Drink 2011: Whiskey Soda Lounge

3131 SE Division St., 232-0102, whiskeysodalounge.com. 5 pm-midnight Sunday-Thursday, 5 pm-1 am Friday-Saturday.
Andy Ricker's Thai bar and de facto Pok Pok waiting room is a cheap Southeast Asian vacation. Score a seat in the wood-paneled space and order a tableful of Thai drinking bites, like salty little deep-fried anchovies and turmeric-laced meatballs and deep-fried pig intestines served with black vinegar sauce, which taste like sweet-and-sour churros. The namesake whiskey soda, spiked with puckery tamarind and palm sugar, is a requisite accessory, but when it's hot outside, slurp down a bia wun ("jelly beer")—an alcoholic slushie made by slowly freezing 22-ounce bottles of Thailand's national beer, Singha, in a revolving contraption that looks like a plastic wine barrel. KELLY CLARKE.
What to drink: Pok Pok Bloody Mary—it's like they blended the spicy soul of Thailand with tomato juice and served it chilled. And those drinking vinegars, which come in a rainbow of housemade flavors from Taiwan lemon to blackberry, are so refreshing the Ricker gang's now selling them retail at all of the empire's locations.
Happy hour: Drink cheap "things that are served in cans and glasses" 10 pm-close nightly.
Entertainment: Ike's legendary fish sauce wings, oddly appealing Thai surf rock.

WWeek 2015

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.