On Thursday, October 2, chef Justin Woodward died in San Diego, leaving behind many admirers from his prestigious undertakings. His early career was spent in esteemed kitchens in Denmark and Spain, exclusive resorts in California, and practicing cutting-edge molecular gastronomy in Manhattan. He’s likely best known to Portlanders for his long tenure at Castagna, and then later its sister restaurant OK Omens, the elegant Hawthorne wine bar and restaurant he co-created with sommelier Brent Braun and Monique Siu in 2018. A critical darling and an awards season regular, Portland Monthly food critic Karen Brooks described him as “the only Portland chef cooking Michelin-level food,” and he spent a good portion of his career on James Beard Foundation Award nomination lists: a semifinalist seven times and a finalist five consecutive times between 2015 and 2019. Woodward died of liver failure, a complication of alcoholism. He was 43.

OK Omens owner Brent Braun described Woodward as a fastidious professional with hidden depths. “Back in the high point of Castagna, he was still kinda reserved and buttoned up. Always dressed in clean whites, early in, late out, hard worker, master of his craft, boy genius, etc.,” Braun said in a message to Eater. “But then for staff parties we’d do karaoke and he’d always belt out “War Pigs,” which was his favorite karaoke song. And it was just a shocking juxtaposition of the clean-cut ‘tweezer chef’ and then him showing his more metal side. Everyone would be hooting and hollering for him when he finally sang. We all loved it.”

Braun says that for Woodward, food was more than just a profession or a technical challenge. “He truly found joy in feeding his friends and the people he loved. On slower nights, when he had time, he’d cook these elaborate staff meals. And he’d kind of hover around when everyone ate, just making sure people liked it, in a really sweet way. But if you told him, ‘Hey chef, this is really good!’ he’d pretend he didn’t care or he’d be like ‘duh’ but kinda as a joke. But he actually really cared and it made him super happy to feed everyone.”

Woodward was born in Boston but grew up in San Diego, where he attended culinary school. He worked in prestigious kitchens in Europe, California, and at the Michelin-starred wd~50 in New York, before landing at Castagna where he was a sous chef under Matthew Lightner. When Lightner left to helm Atera in New York in 2011, Woodward took over at Castagna, where he stayed until OK Omens launched in 2018. Castagna didn’t reopen after the COVID-19 lockdown, but OK Omens thrived, along with similar fancy-casual hybrids like Canard and Expatriate. Woodward stepped down in 2024, a decision that Portland Monthly described as “an amicable, mutual decision months in the making.”

The James Beard Awards are among the highest culinary honors in the United States, and among the community of recipients and fellow nominees Woodward was well known and well liked. News of his passing has also been felt deeply by the Northwest food community. A memorial post on OK Omens’ Instagram was filled with admirers, colleagues, and coworkers sending condolences and remembering better times: those staff karaoke nights, adventurous platings, and quiet moments of kindness. They paint a picture of an inventive and gracious presence in and out of the kitchen.

Family, friends, and community members have been reckoning with Woodward’s untimely death. “My brother struggled with alcohol issues in the industry,” said Rachel Ruiz, Woodward’s older sister, to Michael Russell at the Oregonian. “We don’t want people to speculate about his cause of death. We want people to know how serious alcohol can be and to get resources. Even if you don’t feel like you’re sick, it’s doing damage to your body.” A note in Woodward’s official obituary reads: “Our family would encourage anyone struggling with addiction to reach out to resources. There is often shame associated with these struggles, and we hope this transparency will help inspire others to get help when needed,” and suggested hsmartrecovery.org as a good place to start.

It’s an impossible task to paint the contours of a life in a few hundred words, or to make sense of a death that feels impossibly premature. In the aftermath, it can be tempting to reduce a person to the simple terms of their professional accomplishments or personal struggles. “I don’t want him to be remembered for the somewhat bad decisions that he made,” his sister Melody Woodward told the Oregonian. “If you mentioned a recipe that you liked,” Ruiz told the newspaper, “the stuff to make it would show up at your front door.”

Portland-based cookbook author and James Beard Award winner Diane Morgan summed up Woodward’s legacy to Eater: “His food was spectacular, precise, but not pretentious. We were lucky to have him in Portland. It is so incredibly sad to lose a chef like Justin, who was so humble and incredibly talented, and so young.”

If you are struggling with addiction, call the National Addiction hotline at 1-800-662-4357 or reach out to a recovery organization. Ben’s Friends is specifically geared toward people struggling with addiction in the restaurant industry.

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