Skip to main contentIt’s last call for Bartini and Urban Fondue.
The Nob Hill martini bar and its neighboring melted cheese restaurant are closing at the end of February, according to a press release issued Tuesday by Urban Restaurant Group, which manages both restaurants. Feb. 22 will be the final night of service for both locations.
“Closing our beloved restaurant is not a decision we take lightly,” owner Mark Byrum says in the release. “We are deeply grateful to our loyal customers, dedicated employees, and the many friends we’ve made along the way. Unfortunately, ongoing neighborhood decline combined with untenable landlord demands have made continued operation no longer viable.” The release also says “absorbent city taxes” were a factor in the closure.
“Bartini looks like James Bond’s garage,” then-Arts & Culture editor Kelly Clarke wrote in WW’s first review of Bartini in 2003, at the beginning a timeline detailing a staff expedition to the bar. The piece includes an account of Clarke’s party interrogating Byrum about why the bar’s drinks cost so much (because they’re poured as doubles, he says; they were $9 to $12 each, by the way). It concludes with this update from 10 pm: “Complete loss of communication skills imminent. Complete loss of memory of several flavored drinks. Must pass out and sleep, all for the love of sweet, sweet martinis.”
More recent reviews of the bar—written well after the craft cocktail revival gave Portlanders more options to enjoy a sophisticated-feeling drink—are warmer, but still tempered with snark. In 2016, former digital editor Sophia June described the space as “Portland’s own little Sex and the City bus tour shrunk down into a tiny room bordering a fondue restaurant.” In Taster, WW’s 2024 guide to beer, wine and spirits, Bitch Media co-founder and Taster editor Andi Zeisler wrote, “[Y]ou can afford to be satisfied with just a few sips of an overly sweet drink before getting distracted by the menu of small plates, which features gussied-up versions of familiar bar snacks (chips and guac, mini corn dogs) as well as more substantial fare.”
In 2004, Clarke wrote a glowing review of Urban Fondue, saying it made her rethink fondue, a dish she’d previously dismissed as “fake food for fake grownups.”
“This is supercharged, sexed-up style dippin’—an exotic Gisele Bündchen to the Melting Pot’s Twiggy,” she wrote. “From its crimson-colored ultrasuede booths and slick rust walls to a private dining area cordoned off by flame-colored curtains, every inch of Urban’s hip space looks as if it’s smoldering.”
