Equal parts innovative dining experience, private event venue and creative incubator - if there’s one unifying thread to The Nightwood Society, it’s the empowerment of women and their crafts. Proprietresses Michelle Battista and Kati Reardon started the culinary venture in October 2017. The duo had become friends through the restaurant world and wanted to provide an inclusive forum to converse about social issues, and for people to connect over food and wine.

“We meant it to be a community gathering space for all different purposes,” says Battista. “To be able to come together as a community of women, which we found wasn’t happening in a lot of places, at least not so much in a tangible sense.”

At Nightwood’s core is a multi-talented, diverse collective of women producers, with specialties ranging from floral design to painting, farming and even butchery. In their location on NE Broadway (and beyond), the team collaborates on everything from weddings, immersive meals, or one-of-a-kind corporate workshops - if you can imagine it, they can bring it to life.

“How do you heighten that creative experience by connecting more of those sensory dots?” she says. “For this year, that’s a big goal. To continue offering that in a way that makes sense to people.”

Nightwood’s assortment of rotating classes and nonprofit work is steadily shattering the status quo. Their #LadyLikes campaign is taking back and redefining what it means to be a lady while championing local makers. “We vote with our dollars, right? So we buy as much from women as possible. We’re deeply invested in our female community in Portland.”