Nora Pouillon

Restaurant Nora closed in June 2017, upon Pouillon's retirement.

Pouillon sits on the board of directors for the Ocean Foundation, the Amazon Conservation Team, the Earth Day Network, and the DC Environmental Film Festival. From 1998 to 2000, Pouillon was a spokesperson for the "Give Swordfish a Break" campaign for NRDC/SeaWeb. Along with restaurant partners William Cole, Thomas and Steven Damato in 2005, Pouillon founded Blue Circle Foods, a sustainable seafood company that focuses on traceability, animal welfare, food safety, and quality. Blue Circle supplies fresh and frozen seafood to chefs, retailers, and select distributors.

Pouillon was a driving force behind the opening of the FreshFarm farmers' market in Dupont Circle in 1997, serving on the Board as FreshFarm expanded to more than ten markets throughout the city.

In 1993, Pouillon joined with chefs John Ash, Rick Bayless, Susan Feniger, Nobu Matsuhisa, Michel Romano, and Alice Waters to found Chefs Collaborative, an organization dedicated to sustainable food practices. Pouillon is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier, a society of professional women involved in the food, wine, and hospitality industries. She is also active in the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, an organization for women chefs and restaurateurs.

The early patronage and support of Bradlee and Quinn gained Restaurant Nora a loyal following, and by the early 1990s it was a destination for D.C's media and political elite. President Bill Clinton held his first inaugural party at the restaurant. Jimmy Carter was the first president to eat at Nora's, and it was a favorite of Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have dined there, as has Nancy Reagan. Asked about her presidential patrons in The Washington Post, Pouillon said: “Neither of the Bush presidents ever set foot in Nora’s, but Laura Bush came, along with her two daughters,” Pouillon announces proudly. “Good food, it seems, is also bipartisan.”

In 1986, Pouillon opened the now defunct City Café on M Street in West End, Washington, D.C. City Café was a casual modern American restaurant open for lunch and dinner. In 1994, she changed the format to Asian cuisine and renamed the restaurant Asia Nora, offering organic fusion cuisine. It was the perfect combination with Nora's style of cooking - light, elegant dishes, prepared in a healthful way with exciting flavors from across Asia. In 2007, Pouillon closed the very popular Asia Nora.

Pouillon began to investigate how to become an organic certified restaurant and learned that no certification process existed. She decided to set about creating those standards. She worked for two years with Oregon Tilth, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to supporting and advocating organic food and farming. The Oregon Tilth Certified Organic Program was established in 1982 and is an Accredited Certifying Agent for the USDA's National Organic Program. The resulting standard required that 95 percent of the food used, as a certified restaurant, must be obtained from USDA certified organic sources. “This meant obtaining proof of organic certification from all our suppliers,” Pouillon says. She complied with the lengthy requirements, and in 1999 Restaurant Nora became the first certified organic restaurant in the country. For many restaurants across the country, achieving and maintaining proof that 95 percent of suppliers are organic is a costly and time-consuming process. As Nora explained to Organic Connections Magazine about becoming certified: “People don’t always understand how complicated and time consuming it is,” Pouillon explains. “Almost everything has to be organic down to the spices and coffee. It’s a lot of work to find certified organic farmers and track down certification papers from 35-plus purveyors every year. This process has to be done each year because the certificates have to be renewed each year.”

In 1979, Restaurant Nora opened its doors on the corner of Florida Avenue and 21st in Washington, D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood. Journalist Sally Quinn and her late husband, Washington Post executive editor, Ben Bradlee were early patrons and financial backers of Restaurant Nora. Quinn offered a piece of advice: “Don’t mention anything about being healthy and natural. That sounds so unappetizing. That sounds like hippie food.” Pouillon ignored it.

The turning point in Nora's culinary career came in the mid-1970s, when one of her students asked if she was interested in opening the first restaurant inside the historic Tabard Inn. She developed a following serving locally-sourced tomatoes and house-made mayonnaise, and began making plans to open her own restaurant.

In the 1960s, Pouillon moved to the United States with her husband, a French journalist. This move highlighted the stark contrast between European food, farm, and open-air market cultures versus the supermarket culture of America post-World War II. “At the stores here it was amazing to see all the prepackaged and frozen food. Nothing depended on the season. Pepperidge Farm was like gourmet bread. The produce department was the smallest section in the store.”

As the mother of young children in the 1960s and 1970s, Pouillon did daily shopping and cooking for her family. This time coincided with the modern emergence of food cooperatives in the 1960s providing alternative, organic and whole food options to traditional chain grocery stores and food processing.

Nora Pouillon (born October 26, 1943) is an Austrian chef, restaurateur, and author. She was the owner of Restaurant Nora in Washington, D.C., famous for its status as America's first certified organic restaurant.