Bar Review: Swine

Shine On

SWINE

Back in the day, moonshine was an unfortunate side effect of a bad legal situation—a hollow-sweet grain liquor of indeterminate toxicity. But at Swine (808 SW Taylor St., 943-5844, swankandswine.com), the old white lightning is a selling point, leaving aside that the strawberry-flavored Midnight Moon served here tastes like an oven-baked candy sheet. Billed as a home of moonshine and whiskey, the Paramount Hotel's new Prohibition-themed bar has enormously friendly bartenders, a fake still, pre-aged wood displayed in the same spirit as stone-washed jeans, and an array of bottle lockers in the back wall to let regulars store their bourbon for later use. All well and good, except the Maker's Mark costs $10, with more rarefied malts climbing to $250. As with most hotel bars, come during happy hour. Swine is the sister to Swank, a just-opened restaurant by vagrant chef Daniel Mondok, and its excellent bar food and select cocktails drop precipitously to around $6 before 6:30 pm and after 9:30 pm. A gunsmoke martini of Scotch and gin, off-happy hour for $10, lived up to its name: It tasted, pleasantly, as if powdered by muzzle flare. The salt-and-pepper calamari ($6 happy hour, $12 not) was one of the best versions I've had in town—light and soft to the point of delicate, with no hint of rubber. The $4 happy-hour Caesar salad comes as a blossom of butter lettuce that looks like a rose, pollinated by a magmalike soft-boiled egg and fashionably huge lardons. Order carefully, and Swine is a luxuriant, reasonably priced happy-hour bar. Don't, and you pay a hefty fine. 

WWeek 2015

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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