Friday, August 15, 2008

Portland Happy Hour: Por Que No?

Last night my family was in town so Katie and I took them to por que no?, our favorite Mexican restaurant in Portland. It is a small restaurant on N Mississippi (close to Fremont) with indoor and outdoor seating, and the most delicious food!

The 8 of us arrived and got in line to order before taking our seats. In the 100 degree weather we felt like we were having a very authentic experience. We all ordered margaritas (some ordered the originals, others ordered the pomegranate. Both equally delish...and strong) and tacos. Their tacos are small homemade corn tortillas with a variety of fillings and priced individually. Some of our favorites include the Pollo Verde (chicken with a green sauce-$2.75), Camarones (spicy shrimp with pineapple-$4), and Verduras (vegetable-$2.75). We also recommend their chips with guac and salsa, quesadillas, flautas, bryan's bowl. Actually there is really nothing we wouldn't recommend! So we all sat, sweated, and enjoyed our tasty tacos and drinks while watching parts of the olympics and enjoying the wonderful atmosphere on Mississippi.

We think the prices are pretty great even when it's not happy hour, but for those looking for a deal, food and drink specials run from 3pm-6pm everyday and from 3pm to close on Tuesdays. All tacos are $ .50 off, small margaritas go for $4.50 and larges for $7, and all bottled beers are $2.50.

We took a break to digest and cool down, but then decided we wanted to go out for a drink (well 6 of us at least), so my aunt recommended this small bar also on N Mississippi. She told us it had a great atmosphere, a "real" DJ ("you know with records"), and awesome infused liquor and a back patio. Sounded good, so we asked the name. She couldn't tell us due to the lack of signage, but said we should just look for neon signs and bar noises. Thanks to this description we now call it "the nothing bar", but others may know it as Moloko Plus (formerly the Mississippi Social Club).

We headed back to N Mississippi and were pleasantly surprised by this small bar which was busy even on a Thursday with a pretty young crowd. It did have a real DJ and a variety of infused vodkas, gins, and tequilas. We tried an infused cucumber martini and a citrus martini. The cucumber was much more mellow, and while the citrus wasn't terrible, it was a hard drink with a strong bitterness (perhaps with a citrus peel taste) and vodka burn to it. After getting our drinks at the bar we sat at a table on the patio. It did have a great atmosphere and we plan on returning (though we definitely want to look at their drink menu and try something different). So we don't really know which are the best drinks, prices, etc we'll go back and give a more informative update!