CHAPEL PUB

[January 31st, 2007] Having housed the dead for more than 70 years, a former mortuary now serves lunch and dinner to the living. Built in 1932 as the Wilson-Chambers Mortuary, the Chapel Pub is the newest McMenamins outpost and company headquarters to the McBrothers' empire, which has employed droves of tattooed and dreadlocked Portland youth for decades.

Smallish rooms make for a cozy feel, but cozy becomes cramped quickly when things gets busy and the Chapel Pub takes on the ambience of a suburban pizza parlor during little league season. There's little space to sit (or stand) while waiting, and the dining rooms are so packed with tables that a walk to the loo means a game of chicken with tray-wielding staff. I was relieved the rumor of the crematorium being transformed into a pizza oven was false, simply because there would not have been room for it.

Service was friendly but slow: It took more than 20 minutes for our drinks to arrive, and we would wait another eternity for our food, our second round, and our check.

Chapel Pub has typical McM fare with a few specialties, including beef tacos, a chicken-curry rice bowl, and spicy mac and cheese—each for $5. Another special, the sloppy Jerry ($5.50), an ode to the sloppy Joe, was light on meat and not as sloppy as one would expect of a sandwich named after Jerry Garcia. The Chinese chicken salad ($8) was tasty with tender pieces of sesame-crusted chicken, chow mein noodles, and canned Mandarin oranges in soy-ginger vinaigrette. The spicy mac and cheese ($5) was less impressive: flaccid penne pasta covered in processed cheese that looked and tasted like yellow melted candle wax.

The Captain Neon burger ($6.60) is the item I consistently order at McMenamins establishments, because I've learned by eating hundreds of them that they're pretty hard to screw up. When it arrived in perfect form and with crispy bacon and a frosty Hammerhead, I was reminded why I still go to McMenamins.

The Chapel Pub is a nice addition to the revitalizing Piedmont neighborhood, and Portland wins another historic building back from the dead. Still, with all their resources, it's sad the McMenamins don't try to improve their food quality. In a city where it's becoming increasingly difficult to be served a bad meal, there is little excuse. —MIKE THELIN.