Ask A Bartender: What Does Portland Taste Like?

Friday, July 03, 2015

Kai Soderberg, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Norman Bates was a Psycho because he tried hard to be somebody he wasn't. Sound familiar, Portland?

In New Orleans it's the Sazerac, New York has the Martini. And of course in Portland it's the...Well, wait a minute. Portland might be the place for microbreweries and pinot noir but in the world of cocktails there is no single drink that has caught on to the point of expressing our regional identity. Sure, we have a lot of craft cocktail bars, but so do a lot of other cities. It seems that Portland is more a city known for refining other city’s drinks. The Driftwood Room does some great Manhattans. The Rum Club does some great Cuban cocktails. Still, these are all homages.

Homages have their place. I’m not belittling Portland for its lack of originality. Nor am I calling for a cocktail that somehow wraps the cultural identity of this city in a neat little package. If such a cocktail did exist, I imagine it would be a little too self-aware, i.e. weird tasting for the sake of being weird tasting, to actually enjoy.

If we look back in the City’s history we’ll find that Portland has been and continues to be a city of Pioneers (in the most generic sense of the word). We love it here. Well, we at least came here for a reason. There are other places that many of us hold dearer but, all in all, Portland is… pleasant. I can’t think of a better word for it. Where else can you watch a movie on the big screen without ads, eat pizza, drink beer and get out of there for less than twenty bucks, followed by a long walk home at night and -don’t think twice about it- go ahead and count the money in your wallet over and over again, loudly, the entire walk home. You’ll be fine. As to the intentions of those who leave you alone (is it benevolence or cowardice?) you're better off not thinking about it. The fact of the matter is you are here and you are safe. It’s just that there is nothing really remarkable about it.

All summer long the Laurelhurst Theater has been playing Hitchcock movies. For anybody who hasn’t seen Hitchcock on the big screen, I highly recommend the experience. I just watched Psycho the other day and, however eerie it is to watch Norman Bates frantically speaking and scurrying around the screen in an attempt to hide the truth, from his self as well as others, of who he actually is and what he actually is doing, the most unsettling part about the experience of watching Psycho on the big screen was the audience. They laughed in unison at the more outdated parts- the corny parts- refusing to accept the movie for what it is; a piece of art locked in a time and place that has been subject to decay yet, whose universal themes of alienation and inner conflict couldn’t ring truer today. If the trick to watching a movie-especially a thriller like Psycho- is to bring ones self to a state of suspended disbelief, to abandon ones self to the logic of the film, it was lost on these people. The audience seemed to be more self-satisfied for the fact that they were sufficiently quirky to take pleasure in such a movie, than to actually be taking pleasure in the movie.

So what does that say about cocktails? Well, Portland suffers from a cultural deficit. We are more in love with the idea of being quirky than we are with actually doing anything or creating anything of worth. To be fair, I don’t think Portland is unique in this. As long as social media exists to the extent that it does, so will the tendency to stop observing and start reporting. We make ourselves part of the experience because we are lost. We are not loyal to the process. As long as we can look and act like we are having fun, like we are enjoying the beautiful things that life has to offer, the things that other people laid out for us, we think that is enough. We cannot be satisfied doing something on our own. We have to be seen doing it. We are constantly searching for validation that we are somehow unique or that we have good taste. If you drink a glass of fine cognac out in the woods, did you still drink the glass of cognac? Not if you don’t have your smartphone with you, apparently.

The fact that Portland doesn’t have a regional cocktail that defines our terroir is due to the simple fact that we are too young of a city. With a few exceptions (none found in Portland) nobody is doing anything unique in the world of craft cocktails anymore. This is okay. There is, after all, only so much one can do that is better than what has already been done. If there is no room for improvement, perfect the old cocktails as much you can.

Once you perfect the cocktails, drink them. Don’t be seen drinking them. Just drink them. Try to muster enough genuine enthusiasm to do something on your own and actually enjoy it. Once you gain an appreciation for things, you’ll try to understand them. You’ll ask yourself: What makes these things that I like great, anyway? This genuine appreciation for what has been done is the first step toward creating something new and worthwhile.

A person that spends all of his energy being self-fascinated has very little energy leftover to actually do anything to back up the sentiment. Do you really want somebody like that touching your drink?

Related Slideshow: 10 Things That Have Never Been Said in Portland

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"Oh look, the MAX is on time."

HA!

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"They don't serve beer here."

Begin freak out.

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"Starbucks has the best coffee."

Starbucks is way too basic for Portlanders. We're more likely to be found in that coffee shop in a corner under the bridge that nobody knows about or has ever even heard of. That's what makes their coffee so good.