Favorite
BeerMongers is about as no-frills as nerdy beer bars come: a cash register, some high tables, 8 taps, and two wall-sized refrigerators packed with both hard-to-find and popular imports and micros. Pick up a sloppy burrito from Los Gorditos across the street, grab a cold 22oz from their fridge, and recall a time when all of Division was like this. Read more...
Favorite
Portland has danced, shouted, and bounced on the Crystal Ballroom’s trademark “floating floor” for more than a century—a live music and dance venue as storied as any museum. Owned since the 1990s by the McMenamins brothers (the region’s preeminent beer + restoration experts), the vividly decorated theater’s mainstage has played host to acts from ’60s-era Grateful Dead and Ike & Read more...
Favorite
Prospecting the New World’s coolest latitudes, Brian Croser and Rollin Soles staked a claim in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, a place ideal for late season ripened Pinot Noir and Chardonnay fruit. Since 1987, Argyle Winery has produced world-class methode champenoise Sparkling wine, barrel fermented Chardonnay and ‘silky’ textured Pinot Noir from low yielding vines on winery farmed hillside slopes. Argyle was Read more...
Favorite
During the fall of 2014 Nancy Prior and Adam Moser were looking for a car to buy for an art project that required a vehicle. After calling the number on the for sale sign of a 1964 Ford Ranchero the car’s owner, Karen Harding (owner of Cup & Saucer) convinced the two to forget the car and to take over Read more...
Favorite
Some bars are for slow craft-cocktail sipping and earnest conversation. Others are for knocking back a whiskey soda in order to maximize your dancing time. Killingsworth Dynasty falls squarely into the latter category. The drinks and eats (coconut milk and piney syrup–assisted twists on classic cocktails, Southern-fried vegan fare) are a means to an end—you came for the party. In Read more...
Favorite
It’s barely pulled its first shots, but this ambitious spot celebrating Italy’s greatest exports—espresso and vermouth—is already one of the city’s most exciting places to drink. San Francisco bar star Kate Bolton and Hale Pele “tiki guy” Blair Reynolds dive headfirst into fortified wines, putting them center stage behind a marble bar graffitied with Italian futurist art. Drinking commences at Read more...
Favorite
The Commons Brewery started in Mike Wright’s garage in Southeast Portland (a true nanobrewery!). The Commons strives to make well executed, moderate alcohol beers with a refreshing and unique character (most often with yeasts originating from Europe). The beers are geared to be session-able and therefore enable or enhance social interaction. For consumers, the focus should be on friends and Read more...
Favorite
Portland’s Lightning Bar Collective sure knows how to make locals swoon. The cooperative is behind Dig a Pony, Sweet Hereafter, Bye & Bye, and now NoPo’s charming Victoria, which feels like an older sibling to those joints: out with the mason jars, in with the delicate hobnail lamps. The roomy space brims with lovely details—distressed wooden benches, a hulking painting Read more...
Favorite
When a green light in the attic window of this small Craftsman house winks on, it’s a signal that Westmoreland’s new cocktail-fueled time machine is open for business. Jewelry designer and rabid antiquer Ryk Maverick recently retooled the longtime home of Schoendecken Coffee Roasters as a 1920s-era speakeasy, complete with plinky jazz soundtrack and dizzy-making heritage cocktails. First and foremost, Read more...