Bar Review: Bit House Saloon

Lutz Tavern owners bring rare Japanese whiskey to the former East Bank.

IMAGE: Courtney Theim

On opening night at the Bit House Saloon (727 SE Grand Ave., 729-9929), the liquor shelves fell. Thousands of dollars of rare Japanese whiskey bottles bar manager Jesse Card worked two years to procure €"shattered on the floor.

"The Maker's Mark and Jim Beam? That was all fine,"€ he says.

Luckily, there'€™s still plenty of rare liquor to spare. On a recent Monday, Card passed around shots of single-barrel Bernheim wheat whiskey made especially for the bar, one of eight exclusive small-batch liquors served there.

The cavernous old-time saloon was once the ill-attended East Bank, which it turns out was one of the most underutilized old buildings in Portland. The new owners—who also rehabbed Lutz Tavern in Woodstock—€”threw down flooring with wood from old bourbon barrels, added a huge fire pit on the spacious back patio, and plan to host events on a previously empty second story that once housed boxing matches. The old boxing bell hangs behind the bar, and bartenders ring it when a friend walks in.

Former Wildwood chef Dustin Clark'€™s food menu is downright carnivalesque, with authentic Rocky Mountain oysters ($9) alongside armadillo eggs ($9) that are basically a cross between a Scotch egg and a jalapeno popper, plus a fried chicken-thigh sandwich ($13) and rabbit hand pie ($12).

The festival continues on the drink side, with a $5 Hopworks draft aged in bourbon barrels, mezcal or genepy "€œboilermakers"€ ($8-$12), mystery-flavored boozy ice pops ($5), and a house-blended sherry ($7) that tastes pleasantly like toffee.

The tap cocktails are mostly sweet, very complicated, and all about $9—try the K23, which mixes rum with mint and beet juice, or one of two fancy house slushies. But so far, it'€™s mostly the service industry that has discovered the place.

On multiple visits, seemingly every bartender in town was ponied at the bar drinking mini-bottle beer backs of Miller High Life, while across the street, the sidewalk shitshow at Dig a Pony continued apace.

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