FOOD & DRINK TOP 5
BUZZ LIST
Where to drink this week.
C
H
R IS
1. StormBreaker
N
HENRY CROMETT
BAR REVIEW
E
SS
ET
832 N Beech St., 971-703-4516, stormbreakerbrewing.com. Noon-9 pm Monday, noon-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, 11 am-9 pm Sunday. StormBreaker has made awesome outdoor spaces part of its growing brand. The original location, though, is still the best and, during the pandemic, got even better by expanding into the adjacent side street and adding about a dozen picnic tables extending halfway down the block. As for the beer, name a style and StormBreaker makes a damn fine version of it.
H
2. Bellwether SOBER SIP: Nothing on the menu at Nalu will make you high, so drink the mushroom tea with confidence.
Tea Speakeasy
Nalu is a secret, second-floor tea lounge hidden behind North Portland’s Red Fox. BY S U Z E T T E S M I T H
suzette@wweek.com
3. Prost! 4237 N Mississippi Ave., 503-954-2674, prostportland.com. 11 am-2:30 am daily. In a city filled with amazing beer bars, Prost stands out for its steadfast dedication to German food and beer—not to mention its back patio is now home to maybe the city’s best food cart pod. All beers here are imported from Germany and served in the style of glass called for by German tradition. The staff is knowledgeable and happy to guide your order from the unique and delicious menu.
4. TopWire Hop Project 8668 Crosby Road NE, Woodburn, 503-982-5166, topwirehop. com. 11 am-8 pm Thursday and Sunday, 11 am-9 pm Friday-Saturday. The state’s most secretive beer garden is hidden among the crops at Crosby Hop Farm in Woodburn. Follow the half-mile gravel road that runs between the bines and you’ll wind up at a 40-foot shipping container repurposed as a serving station pouring from 10 rotating taps exclusively featuring batches made with the hops growing around you.
5. Cully Central 4579 NE Cully Blvd., 503-206-8911, cully-central.business.site. 4-10 pm Monday-Friday, 11 am-10 pm Saturday, 11 am-9 pm Sunday. Cully Central is something unique in Portland: a Lao beer bar with 20 handles, boasting favorites from Breakside and pFriem. It turns out dishes you can’t find anywhere else, in particular a subtle khao piek sen chicken noodle soup with thick and chewy rice noodles and a light cinnamon and pepper broth.
TOP 5
HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.
1. Kimura Toast Bar
4. Produce Row
3808 N Williams Ave., 971-266 8087, kimuratoast.com. 9 am-2 pm Tuesday-Sunday. At Kimura Toast Bar, thick slices of shokupan, or Japanese milk bread, can be the stuff of a light breakfast, a savory lunch or a meticulously composed dessert. You can get your toast simply, with French Isigny St.-Mere butter, including such flavors as bacon-cheese or yuzu. You can get a cheese toast, with white cheddar or brie. You can even get it under a hot dog. And yes, you can get it with avocado—a straight-up concession to the Portland market.
204 SE Oak St., 503-232-8355, producerowcafe.com. 11 am-11 pm Monday-Saturday, 11 am-9 pm Sunday. Produce Row was doing patios right long before the pandemic made them essential. The 44-year-old inner Southeast stalwart’s is 2,500 square feet, and it’s fenced, covered and heated. The Row has always exuded a perfect balance of comfort and chic—famous for its beer-cheese macaroni and cheese, but also willing to play with carrot juice, egg whites and blueberry basil peppercorn shrub as drink ingredients. With such a huge outdoor space, it’s a slam dunk to find a seat for weekend brunches or after-work (from home) drinks.
2. Derby 8220 Denver Ave., 503-719-7976, derbypdx.com. 9 am-midnight Wednesday-Sunday. Judith Stokes’ Derby is both a work in progress and an act of imagination: an all-in-one restaurant, bar, cafe and market with a patio for outdoor dining and events like live music and drag bingo. For now, Derby is first and foremost a brunch restaurant offering up the classic paralyzing choice: sweet or savory. If you’re dining in a group of four, no problem: You can split the cardamom custard French toast, mini macadamia nut waffles, massive (20-ounce) breakfast burrito, and the white cheddar, arugula and mustard aioli breakfast sandwich. You may also want some sides like pandesal sweet rolls—not unlike a Hawaiian sweet roll, but with a more substantial crust and crumb—and longanisa sausage are a nod to Stokes’ Filipino heritage.
T
H
O S
TE
AL
4233 N Mississippi Ave., 503-504-0870, mattsbbqtacos.com. Noon-8 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-8 pm Friday-Sunday. Another outlet for Matt Vicedomini’s smoked meats—and much easier to get into your mouth right now than his regular barbecue offerings—Matt’s BBQ Tacos successfully pilfers Austin’s greatest cultural export: the breakfast taco. Smoky-sweet proteins are crammed into a flour tortilla on a bed of fried potatoes, cheddar and scrambled eggs. Our top pick is the brisket, which is packed with the pitmaster’s trademark notes of brass and wood, with a melt-inyour-mouth texture and just the perfect amount of char on the edges.
120-A NE Russell St., 503-333-6923, lottieandzulas.com. 9 am-5 pm Tuesday-Saturday. Breakfast all day, lunch 10:30 am to close. Takeout and delivery only. Toro Bravo is gone, replaced by a punky sandwich window with New England roots. The heart of the Lottie & Zula’s breakfast menu are bolo levedos, or “Portuguese muffins”— something like a cross between an English muffin and a King’s Hawaiian roll.
A
3. Matt’s BBQ Tacos
5. Lottie & Zula’s
M
Combining all the enticing aspects of “secret,” “tea shop” and “secluded rooftop patio,” Nalu Kava has been quietly under (or above) our noses for nearly four years. “Only the daring and persistent find us,” Nalu owner Holland Mulder tells WW. Though you can spy the shop’s second-floor patio from the alley behind Cherry Sprout Produce and Red Fox, most patrons would be too polite to venture down the alley to the door that bears the tea shop’s name. Up a steep flight of stairs you’ll find a homespun tea room with a few tables and a canopied pillowed nook, which on one of our visits provided an intimate space for two high school-age girls to chat and relax in comfort. Mulder says the nook has also been used as a stage for open mics and live music performances—back when it was possible to pack the little room. These days the shop is more mellow. The rooftop patio is covered and partially shaded by bamboo plants. On a weekday evening, you might see someone reading or hear a couple on a hesitant first date. “What’s the difference between drinking chocolates and hot chocolate?” one of the daters asks. Mulder says she uses “drinking chocolate” and “hot chocolate” interchangeably, but hot chocolate generally implies that the cacao is cut with more sugar. All of Nalu’s drinks—from the superfood lattes to the kava root teas—are ones Mulder thinks of as healthy or at least “supportive of health.” The kava tea is especially important to Mulder, and it’s the main drink she wanted to serve when she opened the small secret tea bar in March 2018. “These days it feels like our only option of socializing is at the bar,” Mulder says. “I reached a place where I just didn’t want to go to the bar anymore.” Mulder also relates an older story from her anxious, younger years when she stumbled into a kava bar in Florida, the state she’s from, and found that while kava isn’t intoxicating, it does seem to relieve her social anxiety and create a low-level stress-relieving feeling of euphoria. Nalu makes its kava tea using real roots. “Squeezing the roots,” Mulder says. “It’s a beautiful process.” Still, the tea Nalu serves won’t be as strong as kava you might find in Hawaii or Fiji—where regular kava drinkers have a tolerance for its mood-lightening effects. “We tend to go more middle of the road,” Mulder says.
6031 SE Stark St., 503-432-8121, instagram.com/ bellwetherbarco. 4-11 pm daily. The climb up Southeast Stark Street to 60th Avenue is steep. But that just makes the little pub at the top of the hill tastier for the effort. From the hazy, romantic back patio to the roaring front room, Bellwether feels like a pub that fell into the world fully formed. The cocktails are named in an egalitarian manner, numbered from 1 to 8. The 1 is perfect for summer: rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, cranberry grenadine and salt, served with a curled lemon rind. Not overly sweet, the tangy little number is like a loud, talkative friend whose energy you can’t help but find cheerful. Where Bellwether’s cocktails eschew clever titles, its wines pick up the slack. The selection includes an Orange Wine for Beginners and an Orange Wine for the Brave.
DRINK: Nalu Kava, 722 N Sumner St., 503-519-3415, nalukava.com. 5-11 pm Thursday-Sunday. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 8, 2021 wweek.com
25
