Current Mood: Dynamic
Music Playing:Thrice, The Alchemy Index Vols 1-2
Think of your idyllic happy hour; probably includes something like $2 beers, $3 glasses of wine and maybe $4 highball drinks and an abbreviated appetizer menu. You love going not for the food, but for the opportunity to get a good buzz on after a long day of work for half the cost. Well, when I do happy hour, I’m more concerned about the food menu; don’t get me wrong, cheap drinks are great, but cheap food is equally great. While visiting a friend in Portland Oregon last weekend, I was told we were going to happy hour at a place along NW 23rd street called Uptown Billiards Club. It didn’t exactly sound like your typical happy hour venue, but I thought maybe we’d get discounted fares for playing a few rounds of pool. As it turned out, this place is one of Portland’s best-kept secrets. Available Tuesday through Saturday from 4 to 7 pm, this place does the best happy hour you could ever imagine: five-course meal with wine pairing for $20… I’ve rendered myself speechless just thinking about it again… yes you heard correctly, five courses, with wine, $20; and if you don’t want the wine, just the food, $10 (if you could see your face right now, it would look something like this emoticon :0
The menu changes every other week and is always themed regionally; this week’s menu was Cuban. Let me back track a little bit and give you the run down on this place. It is on the second level of a building right in the heart of the best shopping street in Portland, NW 23rd. When you ascend the stairs you’re immediately transported back in time; some toe tapping jazz plays and you feel as if you might be underdressed for this upscale yet slightly causal, speakeasy-looking bar. There are actually more pool tables and seats at the bar then tables for eating, and the first question the waitress asked was whether we wanted an eight or nine foot table (we weren’t sure if it really mattered since we were here for the food, but managed to a table, though I believe it was only about six feet long) The wall to the left of us was a painted bookcase and there was a cloth curtain to the right of our table covering a neighboring pool table room (probably where the high rolling gangster types would hang out) and an armoire with a large mirror on it was at the far wall (probably for storing the large overcoats and weaponry).
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, the food… first course was red beans and rice with pork, very traditional urban Cuban food, the flavor was great, spiced well with a slight hint of heat, unfortunately the beans were a bit on the crunchy side (at first I started to realize why the food was only $10). But then I was pleasantly surprised by the 2nd course a chilled lentil salad with celery, carrot and onion tossed with a smoky vinaigrette (it was delicious) The wines for the first two courses were incredible; the bar itself is actually well known for their wine list covering wines from California, Oregon and Washington as well as France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Chile and Australia. I will probably have to go back and edit this blog after posting, but I believe the first course was paired with a Sangiovese from Washington of all places and the lentil salad was paired with a Grenache blend from Australia. Third course was a creamy garlic and onion soup garnished with cilantro (yum!) Don’t remember what it was paired with, a blend of some sort. Fourth course was what they called a mojito chicken sandwich; chicken marinated in a mojito served on a baguette with simple tomato and lettuce accompaniment (this was also quite tasty and paired with another blend…I wish they would update their website so I would have all the correct information). Last course was dessert, a spiced rice pudding with some sort of candied citrus; I think the people that I was with was rather turned off by the consistency of the pudding, but it was delicious and the wine pairing was something I couldn’t figure out, there were a bunch of words on the menu I had never seen before, but it seemed to me, to be some sort of rose dessert wine (I was the only one that enjoyed this as well).
All in all we left, fully satisfied, and with money to spend on drinks for later. There really should be more places everywhere that do a happy hour like this…
And just as a side note, there are a lot of great happy hour places in Portland, nothing quite like this place, but still super good, and super cheap! Discover them!
