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To the untrained eye, the Slabtown neighborhood appears to be a dense cluster of monolithic 5-over-1s, each providing bespoke fishbowl accommodation for a mix of celebrity gym franchises and high-end boutiques that seem to sell a bit of everything or nothing at all. To the trained eye this is also true. Sure, there are some glossy cocktail bars like G-Love’s next-door spot, The Love Shack, and a few legacy dives hanging around, though unique bars tend to attach to unique architecture, which is part of why the Central Eastside Industrial District, Mississippi and Alberta have so many of them. But residing within one of those vaguely anonymous mixed-use cubes on Northwest Savier Street is Lucille, a new bar that’s easy to approach and rewarding to linger in.
In the age of Instagram, Temu and private equity, it’s increasingly common for new venues to look a bit samey. But Lucille is a unique hodge-podge of aesthetics, mixing post-modern sculpture with swoopy Miami Deco and even a bit of trompe l’œil thrown in for good measure.
Lucille, which opened in July, is the sibling bar to The Gibson in Multnomah Village, itself a strong contender when it comes to midcentury martini lounges. Both projects are fronted by Nick Gusikoff, former manager of Clyde Common and co-owner of the erstwhile Richmond Bar. Lucille and The Gibson don’t look much alike from a distance—The Gibson has the refined elegance of Dogs Playing Poker, while Lucille skews more Salvador Dalí—but they share a fair bit of conceptual DNA.
Gusikoff says the idea behind both bars was to create a neighborhood cocktail spot with just enough stuff on the menu that a bartender or two could hold down the fort. Some bars are simply too big to staff this way, which can turn a night out into a frantic game of Overcooked. But a compact layout and slim menu means the bartenders never seem too stressed, and the long bar is real easy to sidle up to.
The outspoken visual language comes courtesy of Canopy Builds, a construction and remodeling company run by husband-and-wife team Noah Jay-Bonn and Jimi Hendrix. Canopy is responsible for the equally confident design of The Gibson along with Nixon-era rotisserie chicken bar LaVerne’s, and all three builds share an easy blend of form and function. The function is likely due to Jay-Bonn’s ownership stake in both Lucille and The Gibson, and Gusikoff credits Hendrix with the flamboyant form.
Behind the bar, manager Stephen Hawk has assembled an exceptional cocktail program out of the gate, pulling together a diversity of tropically inflected flavors and some unexpected savory notes. It’s a compelling combination of style and substance, especially in a neighborhood that tends to err on the side of market research consultants.
The typical $14–$16 cocktail in Portland features an ingredient or two you don’t have at home (and wouldn’t know how to use anyway), but it’s not always easy to say whether the alchemical end product is doing anything that a standard Paloma couldn’t.
That’s not the case here. The titular Lucille, for example, blends peppercorn vodka, dry sherry and dill syrup into an invigorating tonic with just a whiff of the herbal elements. Similarly, the Castaway combines hibiscus, cacao, ginger (along with the usual cocktail stuff like gin and bitters) for a type of delicate, ethereal sweetness that’s incredibly difficult to extract from sugar water and booze. Every drink is as vivid and vibrant as the gaily painted walls and, just like at The Gibson, is served in simple, heavy glassware with an unobtrusive garnish.
The food leans perfunctory, with a mix of bar snacks, a better-than-it-needs-to-be Caesar, and a couple of panini for legal reasons (recent transplants, you can stop asking the bartender if they serve food; everyone has to). That’s not really a red flag. Bars like this exist for befores and afters, rather than main courses. This is the kind of spot where you can swing by for an emergency old fashioned before the function or debrief with the bartender after a disastrous first date over a tomato martini.
Which brings up another area where the modern Portland cocktail bar format often falls short. Any bar, no matter how bespoke its ingredients, should be a place that’s easy to hang out in. There should be areas that facilitate striking up conversation with a neighbor, along with spots for privately drowning whatever the sorrow of the moment is. Austere remove or, worse, elitist snobbery isn’t good value for anyone’s money. It’s just the illusion of exclusivity.
Despite the technical acumen of the cocktail menu, Lucille has a bit of that old Cheers magic. It’s an antidote to Slabtown’s tendency toward the prefabricated, and an example of how constraints aren’t an excuse for mediocrity. Because we could all use somewhere nice to drink between rounds of inscrutable boutique shopping and structured meditation at Jennifer Aniston’s yoga startup.
DRINK: Lucille, 2141 NW Savier St., lucillepdx.com. 4–10 pm Sunday–Thursday, 4 pm–midnight Friday and Saturday.
