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350 W Burnside St., 866-777-8932, danteslive.com/production.
Best Tables to Avoid: Customers bringing drinks to the spate of fun-sized outdoor tables hastily assembled post-smoking ban should remember how close they are to the street. On league-mandated vacay in 2011 following a cleat-first assault on Green Bay Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith, PDX native and Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh returned home only to crash a 1970 Chevy Coupe into a curb, a light post, and a tree—just missing the gaggle of 1 am Dante’s patrons by the narrowest of margins.
Best Past Lives: A space that strutted into the ‘80s as a gay disco metropolis and simmered through the ‘90s as a disused Chang’s Mongolian Grill outpost, Dante’s opened in 2000, drawing upon the defining motifs of each former incarnation for an aesthetic fired by louche dissipation and light (the gas-lit conflagrations that once charred fatty lamb have been repurposed as eternal flames brightening the nightlife).
Most Functional Feature: According to claims by some past employees, subterranean green rooms located just behind the back bar’s matinee stage host the only water main controls capable of shutting down hydrants along lower West Burnside.
Best Phantom Enclave: Along the eastern wall between the bar and the mainstage, you’d once find—and, depending upon whom you ask, may still for the right price—access to Dante’s fitful experiment with elevated VIP seating. Perhaps installed for the extended run of Top Gun musical pastiche Hot Gun, the fun-sized private suite’s limited sight lines weren’t quite right for theatrical production, and the vibe felt altogether wrong for harder fare.
Best Pizza and Beer Protocols: The back room tends to feature better pours, but only the main bar has draft beer and indoor access to the pizza window. Reviews are mixed about the quality of the slices ever since the adjacent Lonesome’s Pizza became Pizza Slut, but Portland’s famously scant late-night food options mean that patrons would likely starve without them (though cruelty-free advocates would best watch out for past fave Vegetarian Surprise, which hid a layer of bacon below two layers of cheese).