There are a few reasons to drop by the Ritz-Carlton, Portland beyond springing for a room (they run from roughly $500 to over $1,000 per night). There’s Bellpine, the fine dining restaurant on the 20th floor, as well as the ground-floor lobby bar and all day café, Meadowrue. Both are open to the public.

Many a Portlander was eager to get a look inside on opening night. Yes, someone opens the door for you. Yes, there is a lot of marble-wrapped architecture. Yes, there are visibly wealthy retirees and visibly wealthy twentysomethings. But the crowd wasn’t jarringly distinct from any of the surrounding bars and restaurants. Here’s what caught our eye.

The Dress Code

Cripplingly opulent? Not so much. This hotel follows the opening of the Ritz’s NoMad in Manhattan, which also embraces its location instead of implanting a plug-and-play outpost. As a result, the ethos of the entire hotel seems to be a sweeping embrace of everything Pacific Northwest, from the Willamette River woven into the hallway carpets, to the onslaught of copper referencing the penny toss that won Portland its name, to the relentless mentions of Lewis and Clark this, and Lewis and Clark that. Which is all to say that it would be hard to be underdressed, though you wouldn’t feel alienated should you show up in something, you know, ritzy.

Meadowrue

Start here, the most approachable vector of the Ritzverse. Named for the species of flowering plants colloquially known as buttercups, Meadowrue features a massive cedar tree trunk extending from the bar top and vine-like plants and light fixtures raining down from the high ceilings, leaning hard into buzzy “biophilic” design (that’s bringing the outdoors in). Meadowrue is “a hike through Forest Park,” explains food and beverage director, Will Peniche, who came to the project from the Ritz’s Maui resort. Filling out the back corner of the ground floor just off SW 10^th Avenue, it’s open from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily, and serves everything from a chicken caesar wrap to a $1,250 glass of Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac.  

The Cocktail Menu

The bar’s hot coffee–based Pepe la Mocha cocktail showcases a collaborative roast with Coava Coffee while nodding to the legendary bar formerly under the Ace Hotel, Pépé le Moko. It’s a taste of the local perspective that bar manager Jason Marshall poured into the cocktail program. (Marshall’s resume includes stints at the Multnomah Whiskey Library and as the president of the Oregon Bartenders Guild.) Another menu highlight: a Ryan Reynolds’s Aviation Gin–based “breakfast martini,” flavored with raspberry jam and toasty brioche.

The Wine

Though it’s nothing to sneeze at, the wine program, “is definitely under construction,” explains Paniche. “Our goal was to start small and really build it up.” For the time being, glass pours of 10 or so Willamette and Columbia Valley producers, plus the obligatory Moët Champagne, are available in the lobby and restaurant, with an extended list of 80 or so bottles available upstairs; Paniche hopes to eventually grow it to around 250.

Bellpine

A ride up the mirror-finished elevators, complete with their own waterfall motifs, and maybe a few moments of getting lost in the building’s endless hallways, lands you at Bellpine. The restaurant is split into two areas: a dining room centered around the open kitchen, which sparkles, and the lounge, bisected by a central, ovoid bar. The lounge menu is made up of shareable small bites (a lacy and crispy fried buñuelo topped with raw sliced geoduck clam; a shrimp and blue-corn corn dog fit for a swanky room, sauced with a woodsy "pine gel") carried over from the more extensive dinner menu featured in the dining room.

The dinner menu adheres to the checkpoints you would expect from a luxury hotel with a historic lineage, and a customer base to match it. “We all understand that we’re servicing a hotel, that we have to [work with] certain parameters. But it honestly didn’t feel that way,” says chef de cuisine Lauro Romero, formerly of República and Clandestino. Rather than sticking to standard Pacific Northwest flavors, he and executive chef Pedro Almeida went multicultural. “In Portland, we have a lot of Asians, we have a lot of Latinos; we have a lot of Portlanders [representing] other minorities. So we’re trying to embrace that as well.” You can see the multicultural touches in dishes like a savory crab doughnut, a Berliner, with Japanese flares of sansho (a green peppercorn with the mouth-numbing quality of Szechuan) and the citrusy chili relish, yuzu kosho. The two chefs collaborate on the menu, bringing their Portuguese (Almeida) and Mexican (Romero) backgrounds as well as a foundation in French fine-dining techniques. 

Anchor Dishes

Two “Grand Dishes” consist of a shareable hunk of salmon ($140) or a 32 oz rib eye ($240). They’re served steak-house style, with your choice of two sides: various potato preparations, mac and cheese, and not creamed spinach but a “spinach mousse.” Romero advises these are shareable for 2–4 people.

Don’t Miss the Pastry Menu

The savory-leaning desserts at Bellpine are inspired by micro regions of the state: a porcini mushroom ice cream with chocolate ganache, pistachio mousse, and a whiff of cedar is dubbed “Forest.” And how could one represent the Oregon Coast without throwing crab on the dessert menu? A crab croquant (chewy-crispy French almond cookies) has its own beach, or nori seaweed sand, dungeness crab foam, and apple and bourbon for good measure. It’s the work of Serkan Koc, brought over from the Ritz-Carlton, Baku, in Azerbaijan, the hotel’s executive pastry chef.

Yes, the Building Looks Just Like Its Drawings

On opening night, much excitement was made of how closely the real-life building resembled the renderings created during the design process. Compliments to the designers for executing a vision, though as this long-standing idea becomes a material reality, smack dab in the heart of the West End, time will tell what the city makes of it.