Porterhouse

No Longer In Business

Outside of craft beer circles, this place might or might not have opened with a burst of anticipation, but, within the craft beer world, the hype was indeed strong. Thankfully, it totally lives up to it. We stopped in and bellied up to the bar on a quiet Sunday afternoon and pretty much immediately started having fun. The service is welcoming and all of them actually project some charm. You go lots of places where the service is nice, but the places where the people are actually full-on fun to talk to are comparably less common, and this is definitely one of them. There are booths and tables laid out welcomingly, and a decent-sized display kitchen off to the right. This place has been many different restaurants and bistros through the years, always with that display kitchen. So, whether Porterhouse wanted it set up that way might be debatable, but they’re making the most of it. The bar area is off to one side, with an attractive wooden barback, medium-sized line of stools, and a couple small flat screens showing the game. By day, the whole place is well-lit, thanks to a solid wall of floor to ceiling windows. The tap lineup is actually pretty awesome. Great locals and a few from outside the region. They even have a wall where next-up handles are mounted, rather than printing that info out on every taplist (nice touch). Beers tend to hit the bar all in pint glasses, unfortunately chilled, but, well, you can’t have everything. The staff seemed to know the beers, and they were poured well, so I’ll live with a shaker glass while I am here. The food actually adds to the proceedings--there’s a good happy hour lineup when that applies, but there’s always a big list of burgers, sandwiches, and sides. They even offer a few veggie options with some genuine thought behind them. The sandwiches we checked out were a little greasy and very delicious. The onion rings weren’t bad, and the bacon-topped mac and cheese shells were fantastic. All served in plastic baskets on parchment paper. Old school. You feel like you’ve been coming here for a while, and will keep coming here for a while, even after one visit. Can’t wait to hit this spot up again.

Very accomodating for single diners, the Porterhouse offers a small yet varied menu of apps and entrees to go with a really unique selection of rotating taps and bottles. Their bar is connected to a small outdoor streetside patio and the restaurant itself is fairly smallish yet comfortable. Bar seating is comfortable and service is very attentive, their servers being very beer smart. Food is good and the daily specials are generally seasonal and fresh. Hot wings come perfectly done if not a bit overpriced, the salmon burger is perfectly done and shoestring fries are a bit greasy yet tasty. The halibut and chips are above average, again like the fries being a little soggy. Tap handles rotate constantly and feature an excellent selection of local and west coast offerings.

Love this place. Fantastic selection of draft beers, focusing on west coast ales. Always rotating. Frequently they have something I’ve never had before. Love the food, too. Not your typical pub grub, it’s better. I wish the bar was bigger, but that’s not really a complaint.

Great beer, great food, great people, great music, brewer’s nights, and always a cask beer on tap.