Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Portland Happy Hour: Oven & Shaker

What: Oven & Shaker
Where: 1134 NW Everett St
When: 2:30-4pm and 10pm-midnight daily
Honeys Heart: Corleone Original

Katie, Jenna, Dana, Gina and I have been trying to make weekly, or at least every other week, happy hours together a habit. Most recently, we met at Oven & Shaker for their late happy hour at 10pm.


This restaurant, which opened in November of 2011,  is the baby of three popular Portland peeps: Cathy Whims of Nostrana (which we went to and still nee to blog about!), Ryan Magarian co-founder of Portland's Aviation Gin and ChefStable's founder Kurt Huffman.

It's no surprise that this trio has created a successful restaurant and a delicious happy hour featuring salads and pizzas. Unfortunately the cocktails aren't discounted, but we ordered them anyway!

I went for the Corleone Original.


Made with seedless green grapes, Aviation New Western Dry Gin, Clear Creek Grappa di Sangiovese, freshly pressed lemon juice, simple syrup and a dash of Regan's No. 6 Orange Bitters, it was so tasty. We only had one cocktail each but I definitely would order this again!

Katie chose the Adagio Original made with vodka, Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur, Dolin Dry Vermouth, clover honey syrup, and Peychaud Bitters.


Katie enjoyed her drink, but it wasn't a hit with the rest of us. I think we all preferred the fruitiness of the Corleone.

With 5 awesome pizzas to pick from, we ordered the Margherita ($7) with tomato, mozzarella and basil and the Roasted Squash ($10) with escarole, spiced walnuts, mozzarella, and montasio, an Italian cheese made from cow's milk.


If you're looking for something simple and satisfying you can't go wrong with a classic margherita pizza, but the roasted squash offered a more unique combination of flavors. We definitely want to return to try the cauliflower pizza and reviews suggested that the Nostrana ($6) salad of radicchio, parmigiano, rosemary-sage croutons, and caesar style dressing is pretty great.