No Dishes to Wash

My husband and I have been in love with Portland City Grill for a long time.  And now that he gets off work earlier, we can catch the early Happy Hour at this popular place.  In the US Bancorp tower, on the 30th floor, where Atwaters used to be. If you can snag a window seat, it’s great.  We usually head up early, (about 4:15, for the 4:30 HH) or really late (11 or so for the later one) to get a window seat.  In fact, the HH is totally slammed and hard to get a seat unless you go early or late.  The piano man is playing, your waiter is in a tux jackets, the yuppie crowd is in, talk about ambiance.  And the food can be truly sensational.  Don’t expect big portions, because they don’t exist here.  Just like if you were coming here for a meal, it is all about fancy-shmancy pants artsy food.  But that doesn’t mean the food is not delicious!  I love the Thai Lemongrass beef tenderloin satay (think skewers),  with coleslaw, and the Ginger Hoisen Chicken satay.  Caleb almost always gets the cheeseburger.  The drinks are pro-fessional here.  They even have the number one cocktail waitress in Oregon working for them.  If you go after a Blazer game, don’t be surprised to see a few Blazers, and or coaches to show up - I think the time before last, we saw Patrick Ewing.  Or maybe the time before the time before last.  Anyhow, this is where the IN crowd hang out.  So, expect it to get a little noisy with young 20-somethings giggling over the guy getting his mac on with them.  I do swear, I have heard THE funniest conversations here.  It is a veritable meat market towards the weekend.  If you have anyone visiting Portland, the view of downtown, the river, and Mt. Hood is spectacular, you must take them, they will be very impressed.  (Unless they are the type that hate on the rich and famous, or wannabe rich and famous, in that case, definitely don’t take them here.)  There is a dress code, although I don’t think it’s very strictly enforced, I believe that ripped jeans, shorts, baseball hats and bikini tops are no-no’s.  Besides, if you show up in anything remotely like that, you will feel slightly out of place, unless you are totally oblivious to that kinda stuff.  (Read=most men.)  There is not a late HH on Friday or Saturday, although they do have the early one on both days.  Last year, they had a leeetle problem with health inspector reviews, but not one word has been heard since then, so, (whew) I think it’s safe to enjoy.  Portland City Grill is located at 111 SW 5th Ave, 30th floor.  Open M-Th 11am-midnight, F 11am-1am, Sa 4pm-1am, Su 4pm-11pm.  HH 4:30pm-6:30pm M-Sa, 10pm-midnight M-Th and 4pm-11pm Su.  Props to Operators are Standing By for the picture of the view from the Grill.

We are really fortunate in Portland to have a LOT of happy hours, whether just for drinks or with food as well.  But the day of the super cheap happy hour is coming to an end, I think.  It used to be that almost all places had food for $2-3 and drinks were $3.  Not anymore.  But one place that still packs a punch is any of the McCormick and Schmick’s happy hours.  We’re talking Jake’s Grill, Jake’s Famous Crawfish, The Pilsner Room, McCormick and Schmick’s, the M&S Grill, or McCormick’s Fish House.   Last night we enjoyed McCormick’s Fish House with some friends.  It’s on the westside (shock and Horror!) but well worth the drive (especially since it’s right off Hwy 26.)  Each McCormick and Schmick has a slightly different happy hour menu, and I like this one the best. (My least favorite? It’s a tie between McCormick and Schmick’s Seafood and the Pilsner Room. Which is sad, because the Pilsner room is such a cool place to go!)  We all ended up ordering the same thing, except for me.  That was 6 half-pound cheeseburgers with french fries,  thank you very much.  Oh yeah, and they put bacon on it too. For….. only $1.95.  Crazy Talk!  And this burger is big, with all the trimmings, as big as any Red Robin burger out there, for two bucks.  And a lot of places happy hour (Newport Grill, Stanford’s)  don’t even put fries with their burgers anymore.  So this is a total score.  I tried the Vegetable plate last night, it was meh.  The hummus was just weird tasting, but they had a curry mayonaise that was pretty good, and then a dill aioli.  I also had the buffalo wings.  The thing is, they aren’t wings.  They are entire drumsticks, and not small ones at that.  Each one is a good 5 or 6 bites of meat.  The sauce is good, not anything spectacular, but the amount of meat on these babies blows me away.  And you get about 7 or 8 of them for, again, $1.95.  Crazy Talk!!!  It’s a plate full!  They also have Jarlsberg Cheese Fondue, Fresh Cut Potato Chips, Cheese Quesadilla, Southwest Black Bean Dip, and Roasted Chicken Flautas.  And that’s just on the $1.95 menu… for $3.95 they have Cornmeal Fried oysters, Ahi Tuna Skewers, and for $4.95 you can get Surf and Turf Kobe Beef Sliders.  There are a few more choices on the more expensive menus, too. They also have a happy hour Dessert selection for $3.95.  Their drinks aren’t crazy cheap, but they are not expensive either.  Most of their cocktails are about $7-8, and they are well made, no skimpy watered down drinks.  So please, go and enjoy the many McCormick and Schmick Happy Hours - I’d love to hear which one is your favorite.  McCormick’s Fish House and Bar located at 9945 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, Beaverton.  Happy Hour is 3pm-6pm M-Sa, 4pm-6pm and 8:30pm-11pm Su, 9pm-11pm M-Th, and 9:30pm-12am F-Sa.  (Whew, got all that?)  Our waitress Whitney was a little slow with our waters, but also, we kinda trickled in at different times, so every time she came back to our table, we had more people there.  She did a excellent job splitting up the bill (most waitresses balk at having to split 7 people 5 ways,) and also let us take home our extra food (usually happy hour is no to-go.)