Bar Guide 2014: M Bar

By Matthew Korfhage

M Bar

417 NW 21st Ave., 228-6614. 6 pm-2:30 am daily.

It's tough out there on Northwest 21st Avenue these days, what with the roving packs of suburban high-school athletes and celebrant Timbers fans, the high-pitched dissatisfied screeches of women wearing heels they've barely mastered. But M Bar, long a bastion of the simple and good in wine and beer and conversation, has a couple aces in its pinstripe-wallpapered hole in the wall. It's too small to bring in a group larger than four—too small also to be loud without noticing how loud you are—and the owner-bartender suffers fools gladly (thanks!), but never assholes. And so M Bar, a 12-by-12 box of two beer taps and a smattering of wine, remains a solitary but enduring flame in an ever-darkening desert full of people, a last charming refuge for conviviality at the base of a hill full of knobs. It is, as they say, appreciated. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Happy hour: 6-8 pm daily. $3 off wine, $1 off imperial pints.

WWeek 2015

Matthew Korfhage

Matthew Korfhage

Matthew Korfhage has lived in St. Louis, Chicago, Munich and Bordeaux, but comes from Portland, where he makes guides to the city and writes about food, booze and books. He likes the Oxford comma but can't use it in the newspaper.

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