Going whole hog

Restaurateurs find a connection with Internet fundraising plans

Jason French wants to give you a whole hog.

Contribute $900 to his Kickstarter campaign, and you and your family will be the proud owners of a pig from Laney Family Farms/Eat Oregon First, butchered to your specifications. The meat comes with recipes for each part, for your nose-to-tail dining pleasure.

French is owner of Northeast Portlands Ned Ludd Restaurant, which is on its final two days of trying to raise $60,000 to help fund the construction of Elder Hall, a light-filled, vaulted space that adjoins the restaurant.

We have a strong reverence for elders and wisdom, says French, who opened Ned Ludd five years ago. We wanted to create a community-oriented gathering hall in the Shaker tradition.

The modular space would host private parties as well as community meetings, dinners, lectures, tastings, movie nights, classes on butchery and wood-fire cookery. It would host a childrens cooking camp, and be the home of the Portland Meat Collective.

Basically, it would spotlight and showcase everything French has wanted his restaurant to stand for since opening on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Failing Street five years ago.

Were not building a video game or a consumerable good for the nation, French says. Were building something special for our community, for Oregon.

The 30-day campaign for Elder Hall ends on Thursday. If the campaign is successful, it will be the largest Kickstarter restaurant project to come out of Portland, since the phenomenon began nationally in 2010 and caught on here a year later.

Three Portland restaurants have Kickstarter projects well underway, and seven were funded in the past three years.

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Going whole hog