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1. Lolo Pass Rooftop Bar
1616 E Burnside St., 503-908-3074, lolopass.com. 4-10 pm daily.
Beyond giving guests a place to rest their heads at the end of the day, Lolo Pass is home to one of Portland’s newer rooftop bars where locals and visitors alike can sip drinks and take in the view of the Central Eastside. The fifth-story perch reopens May 4 following its winter hibernation with a new and seasonally changing cocktail menu. The debut Snap Pea martini sounds like the perfect vibrant drink to toast the warming spring afternoons.
2. Gigantic Brewing Tap Room and Champagne Lounge
5224 SE 26th Ave., 503-208-3416, giganticbrewing.com. 2-9 pm Monday-Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday-Sunday.
When considering a collaboration, Upright Brewing’s Alex Ganum posed this question to Gigantic founders Ben Love and Van Havig: “What would happen if we brewed an imperial Pilsner like an IPA?” Naturally, that led the trio to experiment, and the result is Czech Your Cold IPA, a crisp, light-bodied brew with hints of lemongrass and lemon peel. You can find it on tap and in bottles at Gigantic’s flagship as well as its two other locations.
3. Dirty Pretty
638 E Burnside St., dirtyprettypdx.com. 4 pm-1 am Sunday-Thursday, 4 pm-2 am Friday-Saturday.
This is the third venue in industry veteran Collin Nicholas’ quickly growing bar portfolio, which also includes Pink Rabbit and Fools and Horses. As with its sister locations, you can expect a fusion of Asian and Hawaiian ingredients in Dirty Pretty’s food menu (pork-shrimp shumai, fried saimin, furikake jojos), and the lengthy cocktail list is filled with tropical flavors. Drinks with names like Jungle Juice, Charliebird and Guava Wars should brighten what’s been a pretty gray Portland spring.
4. Fracture Brewing
1015 SE Stark St., fracturebrewingpdx.com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-8 pm Sunday.
This month, the Lil’ America food cart pod welcomed its final tenant, and if you haven’t checked out the eclectic mix of vendors—Guyanese bakes are sold feet from crab boils, vegan corn dogs and Hainanese chicken rice—the recent opening is a good excuse to get out there. Be sure to order a beer (but, really, you should get several) made by Fracture’s Darren Provenzano. During our last visit, the medallionlike West Coast IPA and the canary-colored Hazy were both standouts, but the Pilsner trio (classic, West Coast, New Zealand) is what really stole our hearts. Yes, they all taste different.
5. MILK+T
Inside the Portland Food Hall, 827 SW 2nd Ave., milkandt.com. Noon-6 pm Tuesday-Thursday, noon-8 pm Friday-Sunday.
MILK+T, pronounced “milk and tea,” is a Beaverton Asian- and women-run bubble tea bar making the leap across the West Hills by opening an outpost in downtown Portland. A pint-sized version of the suburban shop is part of the revival of the Portland Food Hall, which was slow to reopen following the pandemic lockdown. Despite MILK+T’s closet-sized space, it serves drinks with big flavors and premium ingredients, like the Classic (a black milk tea) and the adorably named Piglet (strawberry coconut milk).