Hopworks Urban Brewery

I can’t remember an instance where there was this much buzz surrounding the grand opening of a pub. Christian Ettinger, the brewmaster and owner, was pressing palms and showing off some contract-brew last July, promising HUB would be open, brewing and hopping (no pun intended) by fall. Delays aplenty followed, but pubs, restaurants and bars around town were HUB were pouring Hopworks brews several months ago.

Hopworks got themselves open on March 25th, and I sauntered in with NO SMOKING and Billy’s Dad on Sunday, around tea time, to check the place out. I’d heard stories of the insanity–5 deep at the bar, waiting an hour+ for food, etc, but we had great timing: we slid into a recently vacated booth next to the portholes right off the bat.

The space is really very unique. Ettinger’s father was the architect, and they have transformed the old Sunset Oil building into one of the more fetching brew pubs I’ve ever seen. Exposed blond wood, red, yellow and black make up the color scheme (the logo, paint job and menus are similarly designed), with polished cement floors. There are bike frames closing in the top of the bar area, making the space seem cozier and not as cavernous as it is. There’s seating and pinball on a second level, and a restaurant that takes advantage of large windows in the southwest corner. There are porthole windows in one area, and one really cool banquette stuffed into a small room that may or may not have served any previous purposes.

We sat at a booth underneath one of the porthole windows, and commenced to drinking.

I had previously tried a few of the HUB brews at other pubs, but I was surprised to See 10, yes 10 in house beers, practically one from every style. Thankfully, you can get a tasting tray of 8 2 oz pours for a really moderate $6.50. Our Server slipped all three of us samplers that included the other two beers on the tray as well, making our samplers complete. What a doll she was. I was impressed with their Trippel ‘El Diablo’, the Bourbon Barrel Aged IPA, the Lager (which they offer mixed with Lemonade, which I think will be significantly better than the Brass Monkeys (the Easy-E recipe) of my youth. I was very taken with the Survival Seven Grain Stout, which I think is one of the best American Stouts I can recall drinking.

We did not like the Crosstown Pale Ale. We hemmed and hawed about how to best describe the odor of this beer, and we settled on Salon Perm. We didn’t dig the Olde Ale Deluxe Organic Ale (DOA) either, but our descriptions weren’t as funny. I didn’t like the Doppelbock, but NO SMOKING liked it alright. The other beer varieties passed relatively un-noticed.

The sad part was we got all this tasting and talking done before our food showed up. I guess it was good we were half drunk when our slices of pizza, pretzels and salads showed up, because sober, I doubt I would have bothered digging in.

Like other huge pubs in town, I wonder if their kitchens are large enough. HUB has a Domino’s thing going, where their pizza dough is also their pretzels (read: not in any way resembling pretzels) is also their cheese sticks is also their croutons. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to pass it off as a Churro. NO SMOKING got a slice of cheese, I got a slice of the ‘veggie selection of the day’, which was a slice of cheese, with some peppers and onions put on top, sprinkled with more cheese and shoved under a salamander for a minute. Salads were fine, but that isn’t saying much. I’m glad we got Happy Hour prices as well; paying much more for what we got would have made me angry. I respect their Organic mission, but they still have to make it, y’know, respectable.

I wasn’t impressed with the food and some of the beer wasn’t all that good. They had only been open 5 days, so a certain amount of slack is due to them. But, like my ill fated trip to Bridgeport after their remodel, I wonder if the facility is just too damn big for its britches. The servers were overloaded, and I saw the wrong food going to the wrong places more than once (not to us, but I’m the perceptive diner). Servers don’t pour beer, and there are bottlenecks of people that make bussing food out of the kitchen a traffic nightmare. They’ve made a lot of different zones and i can’t imagine a server’s life is easy. The kitchen is probably outmatched, but I hope that these are simply jitters and early kinks that will get worked out. I’ll have to go back and drink my dinner for a while.

Hopworks Urban Brewery
2944 SE Powell Blvd
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 232-HOPS (4677)

P.S. The Men’s bathrooms are kinda awesome. I can sum it up in five words: Banana Seats for the drunk lean. I spotted this post on
London Met Blogs, and I thought I’d remind we PDXers how lucky we are with bathrooms.

“Also, there was no vomit anywhere and the toilets actually flush, quite a contrast to most commercial pubs in London on a Saturday night.”