Chef of the Ritz-Carlton, Portland restaurant, Bellpine, and the Mexican pop-up restaurant Clandestino Lauro Romero died on Friday. According to family, he passed away in his sleep. He is survived by his ex-wife Ada Hernandez-Moreno, and two teenage daughters. He was 42.

Romero caught the industry’s attention as the inaugural executive chef and cofounder of República in 2021, winning Portland Monthly’s restaurant of the year and a spot on Bon Appetit’s 10 Best New Restaurants list shortly after. “His food changed the landscape of what Mexican food could be,” says Romero’s close friend and collaborator, publicist Xóchitl Jaime-Aguirre, “and introduced it to people in this city in a completely new way.”

Romero was born in Tulancingo, Mexico, and began his culinary career at age 7, selling chocolates on public transit. At 14, he immigrated to the US, landing in Salt Lake City, Utah, where, in high school, he began working his way through the restaurant world and met Hernandez-Romero.

They were both undocumented, but Romero received a U visa, designated for victims of crime who are helpful in investigations, after suffering a gunshot wound. Naturalization motivated him to pursue his career ambitions, and the couple moved to Portland in 2013, where Romero took a job as chef of the now-shuttered Three Degrees at the Kimpton Riverplace Hotel.

He left to start República in 2021, serving an elevated Mexican tasting menu. It was unlike anything in Portland, spotlighting delicacies including huitlacoche, the corn fungus; escamoles, the prized ant larvae famous in Mexico City; and chicatanas, an edible flying ant popular in Oaxaca.

Romero simultaneously hosted Clandestino, drawing crowds with his carnitas and putting on occasional dressed-up meals as a pop-up in nontraditional spaces, such as the art gallery of his friend, the artist Francisco Morales.

When he left República in the summer of 2022, Romero moved Clandestino into the wine bar Dame, which hosts a collection of restaurants-in-residence. This time last year, our restaurant critic Karen Brooks named it Portland’s best new Mexican restaurant, writing: “I was so taken with Clandestino’s tuna confit empanaditas—earthy, tender, surprising, raging—that I returned the next night for more.” The New York Times later named Clandestino’s whole grilled dorado one of the 23 best American dishes of 2023. But Romero was already on to his next project, putting an indefinite pause on Clandestino to helm Bellpine, the 20th-floor restaurant of the Ritz-Carlton, Portland, which opened on Halloween of 2023.

Despite the noise, those close to Romero say he was far more invested in the people he surrounded himself with than accolades—a rare trait in the notoriously competitive industry.

“Even though he’s one of the best, he never had that attitude,” says Pedro Almeida, executive chef of Ritz-Carlton, Portland. (Romero was the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, while Almeida oversees the building’s culinary operations.) When interviewing candidates, Almeda says their connection was instant: “Since day one, I said: ‘He’s the one.’”

Matt Sigler, executive chef of the forthcoming Soho House Portland restaurant, met Romero when the two were chefs of different Kimpton Hotels restaurants. They became “bike buddies,” Sigler says, and Romero got him into road biking in the annual Chefs Cycle fundraiser put on by the No Kid Hungry charity.

Sigler describes Romero as “one of the most humble, amazing, sweet people I’ve ever known,” and an active mentor to young Latino chefs. At the Ritz-Carlton, Portland, Romero continued to center representation, and spoke about it at the opening of Bellpine last year.

Friends set up a GoFundMe campaign to support funeral expenses and his daughters, who Jaime-Aguirre called “his biggest pride.” Citalli, 19, studies neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. Naia, who is 17, has Down Syndrome and lives in town with her mother.

Romero had an outsize influence on the people within Portland’s restaurant community. “Lauro’s biggest impact is going to be on the people that he worked with,” Jaime-Aguirre says. “He showed an incredible amount of care and love, not just for the talent of the people he was working with, but for the actual people—their person, their humanity.”

A public funeral service for Lauro Romero will be held on Thursday and Friday, February 23 and 24, at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (848 SW 206th Ave, Beaverton). There will be a viewing Thursday evening (6–8pm), and on Friday, a service (9–10am) and reception (2–4pm). The family says all who wish to attend are welcome.