Biwa (late night)

Biwa is a fantastic Japanese restaurant in SE Portland. It specializes in yakitori and ramen, not sushi, and does it well. The interior has a classy SE “industrial” aesthetic, but the atmosphere is more relaxed than many of your comparable fancy restaurants.

Prices can get high on the main dinner at Biwa, but it’s worth it, and they have a great happy hour and late night menu. We went for a late dinner last night after the opera. Sadly they’d stopped serving ramen at 10pm, but we were still able to get lots of tasty treats at happy hour prices: Kim chi (they make it with several types of pickled things, not just cabbage), miso soup (stuffed full of tofu, clearly their own miso paste), and delectable beef burgers with a patty of pork on top that is apparently a new addition to the menu. We also got a carafe of Jinro, which is reminiscent of Pim’s, but not. It’s Sho Chu (a Japanese and Korean distilled liquor often made from potatoes or barley – like Asian vodka) in a carafe with ice and lemon and cucumber slices. Refreshing, light, and tasty.

Thirst

I had a mani/pedi at Pink & White down on the west waterfront, so we decided to check out Thirst Wine Bar because it’s right next door.

Side note: That area is insanely hard to find. I’m never going back to Pink & White just to avoid driving down there.

And it sure wouldn’t be worth it to go for Thirst, either. I’d heard good things about it, but they were all exaggerations. They’ve got prime tourist location – directly on the waterfront with a lovely bridge view – and they’re completely resting on those laurels. My cocktail, the “Daisy Duke,” was tasty but not terribly creative. Drink list definitely more on the frou-frou side than the clever side.

The food was so-so. Nothing terrible, but nothing very good, and the prices were very, very high. The glass prices for wine were also exceptionally high.

Basically, it’s an expensive tourist trap masquerading as a hip Portland wine bar. Fail.

Ten01

Ten01 is a very “it” spot in the Pearl, with good reason – the food and cocktails are amazing.

They’ve got one of my favorite downtown 4-6 happy hours, and you can even get happy hour on Saturday. I’ve never had bad food or a bad cocktail there. The cheese plate’s always good, they do pâté really well, their beef carapaccio is amazing, the grass-fed burger is great if you’re looking for something more filling, and the fries with truffle aioli are heavenly. As usual, I can’t remember the names of the cocktails I’ve tried for the life of me, but they were always flavorful and interesting. And I hear the wine list is good too, although I usually stick to liquor here.

Spint’s Alehouse

Time for bar/restaurant review catch-up time too! Starting with Spint’s Alehouse, a hip new spot on NE 28th & Flanders. And by hip I mean it just opened last November and everybody’s raving about it – the atmosphere is actually very mellow Portland.

I went for happy hour and had a great cocktail… Sadly, I can’t remember the name of it and nothing on their online cocktail list looks familiar. Suffice it to say, their mixology is clever and leans more toward the complex than the foofy/sweet. The happy hour red wine was good too, and their wine list wasn’t huge but was still fairly impressive.

The happy hour menu was delicious. They lean toward hearty peasant fare – we had a cheese plate, a charcuterie plate, and an incredible lamb-stuffed pastry, the name of which also escapes me and I can’t find on their online menu. (I really, really need to do these updates sooner.)

Their main menu is definitely in the $$$ range, but from what I tried at happy hour, it’s worth it. I’m especially looking forward to summer when they can put tables outside.

McMenamin’s Edgefield

I spent last night at the Edgefield, a McMenamin’s complex in Troutdale, Oregon.

And by complex I mean an estate covered with pub/restaurants and teeny hidden bars and a “spa” heated mineral pool, with a huge lodge style hotel in the center. It’s often described as an adult theme park because their liquor license covers the whole property, so you can wander from bar to bar (to poolroom to soaking pool) with drink in hand, gorging yourself on local beers, semi-local food, and occasionally creative cocktails.

I had a delectable artisanal cheese platter during happy hour at the Black Rabbit bar in the lodge, and that was the only interesting eating experience. (The mesquite salmon Caesar at the Power Station pub was inoffensively blah.) That’s ok, we were there to get drunk, and we did – slowly. They mix their drinks extra-weak, which by my 8th or 9th seemed like a pretty smart idea.

The beer is McMenamin’s, which translates to decent but nothing standout in the modern world of microbrews and exotic beers. Some of the liquor was from the McMenamin’s distiller, and insofar as I could taste the liquor itself, it also seemed… fine.

I had two standout cocktails: The Bourbon Furnace, made up of bourbon, hot apple cider, honey, and a cinnamon stick. They managed to make this barely sweet and very bourbon-licious, in spite of not being terribly strong. The other was the Screwhound, a mix of a Greyhound (grapefruit + vodka) and Screwdriver (orange + vodka). What made this amazing? All the juice was fresh-squeezed in front of me right into the mixer.

My conclusion? Like most McMenamin’s, go for the company, and consume the food and drink while you’re there. It’s nothing to write home about.