Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
BLEAK TO CHIC
Rapidly revitalizing warehouse district is worth a visit
PORTLAND, Ore.
About a dozen years or so ago, I took a wrong turn from downtown and crossed over a bridge to the east side of town. It didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t in the posh Pearl District anymore.
With boarded-up windows and rundown warehouses, the Central Eastside Industrial District looked soulless. The only dude I encountered that night signaled for me to roll down my car window and inquired if I needed drugs. A lot has changed. Drive east over the Willamette River and you’ll see it: Warehouses all gussied up and looking like Tribeca. Restaurants and cocktail dens all shiny and new.
East of the river is where one of the city’s best cocktail bars (Rum Club) sits next to one of the city’s best dives (The Slammer Tavern), which sits next to a tofu house, which all sound so “Portlandia.”
A NEW MIX
This warehouse district is reinventing itself as the hotbed for ambitious Asian cooking, with fusion cuisine from restaurants such as Taylor Railworks, whose pedigree comes from Le Pigeon, one of the city’s best restaurants (also on the Eastside), and Revelry, from Seattle’s James Beardnominated chefs Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi.
Yang and Chirchi’s restaurant sits along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, across from a boarded-up Salvation Army warehouse and an adult video store.
But Revelry is slick and sexy, with music pulsatingly loud and food all fussy. That kind of hubris might have gotten their windows busted 15 years ago.
Instead, it’s just one of a dozen new kids on the block, anchoring dreary drags or taking shelter in old warehouses or buildings on the historic registry.
“Portland is rapidly changing, just like Seattle, but the waterfront industrial area is seeing one of the most exciting developments,” said Yang,
who owns Revel, Joule and Trove restaurants in Seattle.
There are parallels to Seattle’s Sodo, but Portland’s industrial area is “surrounded by everything instead of being at the tip of everything like Seattle’s,” Yang said.
Cross the Morrison Bridge from downtown, and you’re at a thriving drink scene, two square blocks (bordered by Southeast Grand and Morrison streets) — from Trifecta Tavern for craft cocktails to Bit House Saloon, whose back shelves are studded with cult whiskeys such as Yamazaki Sherry Cask, Pappy 23year and Booker’s Rye.
Got the munchies after barhopping? Many new spots stay open until 2 to 2:30 a.m. on weekends, including Bit House Saloon, Revelry, Parasol, Lantern, Noraneko and Danwei Canting.
CONTRASTS ABOUND
The Central Eastside Industrial District encompasses roughly 670 blocks along the river bank and railroad tracks, taking in both homeless encampments and Distillery Row. Northward to Interstate 84, old buildings shoulder new ramen houses.
On a secondary street flanking the interstate, the potholed road is littered with shards from booze bottles. Beggars dig through trash bins. But next to them is the new home of Wayfinder Beer, with a roaring fire pit and a sleek Westernred-cedar facade. And there, as you walk through the brewery, you can hear Nina Simone piped overhead: “It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day.”
This is an enclave spruced up but still rough around the edges, transitioning before our eyes. The Willamette River splits this ’hood from the west side of town, but the city, slowly, is making it more accessible, notably in 2015 with the advent of light rail running from downtown using the country’s “largest car-free bridge,” Tilikum Crossing, for bikers, transit and pedestrians. Streets now have lights and crosswalks where there were none; speed limits have been reduced.
More lodging is on the way. Jupiter Hotel, with its Warhol-esque aesthetic, will expand next year with a second east-of-the-river hotel, a six-story building with 67 rooms and a “secret garden.” Nearby, on a commercial drag, another hotel (165 to 190 rooms) is slated to open in late 2018.
THE MAKEOVER
Talk to a dozen chefs and barkeepers and they will tell you two establishments have done much to lift this area.
In 2003, Clarklewis, a cutting-edge fine-dining joint, created buzz when it plopped down near the river bank, putting this industrial area on the culinary map.
In 2011, the bar Dig A Pony made this sketchy stretch cool to hang out in after dark. It spins soul and has the soul of old Portland.
And the hits kept coming. Six weeks after opening on Southeast Main Street, Renata was anointed 2015 Restaurant of the Year by The Oregonian newspaper. Kachka, a half-mile north, was crowned the 2014 Restaurant of the Year by Willamette Week. Considered the apex of Russian cooking in the region, it will open a second restaurant east of the Willamette this summer.