When it opened in early March, Bar King was one of Portland’s most anticipated new eateries, an Asian-inspired restaurant and bakery combining the talents of two well-regarded chefs. Shaun King, perhaps best known as a former chef at the Las Vegas outpost of Momofuku, helmed the restaurant, sending dishes out of the kitchen that ranged from onion rings to Hokkaido squid to crispy pork belly. The bakery side, headed by formerly LA-based pastry chef Katherine Benvenuti, was scheduled to open later that month.

But with the state’s shutdown order, the restaurant closed days later, and the bakery’s March opening never happened. The Bakery at Bar King eventually began offering pastry-filled, to-go “brunch boxes,” and on August 6, the bakery officially opened with pastry cases full of treats like chocolate orange brioches and kimchi egg muffins. Starting this Thursday, the Bar King restaurant will reopen for dinner service, marking the first day that both the restaurant and bakery are open, as originally envisioned. 

Dinner at Bar King will be available either in a $75 per person four-course prix fixe menu format or à la carte. The prix fixe menu, which can be enjoyed at the restaurant’s indoor dining room or on the patio, offers bread service from the restaurant’s bakery served with miso coffee butter; appetizers including scallops with melon and shiso and Ota Tofu with lemon dashi, corn tempura, and trout roe; and entrées like banana leaf-wrapped halibut and a sencha-honey dry-aged duck. On the à la carte menu, available at the bar or on the outdoor patio, the pre-pandemic onion rings are back along with dishes like spicy ribs and ssam-style pork belly. For a sweet end to the meal, the bakery’s offering desserts like miso chocolate chip cookies.

For information about reservations, visit barkingpdx.com/dinner.