Looking to explore the Pacific Northwest's cultural capital? This is your indispensable guide to the very best restaurants, bars and hotels in the city.
Portland is a paradise for urban explorers. The city is a study in dualities, a rare place to experience busy life and natural wonders together in seamless harmony.
For the adventurers, there's Forest Park, a sprawling eight-mile biome of hiking trails and panoramic mountain views. Back in town, you'll find beloved institution, Powell's City of Books, the largest bookshop in North America, the newly renovated Portland Art Museum and a substantial network of daily farmers markets, an endless array of coffee shops, record stores, vintage shopping malls and other totems of effortless Portland cool.
Once you've hiked, shopped and taken in a bit of culture, the city's renowned bar and restaurant scene beckons. Let this be your curated guide.
Around the world in one city
The most exciting new restaurant of the decade in Portland is Kann, chef Gregory Gourdet's ode to the cuisine of Haiti. Built around live-fire cooking in an airy open kitchen, the dining room is tropical opulence, with lush languid plants and pendant lighting modelled after traditional Haitian market baskets.
The menu changes frequently, but mainstays such as the signature warm plantain brioche with epis butter, griyo spiced pork with Haitian pikliz and ribeye steak rubbed with coffee and spices should grace your table. The standout dish is seemingly the most simple: Gourdet's rendition of diri ak sos pwa – jasmine rice with red kidney bean sauce. It's his mother's recipe, deeply spiced with a velvet-like texture.
Kann's substantial alcohol-free cocktail offering is given the same gravitas as the wine and beer lists
Portland is also a nexus of great Thai food. The city's undisputed king of Thai cuisine is Akkapong 'Earl' Ninsom, a Bangkok-born chef and restaurateur whose restaurants are the gold standard in the region. He's at the height of his powers at Langbaan, where the refined tasting menu fuses Oregon seasonal ingredients with Thai flavours. Think Dungeness crab in a wildly spicy southern gaeng som curry and Oregon albacore tuna with watermelon in the style of pla haeng tang mo, a Thai royal court-style snack.
Acclaimed pastry chef Maya Okada Erickson's desserts are also a highlight. A dish of jasmine-infused macarons with vanilla mochi and lychee is a welcome cooling respite. One of the city's most difficult reservations, you'll need to be quick to snag a table.
Langbaan is derived from the Thai word for 'back of the house'
For some of Portland's best fine dining, Nodoguro is hard to beat. Chef Ryan Roadhouse's take on Japanese kaiseki presents serious artistry across 20 courses of vinegared, grilled and raw dishes. The experience can be avant garde – you might be presented with an individual package of tinned fish, opened to reveal fresh Albacore tuna with ponzu, or a dish of uni okayu rice porridge flecked with espresso powder.
Every design detail, from the ceramics and glassware to the soundtrack , have been given a rare level of intention and consideration. In 2026, the restaurant added a lunch menu – a more concise menu modelled in the style of an afternoon tea. It's ideal for travellers carefully managing their time in the city.
For a more convivial experience, there's Kachka. Dedicated to the cuisine of the former Soviet Republics, the restaurant is helmed by chef Bonnie Morales, a first-generation American daughter of immigrants from Belraus. Expect a parade of Russian zakuski drinking snacks – sprat over rye toast, house smoked fish and charcuterie – then skewers of halibut or kefir-marinated chicken grilled on the charcoal mangal. Ice cold vodka is a must – try one of the house infusions, like horseradish, bison grass or caraway.
Kachka Lavka, a deli and grocery upstairs from the main restaurant, sells charcuterie, cured fish and freshly baked Eastern European breads
No Portland food tour is complete without a trip to Lovely's Fifty Fifty – a hyper-seasonal, market-driven expression of Pacific Northwest cuisine with an ardent local following. Wholegrain sourdough is flexed into delicate, distinctive pizzas, upon which chef Sarah Minnick artfully arranges foraged mushrooms, edible flowers, house-made fennel sausage and rare varieties of potato and brassicas. The menu changes weekly, sometimes even daily.
Liquid refreshment
Portland's deep roots as a frontier drinking town collide artfully with the city's modern discerning cosmopolitanism – this city knows its booze.
There's no finer destination to start than Scotch Lodge, which began as a whisky den for the sizeable collection of proprietor Tommy Klus and has since blossomed into one of the most celebrated bars on the West Coast. Try a vintage negroni with Campari from the 1960s, a Penicillin made with serious whiskies from Auchentoshan and Laphroiag, the Only Fans Martini, a cheeky porn star martini riff made with with coconut-washed gin, sparkling wine and popping passionfruit pearls.
The food menu is no second thought – get the soft-shell crab sandwich on milk bread with white kimchi and hot mustard. Or shift into high gear with one of the bar's hundreds of rare whiskies from around the world.
Unlike other whisky bars where the rare spirits are religiously served neat or on the rocks, Klus uses his whiskies in inventive cocktails
A longtime fixture on the Portland drinking scene, Teardrop Lounge is always worth a stop. Set in the heart of Portland's Pearl District, from a perch at the briolette-shaped bar you'll enjoy some of the city's best people watching and take in a menu of original cocktails and classic reframes.
Teardrop is best known for combining whiskies, amaro vodkas and vermouths in-house to create a bespoke base for its cocktail programme. In practice this looks like the Shore Leave, a Flor de Jerez riff made with dark rum, a house-made blend of sherries and passionfruit, or the Flashpoint, an upmarket Manhattan built on the bar's own rye blend and Salers aperitif infused with strawberry and basil.
Seasonal Pacific Northwest produce keeps the menu fresh at this urban-chic watering hole
Another guiding light on the scene is Comala, a cocktail bar that's home to an impressive raft of spirits from across Mexico with a particularly informed focus on mezcal. The bar is dark and comfortable inside, as candles flicker and silent films from Mexico play softly along the west-facing wall. Come for the perfect mezcal negroni or a Mangonada, made with Mexican rum, yuzu sake and mango juice, and stay to explore the best collection of agave spirits in the city.
Sometimes you need to get above it all. Perched up on the side of Mount Tabor, a dormant volcano within city limits to the east of downtown, Bellwether is a neighborhood favourite housed inside a building constructed in 1910 (that's quite old for Portland). It's akin to a gastropub: smart cocktails, a concise tap list from Portland's famous brewery scene, a bar burger and fries and some snacky plates and salads to share. Your trip up the hill will be rewarded with a gorgeous view of the city, and a glimpse of Portland life at a favourite watering hole for discerning locals.
A place to rest your head
The new standard for a luxury hotel experience in the city is the Ritz-Carlton Portland, a soaring high-rise hotel in the city's west end. The spa and pool complex offers unrivalled views of the city (best enjoyed from the infinity pool), and the hotel's signature bar and restaurant, Bellpine, pours outstanding Oregon wines by the glass alongside international dishes from chef Jocelyn Chacón. Major attractions as well as shopping destinations including indie neo-department store Frances May and Stumptown Coffee are all within a short walk.
Portland is a city of neighborhoods, and up north in the Alberta Arts District, newcomer Cascada is fast becoming a favourite stay. Come for the hotel's sprawling spa complex, two floors of thermal baths, saunas and cold plunges and stay for hyper-modern rooms complete with kitchens and private balconies, ideal for an extended stay.
Vinous curiosity
Further afield, Oregon wine country beckons. Vineyards in the Willamette Valley start just 20 minutes south of the city and grape-minded visitors are spoilt for choice when it comes to places to drink and dine.
Antica Terra's A Very Nice Lunch experience does what it says on the tin, weaving wines from its own label alongside rare pours from Champagne, Burgundy and Piedmont and thoughtful local cuisine with Scandinavian influences from chef Kristen Murray.
The multi-course lunch experience at Antica Terra features six wines
Elsewhere in the valley, try a barrage of local and global wines at Hi-Fi Wine Bar in McMinnville, home to an outstanding stereo system and the oldest pool table in the state of Oregon.
Every Saturday, renowned DJs take over the turntables from HiFi Wine Bar's sommeliers and spin curated vinyl
Stay at Inn The Ground, an eco-lodge set on more than 450 acres of trails and regenerative farmland in Yamhill County and grab breakfast at Alchemist's Jam, a cult bakery whose popular preserves in flavours like marionberry, boysenberry, grapefruit and raspberry cardamom with rosehips make the perfect keepsake to slip back home in your luggage. Car hire to the valley can be coordinated from your hotel of choice back in town, or booked via ride share starting at around $70 each way.
Discover more fantastic bars, restaurants and hotels with 50 Best Discovery, and start planning your next adventure.
