Portland, OR

First, my apologies for the dearth of posts in the last three weeks. I have taken a new job, and it has been a wild and bumpy ride in that this new job is a restaurant, and the last four weeks have been training, and now that the training process is complete I feel that I finally have time to resume my normal (*relative term) life.

One quick observation: The restaurant industry in any city is a small, incestuous community. Be it a major city like Chicago, or a smaller city like Portland, everyone knows everyone, and has possibly slept with that same population. However, if you want to learn a city, get a job in a restaurant. Waiters know all the best spots.

That said, I have been introduced to a great bar, with a great outdoor patio. And who doesn’t love a great outdoor patio on which to drink, right?

Rontom’s on East Burnside at 6th Avenue. There is no sign, so you kind of have to know what you are looking for, a grey building with tallish windows along burnside, maybe two blocks before Le Pigeon. Or you can look for the crowd of ESH (East Side Hipsters — a crossbreed of 80’s throwbacks, if young, and Marxists in thrift store clothes, if a little older) clustered outside.

Now that I am working nights again, it seems that is a precursor to going out after said shift. Rontom’s has been my favourite watering hole thus far. And yes, the patio is the main reason for this newly found libation station.

Come on, you put a ping pong table outside, and how can I resist?

Grandma wasn’t there, but could have been. It’s a big place.

The drinks were strong and appropriately priced. As a bartender myself, I hate paying more than six bucks for a Stoli and tonic. I know how much Stoli costs a bar, so anything more than that and it is literal robbery. Rontom’s charged me $5.50 for a tall, and I can live with that. Not that I am cheap, quite the contrary, but I do not like overpaying for alcohol just to sit somewhere posh, especially when I am so much more comfortable at a pic-a-nic table outside.

Also, the female bartender was cute, and put my tall in a pint glass. A girl after my own heart…

Portland, Chicago, Stoli, Rontoms, Rontom’s, outdoor, patio, drinking