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There is a Russian saying “Водка—наш враг, но мы её уничтожим!” which means “Vodka is our enemy, but we’ll destroy it!” It’s a good place to start talking about Kachka’s new bar and distillery Fabrika. From its humble beginnings in 2014 as a ryumochnayas-style drinking and snacking tavern on Southeast Grand Avenue to its larger family-style dining room and kitchen at Southeast 11th Avenue and Yamhill Street that opened in 2018, Kachka has become an unexpected phenomenon not the least for its early horseradish-infused vodka and tasting flights that take center stage at Fabrika.
It’s a cliché caricature of Russian culture to always associate it with vodka, but perhaps no more than the American South is connected to moonshine and the West to whiskey. Fabrika leans into it with class and grace, with a glitzy contemporary take on booming 1920s-meets-Soviet Empire stylized cocktail bars where everyone had a martini in hand.
The new space is laid out like a loft with a ground-floor horseshoe-shaped bar as the centerpiece. Dropdown bulbs from each level twinkle like golden stars over the white marble bar top and emerald green tiles below. The back bar and second-level loft seating are filled with reflective surfaces and Constructivism design reminiscent of the golden age of Russian Futurist cinema.
The entire space is just 2,500 square feet, with a big section of that carved out for the fully on display distillery acquired from former tenants Aimsir Distilling. The famed corn-based Kachka vodka infused with horseradish and honey now has a sister premium wheat-based vodka, more appropriate for the aforementioned dry martinis or sweeter seasonal riffs. The bar stocks more than a dozen other vodkas from near and far, and carefully curated wines and champagnes. Only beer gets short shrift, with just one local tap from the new building neighbors, Rosenstadt Brewery. Though Russia is not historically known for beer, it surpassed Germany last year as the fifth-largest beer-producing country after only officially recognizing it as an alcoholic beverage in 2011.
Fabrika, meaning factory, references not only the distillery, but Kachka’s next-door dumpling “workshop,” the production hub for the most crowd-pleasing foods the brand presents: dumplings with potato, cheese, and pork and beef ($15, $16 and $17, respectively) available at both restaurants and frozen in stores. All pack certified-Maria Sharapova-level hits. Only the Fabrika-exclusive Brandade vareniki salt cod and potato dumplings in milk broth with sunflower oil and topped with fresno peppers and fresh dill ($22) was a miss. Mine was overly fishy and unbalanced with no center to hold it together, leaving a grassy taste in the mouth. But where Fabrika shines is in the zakuski, the signature snack-based drinking foods either cured, smoked or raw like fresh oysters, shrimp, caviar and roe.
We started with the rye bread with kelp smetana butter ($5), which basically just whets the appetite with spicy crackery rye bread and a salty-savory butter that demands a напиток pairing (napitok, or drink, if your Russian Cyrillic is rusty). A Kachka Vodka Sour Cherry infusion (30-, 60- and 100-gram pours for $5, $10 and $15, respectively) cuts the brackish low-key salinity that comes standard in Russian cuisine. That too will just prime you for ещё один раунд (yeshcho odin raund, or one more round) of zakuski.
If you want to stay light on your feet, the refreshingly fresh raw and untouched Oregon bay shrimp salad ($9) or a funkier marinated mussels salad well seasoned with paprika-coriander oil, garlic, pickled carrots and cilantro ($10) are small but affordable choices you might find on a menu in Kaliningrad. If you’ve got the котлета (“cabbage”), the two caviar compositions featuring kaluga fish, fried chicken skins and kholodnik-turned-panna cotta will have you feeling like an oligarch.
But personally, I’m all about the konservy menu of imported tinned fish, like the approachable mackerel with roasted garlic ($19) or the intense smoked herring with white pepper and scapes ($21) that each come with adjika butter, pickled fennel, herb emulsion, hard-boiled egg and rye bread on the side. But if you came to party, just skip ahead to the two-tiered seafood tower with six oysters, four clams, scallop crudo, and six cocktail shrimp ($80) that varies with market availability. On Sunday, Sept. 7, Kachka Fabrika will celebrate the launch of its new premium wheat vodka with a free outdoor party running 1–4 pm. Co-hosted by the culinary event organizers Roux, Fabrika’s party will feature female bartenders and chefs making special treats and drinks, and food and drink-inspired screenprinting.
But this is a vodka bar, after all, and I’m feeling philosophical like a dimestore Dostoevsky. I raise a toast with the signature house martini “From Kachka with Love” ($12), a showcase for its new corn-based vodka complemented with Dolin dry vermouth, orange bitters, a lemon twist, and Alphonso olive. Its name refers to Hollywood’s greatest functioning alcoholic flick, and reminds me of a line in Crime and Punishment alluding to the paradoxical relationship between food, drink and company that makes for such an intoxicating combination: “The more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink....I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!”
EAT: Kachka Fabrika Distillery & Zakuski Bar, 2117 NE Oregon St., Suite 202, 503-470-5077, kachkafabrika.com. 4–11 pm Sunday, Monday and Thursday; 4 pm–midnight Friday and Saturday.
