Holman’s Is a Fine Place to Enjoy Whiskey and a Burger at Eight in the Morning

To fully understand Holman’s, one must consider its split personalities.

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By Pete Cottell

15 SE 28th Ave., 503-231-1093, holmanspdx.com. 8 am-2:30 am daily. Happy hour 4-7 pm daily, 10 pm-midnight Sunday-Thursday: $1 off wells and drafts, food specials.

Established: 1933

To fully understand Holman's, one must consider its split personalities. There's a confounding restaurant side, which functions as a bizarro-world Applebee's where the neighborhood's endangered hipster community noshes on fried food among rolling office chairs, mismatched wall hangings and a projection screen that shows sports and reruns of Law & Order: SVU. Then there's the bar side, a dark corridor of lacquered wood that employees of nearby establishments sneak off to for the $5 Olympia and well whiskey special. You could cough up $6 for a draft of Gilgamesh or Terminal Gravity, but the taps rotate slowly and taste their age. A large portion of the back patio has been engulfed in a giant puddle for who knows how long, but no one minds stepping around it while seeking a place to chain-smoke and complain about co-workers. It's a fine place to enjoy some whiskey and a '57 Burger (topped with a zesty pepper, onion and honey sauce; $10.95) at 8 am, and it's made finer by the fact that no one will judge you for doing so.

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