There Be Monsters

By Matthew Korfhage

Last time I wandered into There Be Monsters, the bartender passed me a little drink sample and asked me what it tasted like. Maybe apricot, I ventured. She made a joyous noise. "I was trying to make apricot flavor without anything that tasted like apricot!" (There was honey, and triple sec, and so much else.) And that's the thing about There Be Monsters, which was once home to glorious Hal's Tavern, a dive with no bottom. It's all a little makeshift—a black-and-white TV so fuzzy that even Back to the Future looks like a German Expressionist masterpiece, a bar theme currently summed up by a map on the wall, a bar light shaped like a mustache and a patio that seems to open out of a storage locker. And yet it all comes together in a way that seems both friendly and familiar, not to mention that on a five-tap list there are always at least two beers I want to drink, whether Sunriver Vicious Mosquito or a Baerlic oatmeal gose.

Happy Hour: 4-7 pm Monday-Friday. $3.50 wells, $4 pints, $5.50 cider pints, $2 Rainier, High Life and PBR.

Entertainment: shuffleboard, patio, German Expressionist TV.

1308 SE Morrison St., 971-319-6983, tbmpdx.com. 4 pm-2 am daily.

Willamette Week

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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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