Backstage Bar

Warning: Your vision should be at least this blurry before attempting food consumption at any McMenamins.

Architecturally speaking, Backstage Bar is easily the most jaw-dropping space in the Portland bar scene. It's immense verticality easily stiff-arms the skyline views from rooftop lounges like Departure and Noble Rot, which are probably its closest competition. The incredibly high ceiling makes for a stunning first impression, and the massive tapestries that it affords the walls make closer inspection equally rewarding.

Just don't inspect closely enough to see anything that's on the menu.
You see, Backstage Bar, being so named for occupying the space behind the stage at the Bagdad Theater, is a part of the McMenamins restaurant chain that owns the aforementioned theater, along with roughly 287 other restaurants within a four block radius, and as such, it is held to the trappings of a menu that can be described no more eloquently than shitty.


While Backstage has largely escaped most of the hokey, forced nostalgia found in most McMenamins locations, its food has not escaped the freezers in which it was stored before being reheated and served. Don't get me wrong, if you're in the mood for shitty bar food like I frequently am, you could do worse than a McMenamins, and by extension, Backstage. There's some high-concept stuff like the Captain Neon burger and the Communication Breakdown burger that are only let down by the low quality ingredients of which they are composed.

Although the low-quality food is brilliantly juxtaposed by the high-quality chandelier.

The beer is also McMenamins standard, which is fairly restricting for the gentlemen, as the best beer available, the Ruby, is only acceptable for male consumption in a brief period between June 25th and August 9th. Even then, be prepared to have your driver's license returned to you with a crudely sharpied F in the gender category.

The only thing more emasculating than being seen sipping a fruity (literally, not like a slur from 1998) beverage might be accidentally ordering any food on the menu that doesn't end in "Burger" or "Pizza." Particularly despicable is the Meatball sub that only qualifies as such with the most literal interpretation of the title: There are balls, made of meat, and a delicious marinara sauce was subbed out for barbecue sauce.

Forgive the atrocious puns. Don't forgive the price. Also, for the love of whatever deity you affiliate yourself with, stay the fuck away from the fries. These are the fries of nightmare. As a child, I wept when anyone ordered them. I don't care how good fries sound. Don't order them. They're a soggy, overgreased mess that look like Cthulhu's pubic trimmings. Get the tater tots.

When approaching an evening at Backstage Bar, your best bet is probably to order up a pint and some tater tots and strike up a game of pool, relentlessly reminding yourself that the crappy food is worth hanging out in one of the city's coolest rooms. Should you be moved to hunger beyond what tater tots can quench, Hawthorne has a more than worthy selection mere blocks away.

5/10