portland. That changes the rhythm of a wine-country itinerary.

Why Brian Barker Chose Perlée Dundee Hills

Barker’s move reads differently if you know what Smyth means in American dining. Eater Portland reports that Smyth became one of just 14 restaurants in the United States to hold three Michelin Stars in 2023 and, as of 2025, the only three-star restaurant in Chicago. The same source notes that Smyth was recently named number one on North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Barker was not leaving a minor post. He was leaving a kitchen with a national reputation and choosing Worden Hill Road (Eater¹).

His stated reason was not a bid to import Chicago dining into Oregon wine country. Barker told Eater Portland he saw the move as a chance to refine his own cooking in a place with “beautiful nature and products.” Of Perlée, he said, “This is exactly what I’d hoped for. I didn’t think I’d find it. The timing was well-suited.” The quote carries the essential clue: Perlée is being built around Oregon’s ingredients and Oregon’s setting, rather than around an urban tasting-menu template dropped into vineyard country.

That distinction matters for collectors and travelers because wine-country dining can easily become decorative, the vineyard view doing more work than the cellar or the kitchen. Perlée Dundee Hills has recruited both Barker and Kevin Goldsmith, the estate’s director of hospitality and former wine director for Smyth, according to Eater Portland. The Smyth connection, therefore, is not confined to plating technique. It reaches the pacing of service and the wine conversation at the table.

Perlée’s founders bring their own Oregon context. Tiffany and Grant Austin founded the estate; Eater Portland identifies them as co-founders of A-dec, a dental equipment manufacturing company, and developers of Allison Inn & Spa in Newberg. The estate sits on land Grant Austin’s family has owned for almost 50 years, on winery-packed Worden Hill Road. This is not a visiting chef residency. It is an Oregon family project with a serious dining program attached from the start.

The Eight-Course Lunch Menu: What the Table Looks Like

The lunch is priced at $250 per person for eight courses, with an additional $150 upgrade available for high-end wine pairings from Oregon and global producers, according to Eater Portland. The meal begins before the menu proper: guests are welcomed with a glass of Krug Champagne, then seated at tables set with custom handcrafted wares. It is a useful signal. Perlée’s own inaugural wine anchors the experience, but the estate is not treating outside benchmarks as taboo (Eater¹).

Eater Portland’s first report from the dining room describes an opening sequence with another pour of Krug Champagne alongside three composed bites featuring spot prawns, candied nori, and foie gras. That is the sort of detail that tells you more than any blanket description could. Spot prawns place the kitchen close to the Pacific; candied nori brings salinity and sweetness; foie gras supplies fat for Champagne’s cut. The format is built for sparkling wine’s pressure, acidity, and texture.

The same account notes cured rockfish and tomato tartare, Chinook salmon with a mi-cuit texture, aged rib-eye, rock rose ice cream with Hood strawberries, and a Raspberry Mosaic dessert. Those are not generic tasting-menu nouns. They show Barker working with Oregon fruit, fish, and seasonality inside a controlled multi-course arc. The lunch is not positioned as a quick stop between tastings. It is the appointment.

Tiffany Austin framed that deliberately in Eater Portland’s report: “When I moved to Oregon from Miami, I learned that people here don’t lunch. People eat lunch, but they don’t do lunch as an hours-long kind of thing. So now, people can lunch here!” The line gets at the cultural shift without overworking it. Perlée is inviting Willamette Valley visitors to slow the day around a table rather than stacking as many tasting rooms as possible between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Perlée’s All-Sparkling Wine Program

Perlée is described by Eater Portland as a new all-sparkling wine estate in the Willamette Valley’s Dundee Hills. The same report places the estate within Oregon’s growing interest in premium traditional-method sparkling wine, while acknowledging the region’s reputation was built on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. For a traveler, that means Perlée belongs to the Willamette conversation but changes the bottle at the center of it.

The estate’s all-sparkling focus also sharpens the food pairing logic. Sparkling wine can move through a menu with fewer forced turns than many still wines: it can lift spot prawns, reset the palate after foie gras, and meet the fat of aged rib-eye with acidity and mousse. Perlée’s reported use of Krug as a welcome pour and optional pairings from Oregon and global producers gives the experience a comparative frame. You taste Oregon sparkling in a room that is not pretending Champagne does not exist.

For collectors, the more interesting question is provenance. Perlée’s inaugural wine is already being poured as part of the lunch, according to Eater Portland, but the source does not disclose cuvée composition, disgorgement details, production volume, or release allocations. That restraint matters. Without those facts, the collector’s play is not to speculate; it is to observe how the estate positions its first wine at the table, what benchmarks Goldsmith chooses around it, and how the pairing program handles Oregon alongside global producers.

Perlée Dundee Hills also joins a region where estate visits are often organized around views, barrel rooms, and flights. Here, the kitchen is part of the wine program’s first impression. If the estate continues to lead with long lunch rather than a standard tasting-room cadence, the wine will be judged in context: temperature, glassware, pacing, food, and the cumulative effect of several courses. That is a demanding arena for a debut sparkling program. It can also be a clarifying one.

Worden Hill Road, Mount Hood, and the Arrival Sequence

Perlée’s location gives the experience its own geography. The estate is at 11050 Northeast Worden Hill Road in Dundee, a road Eater Portland describes as packed with wineries. The approach matters because Oregon wine travel is often tactile before it is analytical: the slope of the road, the canopy overhead, the moment a vineyard opens into view. Eater Portland reports that Perlée’s driveway passes beneath white oaks and Douglas fir before reaching a hilltop estate with a charred wood exterior, an oversized doorway, panoramic glass walls, rolling vineyards, and a view of Mount Hood.

Those details matter because a $250 lunch in wine country has to justify time as much as tariff. The room is part of the tempo. A Krug welcome pour before the first course sets the palate; panoramic glass keeps the vineyards in the frame; the midday schedule lets the valley remain visible through the meal rather than turning dinner into a dark-window exercise. Dundee Hills light is part of the service.

Worden Hill Road also places Perlée inside one of the Willamette Valley’s densest visitor corridors. The practical advantage is clear: you can plan a day around Dundee and Newberg without asking guests to thread together distant appointments. The editorial caution is just as clear: Perlée is not a squeeze-in tasting. Eight courses, welcome Champagne, optional pairings, and a chef-driven kitchen require a slower map.

That may be the point. Oregon wine country has long rewarded the collector who leaves space in the schedule, time to talk through a vintage, taste a library bottle if offered, or watch weather move across the hills. Perlée formalizes that instinct into lunch.

How to Book Perlée Dundee Hills and What It Costs

Perlée Vineyards is located at 11050 Northeast Worden Hill Road in Dundee. Eater Portland reports that the restaurant is open Wednesday through Sunday, with reservations available on Tock. The eight-course lunch is $250 per person, and the high-end pairing upgrade is an additional $150. Those numbers put a fully paired experience at $400 per person before tax and service considerations, assuming a guest chooses the upgrade (Eater¹).

The booking detail is important for travelers building a Willamette Valley trip around meals rather than only tastings. A Wednesday-through-Sunday schedule gives some flexibility, but the lunch format means Perlée will shape the day around it. If you are planning multiple winery appointments, treat Perlée as the anchor and build outward, not the reverse. The risk is not palate fatigue alone; it is missing the point of a meal designed to unfold over time.

The optional pairing structure also gives two different ways to read the cellar. At $250, guests encounter the eight-course menu anchored by Perlée’s inaugural wine, according to Eater Portland. At $400 with the upgrade, Goldsmith’s list can widen the lens to Oregon and global producers. For a serious sparkling drinker, the latter may be the more revealing format because it shows how Perlée wants its own wine heard beside established references.

Perlée Dundee Hills arrives with a tight cluster of facts that should put it on wine travelers’ maps: Barker from three-star Smyth, Goldsmith from Smyth’s wine program, an all-sparkling estate on Worden Hill Road, Krug at the welcome, and an eight-course lunch built for the middle of a Dundee day. The next thing to watch is not whether Oregon can attract chefs of this caliber, Perlée already has, but how many Willamette itineraries begin to treat lunch as the main reservation.