Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Good bar food: it's not any oxymoron


One of my favorite bars here in Portland is Bonfire, SE Stark and 28th. I've gone there for twice as part of my birthday celebrations. In my most humble opinion, they have the best fries in Portland. And i don't think that only because they're the cheapest! It's $3.50 for a motherload of well seasoned fries. McMenamin's charges $5 for tater tots! But i won't get started on my love/hate relationship with the McMenamin's company, maybe a different post...

French fries is what i look for at a bar as my primary way of judging their food selections, but in Portland you'll find a lot of substantial food and there's usually some good vegan options. I think it's the law here to serve some kind of food as long as you're serving alcohol. I really should know this since i took a mandatory 6 hour long alcohol class so that i could work at Hot Lips Pizza....

Anyways, at bars around here you can almost always count on a hummus plate and french fries (though there's a few bars that don't have that have, if you can just imagine that! i'm looking at you, Beulahland, Roadside Attraction, Tube and Hedge House! man...there's quite a few....), but you can also count on something more filling, such as the tofu or tvp tacos at Bonfire, which is what my friend Matthew above is about to devour. They also have a curry burrito, which i've never had. My friend Corinn loves the portobello gyro, which can be made vegan. Side note about the waitstaff: they can be a bit more-hipster-than-thou, but there's at least one awesomely nice server there named Sean.

The Tube downtown has the yummiest $2 Ham & Cheese english muffin sammies during their Happy Hour (which last i checked ended at 10pm). The Bye & Bye, our town's only all-vegan bar, has quite a few options including a delicious, but messy meatball sub and several different bowls, which are nutritious and delicious. Oh, they are also fry-less.....sad face....

As you can tell, i'm not looking for good-as-in-healthy bar food, though it's possible. I just know that when i visit home in Sarasota, Florida i don't even think about trying to get anything vegan that tastes good when i'm out and about.

What's your favorite bar food?

3 comments:

Leslie Richman said...

I remember being extremely happy about a bar in Chicago called Reggie's Live. They has two different venues stuck together, and one side served food. We got a giant plate of veggies and awesome hummus to eat while we watched bands. Yay! Locally, we have an Irish pub that attracts cool music and serves a really nice selection of vegetarian sammiches that can be made vegan. I heart bar food.

allularpunk said...

chips n salsa or fries are the only vegan options around here! though most of the bars don't serve food at all.

jess (of Get Sconed!) said...

cooks! apparently the ham and cheezies are $3 now! Let's go on Tuesday to find out.