Patrons of the North Williams food corridor may still be mourning the loss of the street’s only Vietnamese eatery, Lúa. Despite his best efforts — including popping up with the neighboring Box Social — co-owner Raymond Chau closed in May after five years
of business, citing declining sales over the last two years.
However, Chau had another, sweeter food venture waiting in the wings. Last month he finally introduced the project to the wider public: Jade Cow Creamery opened on Saturday, July 18, in the Flock food hall, serving flavors like Thai tea horchata, honey chrysanthemum, and White Rabbit, the latter of which is a nostalgic nod to the Chinese milk-flavored candy.
Chau got inspired to start experimenting with ice cream flavors after exploring shops in Los Angeles and San Francisco — spots like Wanderlust Creamery in Southern California where ube malted crunch and Thai tea ice creams are part of the menu. “That’s the kind of stuff I wish I saw in Portland when I was growing up,” he says.
Drawing on his travels and Vietnamese Chinese background, Chau experimented with flavors like Hong Kong milk tea, matcha, and even fish sauce and tamarind, providing ice creams for holiday gatherings and events in late 2025. “I was very careful about what I chose and what I paired and what I really enjoyed,” Chau says. The attempts were met with grassroots success. “It just really took off,” he says. “People started requesting pints of ice cream that I was making.”
While he notes that ice cream was an easy starting point, he was also lured by the dessert’s flexibility. “It’s so versatile,” he says. “You can make ice cream, mixed sorbets, sherbets, and it’s very easy to play around with flavors, whereas with baking, it’s very technical. Ice cream is a little more forgiving.”
When Lúa closed in May this year, Chau received an opportunity to share a space in the Flock food hall in downtown Portland with Flock’s in-house wine bar, Nest & Vine. Knowing that summer was approaching, he had to move quickly to open in time for ice cream season.
The coconut pandan ice cream on Jade Cow’s menu is a personal favorite of Chau’s. “It’s very Vietnamese, a flavor that I have seen throughout my entire childhood,” he says. “And you’ll see that with a lot of Vietnamese desserts as well, so I wanted to bring that to ice cream.” Although the menu currently doesn’t offer any non-dairy flavors, Chau says that they are in development. The small-batch preparation makes it possible for ice creams to be churned on a daily basis.
In moving into the space, Chau also opted to take over operations of Nest & Vine, scooping ice creams and pouring wines on a daily basis for patrons. The reimagined business is a blend of both bar and creamery — think Cambros filled with ice cream bases steeping alongside racks of chilled wine in the fridges, a freezer of finished ice creams sitting below the bar counter, and an ice cream machine itself hiding behind the bottles of liquor.
“I’m working with whatever I’ve got right now,” he says regarding the mixed-use space. “It’s a lot easier to set up, clean up, and manage versus the moving parts of a restaurant. But it’s cool to be able to draw from all of these other roles that I’ve had throughout my entire career.”
Jade Cow Creamery is open at 917 SW Alder Street in the Flock food hall from 11a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
