Nora Pouillon

Background

Pouillon was born in Vienna, Austria during World War II. Pouillon’s family was affluent and owned a safety glass window factory. They were able to flee Vienna in the last years of the war. The family’s refuge was a farm owned by family and friends in the Tyrolean Alps. Of this time, Pouillon says: “There, the farmers grew all of their food. It taught me how difficult that truly is. They got up with the sun and worked until sunset. They had to prepare food for the winter months. There was no electricity and no running water."

After the war, Pouillon and her family returned to Vienna, where she attended boarding school. Pouillon would continue to spend summers at the farm with her grandmother.

Coming to America

In the 1960s, Pouillon moved to the United States with her husband, a French journalist. This move highlighted the stark contrast between European food, farm, and open-air market cultures versus the supermarket culture of American post-World War II. “At the stores here it was amazing to see all the prepackaged and frozen food. Nothing depended on the season. Pepperidge Farm was like gourmet bread. The produce department was the smallest section in the store.” As the mother of young children in the 1960s and 1970s, Pouillon did daily shopping and cooking for her family. This time coincided with the modern emergence of food cooperatives in the 1960s providing alternative, organic and whole food options to traditional chain grocery stores and food processing. “I started to look for ethnic markets where I could find French bread, good olive oil and cheeses. It was the hippie time and co-ops were forming, which had better products; I cooked at home using these ingredients. I started driving to nearby farms in search of quality products. We had no money at the time and it was an epicurean wasteland in DC then, with only one or two good restaurants. I got really into cooking and we entertained a lot because it was the best way to have social time, given the circumstances.”

Nora's Cooking Classes and Catering Business

Pouillon soon had several home-based businesses in D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood where she hosted and taught cooking classes, and later, operated a catering business.

The Tabard Inn

The turning point in Nora's culinary career came in the mid-1970s, when one of her students asked if she was interested in opening the first restaurant inside the historic Tabard Inn.

Introducing Organic Foods to DC

At a time when “organic” meant unappealing, hippie food, Pouillon’s inventive and tasty dishes won an avid following at the Tabard Inn. Produce is sourced as locally as possible and then washed with triple-filtered water. Herbs are planted in boxes outside for the restaurant and surrounding neighborhood. The menu changes daily depending on what is available.

Restaurant Nora

Restaurant Nora opened in 1979 in DC’s historic Dupont Circle. Journalist Sally Quinn and her late husband, Washington Post executive editor, Ben Bradlee were early patrons and financial backers of Restaurant Nora. They advised Nora not to put organic or natural on the menu. “People told me I was a crazy lady; I was called completely nuts. People were making fun of me. Advice came in like ‘Don’t call it organic; it sounds like biology class.’ I persevered. I couldn’t quit.” The early patronage and support of Bradlee and Quinn cemented Restaurant Nora as a destination for D.C’s media and political elite. Former President Bill Clinton held his first inaugural party at the restaurant. In January 2010 President Barack Obama held a surprise birthday party for First Lady Michelle Obama at the restaurant. Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President, often celebrates at Nora’s. Restaurant Nora has held lunches, dinners and events for dignitaries, congressional members, and White House administrators, and was a favorite of Hillary Clinton. Asked about her political patrons in The Washington Post Pouillon says: “Neither of the Bush presidents ever set foot in Nora’s, but Laura Bush came, along with her two daughters,” Pouillon announces proudly. “Good food, it seems, is also bipartisan.”

City Café and Asia Nora

In 1986, Nora opened the now defunct City Café. City Café was a casual modern American restaurant open for lunch and dinner. In 1994, Nora changed the format to Asian cuisine. Asia Nora opened in 1994, offering organic fusion cuisine. It was the perfect combination with Nora's style of cooking - light, elegant dishes, prepared in a healthful way with exciting flavors from across Asia. In 2007, Pouillon closed the very popular Asia Nora.

Becoming America's First Certified Organic Restaurant

Pouillon began to investigate how to become an organic certified restaurant and learned that no certification process existed. She decided to set about creating those standards. She worked for two years with Oregon Tilth, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to supporting and advocating organic food and farming. The Oregon Tilth Certified Organic Program was established in 1982 and is an Accredited Certifying Agent for the USDA’s National Organic Program. The resulting standard required that 95 percent of the food used, as a certified restaurant, must be obtained from USDA certified organic sources. “This meant obtaining proof of organic certification from all our suppliers,” Pouillon says. She complied with the lengthy requirements, and in 1999 Restaurant Nora became the first certified organic restaurant in the country. For many restaurants across the country, achieving and maintaining proof that 95 percent of suppliers are organic is a costly and time-consuming process. As Nora explained to Organic Connections Magazine about becoming certified: “People don’t always understand how complicated and time consuming it is,” Pouillon explains. “Almost everything has to be organic down to the spices and coffee. It’s a lot of work to find certified organic farmers and track down certification papers from 35-plus purveyors every year. This process has to be done each year because the certificates have to be renewed each year.”

Blue Circle Foods

Along with restaurant partners, Thomas and Steven Damato, Nora is a partner Blue Circle Foods, a sustainable seafood company that focuses on traceability, animal welfare, food safety, and quality. Blue Circle supplies fresh and frozen seafood to chefs, retailers, and select distributors.

Activism and Board Memberships

Nora sits on the board of directors of, The Amazon Conservation Team, FreshFarm Markets, Earth Day Network, DC’s Environmental Film Festival, and SeaWeb. Nora is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, a society of professional women involved in the food, wine, and hospitality industries. She is also active in the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, an organization for women chefs and restaurateurs. Pouillon is a founding board member of Chefs Collaborative. From 1998 to 2000, Pouillon was also a spokesperson for "Give North Atlantic Swordfish a Break" campaign for NRDC/SeaWeb. She had stopped serving swordfish in her restaurants in the mid-1990s after she learned that swordfish were being overfished. With the group, she asked for a moratorium so that the swordfish population could be replenished. She also does not use foie gras and fish from the Gulf of Mexico.

Awards and honors

The International Association of Culinary Professionals named Pouillon Chef of the Year – Award of Excellence. The American Tasting Institute also named her Chef of the Year in 1996. Pouillon was one of several chefs to star partially nude in a Vitamix campaign and shown in Food Arts Magazine. Other chefs featured were Cat Cora, Michael Symon, Todd English, Jose Andres, Takashi Yagihashi, Daniel Boulud, and Eric Ripert.

Memoir: My Organic Life

In April 2015, Penguin Random House published Nora’s memoir, “My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today.” The memoir has received praise from Howard Schultz, Executive Director/CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company, chef and ABC-TV The Chew host, Carla Hall, restaurateur and Bravo TV Top Chef Host, Tom Colicchio, and many more.

Cookbooks

Pouillon is the author of two cookbooks. “Nora: Cooking in a Healthy Way,” published in 1993. “Cooking with Nora: Seasonable Menus from Restaurant Nora – Healthy, Light, Balanced, and Simple Food with Organic Ingredients,” published by Random House in 1996 with a foreword by Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee.

Personal life

Pouillon has been married once, to a French journalist, 17 years her senior. The marriage produced two sons and ended in divorce. Nora has two daughters with her business partner, Steven Damato.