The Best Cocktail Bars in Portland, by the Record
The best cocktail bars in Portland, by the professional record: Esquire, Portland Monthly, and Spirited Awards have all weighed in, and their honors are what rank this list. Too Soon comes out on top.
Rum Club and Clyde Common hold the next two places. Difford's Guide and Portland Monthly show up on more of this list than any other guide.
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- Esquire The Best Bars in America
- Portland Monthly The Best Bars in Portland
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
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The horseshoe bar juts into a low-ceilinged room lit by fairy lights, which tells you most of what you need to know before the first drink arrives. This is a cocktail bar with serious craft credentials and a named spot on Difford's Guide, but it wears that lightly. Off-duty bartenders from around Portland fill the stools, which is either the best endorsement or a sign you'll have to work harder to get the bartender's attention.
- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- Portland Monthly The Best Bars in Portland
- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
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Rank 3. Clyde Common
Cocktail Bar
The zinc-topped bar inside the Ace Hotel is where Jeffrey Morgenthaler built his reputation, and Portland's cocktail crowd hasn't forgotten it. Clyde Common is technically a big, open dining hall, but the bar runs the show here, with vintage stools filling up fast under a double-height ceiling loud with conversation. The food is genuinely good, but nobody's coming just for dinner.
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Rank 4. Hale Pele
Tiki Cocktail Bar
A small bridge over a little moat takes you from a residential stretch of Northeast Broadway into what is, with commitment, a full tiki immersion. Woven palm walls, bamboo rafters, illuminated pufferfish, and three hand-carved tiki gods loom over the sunken bar while intermittent thunder rumbles and wisps of volcano smoke drift through. The rum-based cocktails are the actual point of the exercise, and nobody here seems to mind.
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Rank 4. Palomar
Cuban-Inspired Cocktail Bar
- Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar
- Portland Monthly The Best Bars in Portland
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Rank 7. Kask bar
Cocktail Bar
From the street it reads like a shop, and inside it's barely bigger than one, with around thirty seats tucked under warm light and a hefty oak bar. Kask is a cocktail bar with a leather-bound list organized by spirit, leaning hard on amaro, sherry, and vermouth. The drinks skew classical without being stiff about it. Small rooms either feel intimate or claustrophobic, and this one lands on the right side.