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Given most passersby are flying at 40 mph, it takes some time for a new bar to build a crowd in Foster-Powell. At least that's the word at Bar Maven (6219 SE Foster Road, 384-2079, barmaven-pdx.com), which has been open 18 months but only recently rounded into one of the neighborhood's best bars. Maven's sleek black exterior looks a little bro-y, but the inside is a faded rainbow of reclaimed wood to deaden speakers playing "Tighten Up" with all the clarity of a subwoofer rattling from the trunk of an '87 Cutty Supreme. On a recent Saturday, the crowd was mostly late 20-somethings, drawn more to an eccentric tap list of pineapple cider and Barley Brown's hefeweizen than the newfangled digital shuffleboard table or cocktails ($6.50 gets you cucumber and Bombay, $7 buys a cocktail with brandy and a grove of pulpy, muddled citrus). Maven's pubby food menu has a Mediterranean twist, including a gyro burger ($11) that's a delightfully sloppy mess of beef, bacon and sliced gyro meat. Coincidentally, just down the street there's another new FoPo bar doing Middle Eastern food. That's the newer, less-polished and so-far empty FoPo Tavern (5902 SE Foster Road, 771-2377). FoPo also has burgers and gyros, cooked by the solo bartender after she blends a ginger ale stand-in from 7 Up, Coke and bitters. It's easier to hear the music—Ed Sheeran, the Weeknd—and the house-fried potato chips are tasty, but for now, the party's down at Maven.
WWeek 2015