Naomi Pomeroy, 49, Chef Who Made Portland a Dining Destination, Dies

Naomi Pomeroy, a self-taught chef with an irreverent streak whose high standards and generosity of spirit made her the culinary matriarch of Portland, Ore., as it emerged as the locus of a radical new style of fine dining in the mid-2000s, died on Saturday near Corvallis, Ore. She was 49.

She died while tubing on the Willamette River, in western Oregon, said her husband, Kyle Linden Webster, a fellow restaurateur.

Ms. Pomeroy and Mr. Webster had joined a friend to float down the Willamette on Saturday afternoon. Their floats — two inner tubes and a paddle board that they had tied together — hit a partly submerged branch, and all three of them were thrown into fast-moving water, Mr. Webster said. He and the friend made it to shore.

Rescuers from the Benton County Sheriff’s Office located Ms. Pomeroy’s body underwater, but strong currents prevented them from retrieving it. The search continued on Tuesday.

Her death was reported on Monday evening by Portland Monthly magazine in an article by Karen Brooks, a food critic who had covered Ms. Pomeroy’s career since 2002, when she and Michael Hebb, her first husband, hosted a series of underground suppers in their home. Those coveted gatherings helped start Portland’s renegade restaurant culture and the national pop-up restaurant craze.

Although their quirky restaurant empire and marriage blew up in spectacular fashion several years later, they became so revered that W magazine crowned them the prince and princess of the Pacific Northwest food scene.