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1325 NE Fremont St., 503-946-8161, freehousepdx.com. 4 pm-midnight daily. Happy hour 4-5:30 pm daily: $1 off everything except $2 items.
Established: 2009, Re-established: 2012
A recent visit to Free House landed during Design Week Portland. The place was packed with YoPros in sensible jackets and Warby Parker glasses, which buttresses our theory that it's a place where people who casually aspire to be fancy assemble in hopes that no one will say a word about it. There's a really nice $11 cocktail made of Cardamaro, dark rum and sherry named after a song by Kings of Convenience—a polite Norwegian folk duo that sounds great while folding laundry. The menu features a preponderance of upscale meat products at middle-class prices, like an Olympia Provisions charcuterie platter ($16) and a fantastic secret sauce burger ($9) you shouldn't share because you don't want anyone to know you have a taste for Big Macs. There's a covered patio encased in blond wood and leafy greenery out back, but you shouldn't go there because you'll want to bum a smoke off the blue-haired kid who just finished a shift at the nearby Whole Foods. You can ditch your design friends and smoke cigarettes and drink $2 cans of Old German later, but for now you're an adult who enjoys fancy things.