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Right after chain tiki bar Trader Vic's announced its Pearl District location would close, Portland tiki-bar owner Blair Reynolds of Hale Pele announced the opening date for his new craft-cocktail and craft-coffee and craft-coffee-cocktail venture alongside Coco Donuts' Ian Christopher.
It'll open March 26 on the bottom floor of Kerns apartment building Burnside 26—best known as the white-hot, artisanal nougaty center of Portland's love-hate, codependent relationship with new apartment development.
Burnside 26 swirled into the crema of Portland anti-gentrification feeling after the apartment complex's owners issued a promotional video featuring ecstatic and smug Burnside 26 residents Luke and Jess. Luke and Jess seemed to have codependency issues of their own, but they did really enjoy washing their dog.
Anyway, now Luke and Jess will have a great place to drink when it's not growler hour.
Of Americano, Reynolds told Eater Portland that the new spot will cross-breed coffee and liquor servers to "bring the bartending aspect back to the barista world" and "really explore, not just specific regions, but specific farms" with Christopher's house coffee roasts.
The cocktails will focus heavily on coffee, vermouth and amaro—these last two being very much the current darlings of the booze world, whether at the West End's new Shift Drinks (where we heartily recommend the Priorat Vermut Natur "drinking tobacco"), vermouth-and-aperitif-happy Taylor Railworks or already-existent coffee-and-vermouth bar Locale on Mississippi.
The decor will be themed on the art of the Italian Futurists—those lovers of fast cars and manly warfare, who were themselves gunned down in the Great War—and will seat 15, serving up "bitter circus" fare from New Orleans chef Chris DeBarr, previously of Green Goddess.
The Luke and Jess vid has been taken down, sadly. But here's a self-avowed Situationist parody of it:
Willamette Week