Oregon Roots. Basque Fire. Coastal Heart.

Chef-Owner Dom Crisp was born and raised at Lumos, his family's third-generation vineyard in Wren, Oregon, where raising livestock, fishing, and harvesting were part of everyday life. His family taught him that good cooking begins with real relationships with the people who grow the food. That reverence for land and sea has followed him into every kitchen since.

He started in restaurants at 15, working every role in the kitchen, then refined his craft in Portland and in the Provençal kitchens of southern France, where he grounded himself in French technique. In Los Angeles he cooked at L&E Oyster Bar and Blue Plate Oysterette, then opened Saso in Pasadena, a homage to the coastal flavors of Baja, the Pacific Northwest, and the Basque Country, and went on to lead the kitchens at Dear Jane's and The Lonely Oyster. A trip to the Basque Country, where pintxos in San Sebastián struck him as "better than French food," turned him toward Basque cooking for good.

Dom's Taverna opened in summer 2025 in a nearly century-old building on East Victoria Street, in El Pueblo Viejo. The original marble bar is now topped with white oak from the vineyard where he was born. In the open kitchen he cooks with fire and ice: whole fish grilled over the coals of his Josper, the charcoal grill and oven from Barcelona, and chilled shellfish on crushed ice, all built on dock-fresh seafood and produce from the fishermen, farmers, and foragers he counts as friends.

His philosophy is simple: honor the ingredients, respect the process, and create experiences that reconnect people to food and to each other.