As a tech city, Portland often feels like a lifestyle destination for wayward engineers. Though nearly 10 percent of Portland works in tech, Stumptown’s business scene can sometimes seem to be in hiding, operating as a comfortable “third place” between the FAANG capitals to the north and the south. Portland is a tree-filled place of sometimes startling natural beauty, resting in the shadow of Mount Hood, Oregon’s tallest mountain, and at the intersection of two rivers.
Much of Portland’s tech industry action is tucked into home offices and coworking spaces, or beneath a canopy of trees in the so-called Silicon Forest sprawling out to the west-side suburbs of Beaverton, Hillsboro, and Aloha. This is where Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang went to high school, and it’s also where he planted an engineering outpost for Nvidia. It’s likewise where a sizable chunk of America’s semiconductor and microchip industry has put down roots, including wings for Intel and Microsoft.
This low profile can make Portland a chill place to do business. Whatever the occasional national headlines, the city remains a mostly relaxed mecca for food and beer and music, and for always dressing like you’re about to go on a hike. It is also a nerd’s paradise for hacker spaces and tech ephemera. Here’s where to stay, and where to go.
Where to Stay in Portland
Courtesy of Jupiter NEXT
Don’t just plop yourself down in a sleepy downtown hotel—a rookie Portland move many a visiting executive or engineer has come to regret. Portland is most workable where people actually live, amid dense business districts filled with cafés and restaurants. That’s also where you’ll find many of the coworking spaces and meeting resources that make doing business here easier, and the saunas and cold plunge tubs that make it pleasant.
Portland’s downtown core hugs the west side of the Willamette River that bisects the city. But WIRED recommends finding a hotel on the amenity-packed central east side across the river from downtown, or in the more residential districts just outside of downtown on the west side.
East Side Hotels
Courtesy of Jupiter NEXT
900 E Burnside St., (503) 230-9200
The Jupiter NEXT hotel is the statement piece of Portland’s eastside LoBu neighborhood just across the river from downtown, a modernist six-story sculpture of a building with a balcony, bamboo garden, and bookable meeting rooms for large or small groups. Corporate discounts and packages are available for frequent business travelers, which include complimentary drink tickets at Hey Love, a popular ground-floor cocktail bar that’s a bit like a tropical fern bar from the ’70s.
100 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., (971) 346-2992
Not far from Jupiter NEXT is the only North American location of Icelandic hostel KEX, a 28-room boutique with private rooms and event spaces. For business travelers, KEX gets a good-neighbor discount at startup-centric coworking space CENTRL across the street, where you can book a meeting space or coworking berth. The downstairs lounge, Pacific Standard, offers oysters on the half shell and cocktails from internationally renowned bartender Jeffrey Morganthaler.
Near Jupiter and KEX: The immediate neighborhood includes music venue Nova, patio bar Rontoms, excellent pizza and hoagies at Dimo’s Apizza, and terrific coffee from Roseline Coffee. Visitors can usually walk in for foie gras dumplings and steam burgers (which sound like a Simpsons joke and taste like heaven) at Canard, the wine-filled casual sister restaurant of James Beard Award-winning French prix-fixe spot Le Pigeon next door. High-rise luxury sauna and cold plunge spa Knot Springs, offering river views from hot or cold water, sits near KEX.
West-Side Hotels
Courtesy of Sentinel
614 SW 11th Ave., (503) 224-3400
The best advice around Southwest Portland’s downtown core is to stay above 9th Avenue, in the residential and restaurant-packed West End. Boutique hotel The Sentinel is within easy reach of the interstate, with corporate meeting spaces available and a classic seafood spot and steakhouse, Jake’s Grill, on the bottom floor, along with a tasting room for one of the country’s premier wineries, Domaine Serene.
Nearby: One of the most extravagant views of the city can be found at Bellpine, the top-floor bar and restaurant at the nearby Ritz-Carlton, whose first-floor food hall, Flock, offers excellent birria tacos and a surprisingly well-stocked wine cellar. Nearby Multnomah Whiskey Library offers one of the largest and most renowned whiskey cellars in the country.
1150 NW 9th Ave., (503) 220-1339
For longer stays, local execs tell us a favored location is the Marriott’s Residence Inn at the edge of Portland’s tony Pearl District just north of downtown, within easy reach of light rail to the airport—with small kitchenettes for leftovers or snacks, and an onsite gym and pool. This is a place to stay, and stay fit, while working away from home.
Nearby: A location of drop-in-friendly coworking space CENTRL is a brisk 14-minute walk away. Nearby Jamison square is a dense corner of upscale eateries and bars. The most acclaimed food in the neighborhood comes from nationally recognized Mexican chef Angel Medina, at prix-fixe Republica (reservations recommended) and its nearby a la carte cousin, Lilia Comedor.
Where to Work
Courtesy of CENTRL
329 NE Couch St., plus three more locations
CENTRL is a midsize West Coast chain of coworking spaces with four locations in Portland that offers flexible and low-friction arrangements for drop-in business travelers. This includes $40-per-day open-format day passes and private collaborative day offices ranging from $100 to $300 a day. Relatively low-frills meeting rooms are also rentable by the hour.
830 NE Holladay St.
WeWork is back from the brink these days, and Portland has one of the more modern locations, with flexible day work options and a pleasant enclosed patio—plus the requisite craft beer taps and table tennis. If your company has a WeWork membership, this is where you’ll be—amid high rises overlooking Portland’s convention district.
500 SW 116th Ave.
This luxe coworking space at the edge of Portland’s western suburbs is a perfectly located way station for those doing business in the chip-filled Silicon Forest west of Portland. Day passes and meeting rooms are available, in a sleek and high-ceilinged space attuned to corporate clients, with an attached health club.
Where to Get Coffee
Portland was the earliest hotbed for third-wave craft coffee in America, and some of the best-regarded beans in the world come here to be roasted. Here are the spots that best let you mix excellent brew with Wi-Fi and a power outlet.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
321 NE Davis St. and other locations
Roseline is a midsize roastery with a few locations around Portland that offers perhaps the best mix of work-friendly spaces and truly excellent coffee—ranging from forward-thinking light roast drip coffee to balanced espresso shots.
823 NW 23rd Ave.
Looking for a café where you’re likely to find Portland tech intelligentsia? This sophisticated multi-roaster hall of espresso is your spot, with shots from far-flung roasters on offer. You’ll need to show up early to get a prime table.
1229 SW 10th Ave.
In Downtown Portland’s museum blocks, Behind the Museum Café is a lovely respite, opened by owner Tomoe Horibuchi with a focus on small Japanese snacks, excellent tea, and coffee from local roaster Extracto. Wi-Fi is free, and the tucked-away café often has seats (and outlets) available.
2181 NW Nicolai St.
Electrica is a brick-walled multi-roaster café that offers excellent tea, coffee roasted in Japan or Thailand, espresso tonic drinks, and Mexican-style coffee—all at the edge of an electric fixture store.
Where to Eat
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Toya, for Some of the Country’s Best Ramen
803 SE Stark St.
I have eaten at a lot of ramen spots, from New York to Los Angeles to Tokyo. Few in this country are on Toya’s level, from its classic shoyu broth to wild modern inventions like a brothless ramen carbonara with hand-massaged noodles. The menu is equally schooled in sake and shochu highballs.
EEM, for Texas Brisket and Thai Spice
3808 N Williams Ave.
Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom founded multiple Thai restaurants in Portland that rank among the best in the country, including Beard-awarded prix-fixe Royal Thai restaurant Langbaan. None are as distinctive as EEM—a mix of tiki cocktail, slow-smoked Texas barbecue, and Thai curry that must be tasted to believe. You will order the white curry with brisket burnt ends. And you will talk about it to your friends for years.
Kachka, for Horseradish Vodka and Cherry Dumplings
960 SE 11th Ave.
There’s no restaurant quite like Kachka—a vodka and dumpling-filled hall devoted to the food of the former Soviet world. Ask for the Ruskie Zakuski, an endless parade of Slavic treats including Kachka’s iconic bright pink “herring under a fur coat” salad. Then order dumplings, from savory pelmeni to sour cherry vareniki, fine caviar with butter and blini, and flutes of infused vodka distilled by the restaurant. Prefer seafood? Try Kachka’s newly opened Fabrika spinoff at 2117 NE Oregon St.
Courtesy of Ox
Ox, for Argentine Steaks and Northwest Veggies
2225 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.
Portland has multiple excellent classic steakhouses, notably downtown’s El Gaucho and the 80-year-old Ringside Steakhouse. Argentine-inflected Ox is special, from its famous smoked bone-marrow clam chowder to the delicate chimichurri atop its prime cuts of beef. But Ox’s true secret weapon is its facility with the farm-fresh vegetables that have made Portland dining famous, whether flash-fried cauliflower offset by sweet golden raisin or heirloom carrots dappled with truffle-salted pistachio. It’s the rare steakhouse where I’d bring a vegetarian.
Where to Drink
Courtesy of Teardrop Lounge
1015 NW Everett St.
The traditional haunt of Portland’s startup tech industry, the Pearl District’s Teardrop Lounge is a national landmark amid modern cocktail aficionados—Portland’s equivalent to New York’s Death & Co. You can reserve the Crybaby room next door, or just walk in to the horseshoe bar for apricot-chili cocktails or delicately balanced Manhattans infused with strawberry and basil. (For a smaller, more casual but equally accomplished cocktail haunt rightfully beloved by the city’s bartenders, try Rum Club at 720 SE Sandy Blvd.)
1124 SW Alder St.
For some, only the impossible will do. In a hidden upstairs hall with the vibes that recall the secret library of a big game hunter, Multnomah Whiskey Library holds more than 1,500 liquor bottles that include some of the rarest whiskeys in existence—aspirational bottles some know only as rumor. The Library can be notoriously hard to get into. But there’s a trick: Reserve ahead, with a two-hour, $25-per person hall pass that comes with champagne and valet service. (Scotch lovers can avail themselves instead of the Scotch Lodge, at 215 SE 9th Ave. Reserve ahead.)
Hale Pele, for Flaming Cocktails Amid Waterfalls
2733 NE Broadway St.
You already know in your heart if you’re a tiki person—if you have a pulse that quickens to the words “Smith and Cross” and the sounds of indoor weather. If this is you, Hale Pele is one of the best of its kind anywhere, stewarded by tiki legend Martin Cate of San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove. Hale is a more intimate affair than Cate’s flagship. For this, it might even be better—but best for small groups.
4057 N Mississippi Ave.
There is a truly Portland style of food-filled pub, one you can find in most of the city’s neighborhoods: a classic hardwood-burnished place with low orange light, oddly elegant cocktails, a carefully chosen beer list, a few off-track glasses of wine, and much better food than you’d expect. Maybe the most refined is North Portland’s Interurban, a bastion of low-key excellence. Visit in good spirits. Enjoy the patio. (For a lower-key, punkier experience—with a terrific beer and cocktails and perhaps the city’s best smash burgers—pop up the street to Tulip Shop Tavern at 825 N. Killingsworth St.)
Eat, Drink, and Play in the Silicon Forest
Portland-area’s Silicon Forest arguably sprouted in the mid-20th century with early electronics companies such as Tektronix, but the term was coined amid a 1980s boom in Japanese investment. Portland’s western suburbs are now a hub for engineering talent and account for more than a tenth of the national semiconductor industry, boasting spokes of Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Here’s where to eat and play when visiting west of Portland.
2088 NE Stucki Ave., Hillsboro
Hillsboro is the region’s home for Indian dining, and there are always spirited arguments about which new hole-in-the-wall is the best in the area. But for decades, Chennai Masala has been Hillsboro’s default answer for southern Indian food—a well-appointed room you want to spend time in and which can host large groups. Lunchtime is the buffet, but dinner is better, including some of the region’s best crispy dosas, lentil crepes stuffed with spiced potato filling.
Excellent casual Indian restaurants: Some of the best biryani in the region can be found at an unassuming strip mall restaurant called Hyderabad Hub (18033 NE Evergreen Pkwy, Hillsboro). Apna Chat Bhavan (1815 NW 169th Place, Hillsboro) is a casual thali spot adjoined to a grocery store, with excellent Southern Indian specialties in particular.
Hansik, for Korean Grilled Meats
8225 SW Apple Way, Suite 102
Beaverton is a short hop from the largest semiconductor and chip plants of Hillsboro. It’s also the hotbed for Korean food in the region. Just at Beaverton’s border with Portland, Hansik is a new and buzzy entry with plenty of space for larger groups, and a reputation for excellent grilled meats—including a prime rib ssam set with a variety of greens to wrap up the tender meat, and sizzling stone griddle bibimbap, plus indulgent tteokbokki rice cake appetizers and hearty, spicy yuk gae jang beef soup.
More excellent Korean food: For terrific Korean fried chicken and late-night snacks and drinks, stop in at 1st Street Pocha (12590 SW 1st St., Beaverton). Comfortingly homestyle Korean soups and dumplings, plus seasonal noodle dishes, are tucked in an upstairs nook in the back of G-Mart supermarket at Always Spring (3975 SW 114th Ave., Beaverton). Old-school Korean fare with excellent seafood pancakes, spicy tofu stews, and endless banchan can be had at Nak Won (4600 SW Watson Ave., Beaverton).
4500 SW Watson Ave., Beaverton
In a capacious former bank building with vaulted ceilings, find more local beer than some states even brew. Loyal Legion offers cocktails, pub food, and 99 taps of Oregon beer—from lager cleaner than spring water to the hypiest hazy and silly mango lime sour.
1458 NE 25th Ave., Hillsboro
Near the largest tech plants of Hillsboro sits an unlikely wonder: quite plausibly the world’s second biggest arcade. Routinely named the universe’s best place to play pinball, Next Level is a 650-game hall of blinking lights and plungers, not to mention the home to a 25,000-item museum of cultural ephemera ranging from lunch boxes to action figures. It is the endless house that nerd built.
If You Have More Time in Town
Courtesy of Portland Japanese Garden
Walk Portland’s Serene Ode to Japan
Portland Japanese Garden, 611 SW Kingston Ave.
With spaces designed by revered architect Kengo Kuma, the Portland Japanese Garden is widely regarded as the purest example of its form outside Japan—a serene space of cultivated wabi-sabi and serenity that was first dedicated 60 years ago. Little like it exists in this hemisphere.
Start at Breakside Brewery, 1570 NW 22nd Ave.
Portland doesn’t have a signature cuisine or dish, like gumbo in New Orleans. What it does have is beer. Portland is one of the oldest and densest craft beer scenes in America, and maybe the best. Northwest Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood offers a great walking tour. Begin at Breakside Brewery, possibly the most award-winning brewery in the state, and drink literally anything: IPA, lager, stout, or sour. A block away, at Ruse Brewing (1505 NW 21st Ave.), delight in Detroit-style pizza and some of the state’s best IPAs and lagers. A 10-minute walk takes you to Brujos Brewing (2377 NW Wilson St.), a metal-themed brewery known nationwide for super-saturated hazy IPAs and big-bodied stouts.
On the East Side: Among the myriad breweries in the inner east side, the two that most reward visits aren’t far from each other. Stop by the spacious patio of Wayfinder Beer (304 SE 2nd Ave.) for the city’s best selection of lagers. Pair terrifically balanced IPAs with truly excellent pub grub at Grand Fir Brewing (1403 SE Stark St.)
Courtesy of Powell’s Books
Find Rare Books and Old Typewriters
Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St.
In a city with few traditional visitor attractions, one of the most common suggestions is that you should go to a bookstore. Powell’s City of Books, a four-story bookstore at the edge of Portland’s downtown that takes up an entire city block, is an impressive monument to books—often the first thing a visitor to Portland will remember when they think of the city. Ogle the estimable rare book room and the museum of vintage typewriters.
The author is a WIRED staffer who has written about culture, food, tech, and business for two decades and is living proof that some Portlanders actually grew up here. He has been present for the filming of at least two episodes of Portlandia.
