Burnside Brewing Company: Little Big Bar

By Casey Jarman

It's hard to get past the logo for the Burnside Brewing Company (701 E Burnside St., burnsidebrewco.com): a silhouetted World of Warcraft-looking tiger lady bent in a suggestive pose and holding a pitcher. Luckily, the new brewpub showed more vision concocting its signature brews than it did designing its logo. The housemade IPA has some zing; the Gratzer tastes like citrus and campfire smoke. Both are excellent. These are the first two in what is slated to become an adventurous fleet of BBC beers, and they're accompanied by nice outside drafts and a small menu that's half classy (the special on our visit was an $8 slab of pork belly; the $10 house burger is cooked in duck fat) and half crass (the $8 Coney dog is best served with $3 shoestring fries). BBC's decor feels a bit like an intimate, upscale restaurant plopped into a warehouse, but the drink specials ($3 imperial pints Wednesdays; $10 mega-pitchers Sundays) should give the locals a reason to fill the extra space.

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.