Inside the former Wildwood space in Northwest Portland, Bar West offers a fresh, modern space with remarkably approachable food. The 40-seat bar shakes up creative takes on classics, while the Toki & Savory, a highball fizzing with Suntory whisky, salted plum, and “maitake mushroom soda,” has junk food levels of sweet-salty-umami. The slim dinner menu of fairly simple west-side-approved comforts is all nostalgia and seasonality. The best things make use of Wildwood’s old tandoor oven: smoky beets sit in a brown butter–curry spice slick and a huge mound of fall-apart short ribs in a red wine reduction seeps into McDonald’s-caliber fries. Bar West manages to coddle the neighborhood’s less adventurous crowd and hooks nostalgia-hunting food hounds. For that, it’s earned its keep.