No Other Portland Brewery Does Food Like Burnside

The food focus extends to the beer, too.

Burnside Brewing (Cameron Browne)

701 E Burnside St., 503-946-8151, burnsidebrewco.com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Tuesday, 11 am-11 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.

Pretty much no other brewery has made food as big a focus as Burnside in the eight years it's been open—and in the past two years the LoBu brewery has doubled down with a truly excellent and tender pork belly plate, and maybe the only Spanish octopus dish in a Portland brewpub. But that focus extends to the beer, from its flagship Scotch Bonnet and apricot Sweet Heat to malt-balanced IPAs that pair well with food but can also sometimes come on a bit muddy. On a winter visit, a wheatberry wine had aged very well in the months since the brewery hosted June's Fruit Beer Fest—one of the best parking-lot drinking weekends in Portland—and the Thundarr the Bavarian Hefe offered up lovely clove and banana notes. The darks and barrel beers were the most impressive, however, especially a round and peaty Owd Cappy Mac Scotch ale and a truly impressive Flanders Red, mixing 18-month and two-year barrel-aged batches to create layers of bright acidity, dark-cherry notes and warming oak. It was a hell of a beer, perfect for pairing with Burnside's mussels or steak frites.

Nearby: Tucked behind the brewery on Northeast Couch Street, stop in at Cider Riot (807 NE Couch St., 503-662-8275, ciderriot.com) for a mix of goofily inventive and deeply traditional English ciders including a mind-shatteringly good single-varietal Yarlington Mill that's both softly velvety and satisfyingly tannic without a hint of sugary sweetness.

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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