Remarkable Woman: Lisa Schroeder, ‘Mother of Mothers’

Editor’s Note: March is Women’s History Month. Each Tuesday during March, KOIN 6 News will spotlight a Remarkable Woman nominated by others in the community.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Lisa Schroeder has been called “The Mother of all Mothers.”

For more than 2 decades, she has been the owner and chef of the beloved Mother’s Bistro in downtown Portland. Those years have brought great success along with personal tragedy. She’s survived the pandemic and the repeated vandalism of recent years.

Lisa Schroeder has continued to find ways to give hope to help lift a city in turmoil. But being a civic force in Portland was not always her plan.

‘The world needed mother food’

After growing up in Philadelphia, Lisa moved to Israel, got married, then came back to the US while she was pregnant.

“My husband wasn’t really making money, so I had to also go make money as well as raise our child,” she told KOIN 6 News.

Her husband was abusive. She left him when their daughter, Stephanie, was 6. She took a series of jobs in New York — including at Publisher’s Clearinghouse and Weight Watchers.

But the single mother found herself at a crossroads. She wanted to be a lawyer but she also dreamed of a career in food.

“One day I had the epiphany: ‘Wait a minute, I can get all this food, pizza, Chinese food, but where can I get mother food, the kind of food that I would make if I had time?’ And that’s when I realized that the world needed a place that served mother food.”

The idea for Mother’s Bistro was born. Still, it took years for the dream to become reality. She attended the Culinary Institute, worked at many restaurants and found love again.

Rob lived in Portland.

“I always knew I’d open up Mother’s in a city other than New York. I just didn’t know what the city was,” she said. “Here’s this great guy in Portland, I’ll move out to Portland and open Mother’s. If it works out with him, great. If not, I’m in the right city for Mother’s. And that’s how I ended up doing Mother’s.”

But the road to opening Mother’s Bistro is 2000 was not easy.

“Very hard for a woman in the restaurant business, period, because the men will sabotage you left and right,” she told KOIN 6 News. “They do not want to see you succeed.”

But she did.

Mother’s constantly saw a line of people outside its original location on Stark Street. Willamette Week named it Restaurant of the Year in its first year.

Tragedy strikes

Lisa’s only child, Stephanie, was there for the launch, “throughout that time helping me, coming up with great ideas.”

One great idea: A Mother of the Month (MOM) honoring different Mom’s dishes on the menu.

Lisa Schroeder became a fixture in the Rose City, serving comfort while treating her customers like family. So when tragedy struck in 2016, it felt like all of Portland mourned with her.

Stephanie was hiking with her twin boys when one of them fell off a crumbling edge at Horsetail Falls. He survived but Stephanie died trying to save him.

“It’s very ironic that I have a restaurant called Mother’s and now I’m daughterless,” she said. “But, you know, I love my daughter through her children, and I realize that when I hear her in my mind saying, ‘Take care of my kids, take care of my kids.’ And so that is my focus.”

Lisa and Rob help raise the boys, who are now 11.

One of them told KOIN 6 News their grandmother “works a lot. Cooks for us, drives us to school. I appreciate that. Gives us a massage every night for 5 minutes” — a personal nugget Lisa was surprised he revealed.

Through it all there was Mother’s. And in 2019 Mother’s moved a few blocks away into a bigger space on the first floor of the Embassy Suites by Hilton Hotel. The move itself became a huge street party and parade.

Then came the pandemic

Lisa was juggling home schooling the twins and how to keep her restaurant afloat. Like many Portland business, Mother’s Bistro was a frequent target of vandals.

Undaunted, she kept giving back.

“We did let Don’t Shoot Portland use our spaces for feeding the homeless. When we had to shut down, we drove everything to the Blanchet House so that they could use the food that we had just paid for, but couldn’t use.”

She navigated the pandemic and Mother’s survived. But then the fentanyl crisi began overtaking the streets of Portland.

“What I want people to understand is — yes, there are homeless that need our compassion and our care. And then there are the drug users whose main reason for being is to get the drug, use their drug and get more of the drug. And this is what is killing Portland.”

In 2023, she and KOIN 6 News anchor Jeff Gianola walked from her restaurant to an open-air fentanyl market at SW 4th and Washington. It was a startling example of what she and other business owners — plus others who come to downtown Portland — deal with on a daily basis.

Later she appeared on the KOIN 6 News Town Hall dealing with the fentanyl crisis. And she hasn’t backed down.

“I was a member of Governor Kotek’s governor’s task force for downtown Portland, where myself and 50 other business leaders gathered, brainstormed, and tried to figure out ways to improve the state of our city,” she said. “I go to downtown retail council meetings, which we try to help to get people back downtown and encourage them downtown.”

In 2023, she was named the Oregon Small Businessperson of the Year.

As it says on the Mother’s Bistro website, it’s all about the love for the city she has made her home, customers who become like family or stepping into the role of Mother to her grandsons.

“That’s my mission,” she said. “Making two lives really, really good in addition to other people’s lives in my restaurant, is a big focus of mine. And I think, you know, if we can affect change in one human, if we can make one great human or two and have them be great people on this planet, the world will be a better place. So, you know, I do it at home and I do it publicly, too.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com.