Slow Bar Editor’s Pick
Behind the red glow of frosted windows, in a small corner bar on SE Grand Ave, Portland’s creative class plots and flirts in covert vinyl caves. The air is thick with smoke, pheromones and laughter. Raucous music thrums from the jukebox and, if the mood is right, the shaggy-headed hipsters and young, trussed-up socialites may break into an impromptu sing-along of Journey’s greatest hits.
In typical Portland fashion, a confluence of cultures can be found at Slow Bar, with bike messengers pounding Hamm’s tall boys at the bar and young upwardly mobiles—the kind who have bike messenger roommates—pondering a wine list that includes a $165 bottle of Dom Perignon.
The drink menu at this stylish and tidy dive-in-attitude-only offers an agreeable selection of no-nonsense cocktails such as the Slow Bar Manhattan, mixed with Fighting Cock bourbon and just a drop of vermouth, which has an authoritative bourbon growl well-suited to the punk-packed jukebox. But it’s the energy here on any given night that defines an atmosphere of pleasurable conquest, whether in pursuit of an excellent pre-movie burger, in thrall of a bracing drink to start a night of revelry or in hopes of a post-happy-hour hook-up.
In any case, it’s likely that amid Slow Bar’s high-backed gangster nooks there’s plenty of “lovin’ touchin’ squeezin’.”Featured in The Art of Eating Cheaply and East Side Rising.
