"Any Successful Pub Has to Have a Bladed Weapon, a Firearm, and Taxidermy"

Ten years ago, Ben Love and Van Havig launched their production brewery with an almost throwaway taproom they named, in the puckish manner characteristic of the brewery, the Champagne Lounge. It was a spartan affair and if memory serves, one of them expressed dim hops that it would be much of a hang. They located the brewery in an industrial tract near a tangle of railroad tracks in Southeast Portland—not a noted drinking district. Remarkably, people found the pub, which has expanded within the building and without. They have a cadre of passionate regulars both owners speak about like friends.

It encouraged them to open a second location in the midst of the pandemic on the border between North Tabor and Montavilla on 70th and Glisan. It, too, was a taproom, though this time ringed by permanent pods serving Ethiopian, sushi, and Mexican food—with a Pie Spot for dessert. Following established protocol, they called it the Robot Room. Last week, they quietly opened their third outpost, this one in the heart of vegan Portland at 43rd and Hawthorne. This time they created a proper pub, one with a kitchen and a menu. Step by step, they have moved from production brewery to brewpub, the opposite direction most Portland breweries travel.

A Gigantic Menu

When the co-owners convened a few media folks last week to see the new place and try out some of the food, I asked how they were feeling about owning and being responsible for a kitchen, and their answers were amusing:

Ben: “Excited!”

Van: “Terrified!”

Gigantic Brewpub and Portrait Room
4343 SE Hawthorne
Hours: Mon-Fri: 3p - 9p
Sat-Sun: Noon - 9p
Website

In Portland, the easiest brewpub menu involves burgers and sandwiches or maybe pizza. You can hardly go wrong there. That would not be the Gigantic approach, though. This is a brewery that always does things a little differently—like sticking with 500 ml refillable bottles when almost every other brewery has shifted to cans. The big idea for the menu here was to draw on their experiences traveling the world for beer fests and collaborations—eating along the way, as brewers do, in bars and greasy spoons.

They had a brilliant idea: why not have regular bar food, but the stuff they eat at bars in other countries? The two signature dishes are: a roast pork sandwich served in Copenhagen called a flaeskasteg (pronounced, I think, floss-ka-stay), and 2) karaage, or Japanese fried chicken (also available in tofu). The flaeskasteg blends pork and pickled cabbage, but is basically a pork sandwich (though one of them said, obscurely, “it’s like a Thanksgiving sandwich!”), and the fried chicken and tofu are, well, fried chicken and tofu. They aren’t a crazy departure into the unknown, so you get a little travel along with pretty familiar food. The chicken is really good, too (as judged by my admittedly unschooled culinary palate), which seems to include some herbal preparation that makes the batter delish. They also made sure to include plenty of vegan and vegetarian options, which is a nice acknowledgement of the neighborhood’s tastes.

Ben was the champion of the menu, developing it with help from chef Justin Wills, who manned the kitchen when they both worked at Pelican. Wills has gone on to open Restaurant Beck in Depoe Bay and Sorella in Newport, and was a helpful wing man for Ben, who enjoys making good food. “It was just Justin and I cooking it up at our house,” he said. They test-drove some of the menu at their 10th anniversary party earlier this year and the dishes seemed to poll well. “My goal,” Ben said boldly, “is that we’ll be known for our food.” I don’t know that a brewery like Gigantic will ever be known first for food, but this place has the potential to find an audience tired of burgers. (Though fear not, burger-lovers, they do have one if that’s your mood.) And I mean that chicken is really good.

Cask Ale + Portrait Room

Gigantic has always done a bit of cask ale, serving it at the Champagne Lounge on Fridays. But with the new place, they’ve installed two engines and are planning to have at least one handle pouring all the time. They will join a growing and completely unexpected cadre of cask ale purveyors, including Away Days, Upright, and Steeplejack. If you’re looking for a bit of a cask crawl, Away Days -> Foreland Study -> Gigantic makes a decent calorie-burning hike. They are going to rotate through beers constantly, so you’ll just have to stop in and see what they have. For the media preview, they were serving LP Stout, which was ideal for cask. I went on Saturday and they had a strong IPA on—it showcased the difference this preparation makes on a beer by softening the palate. Honestly, with IPAs headed in a soft direction now, it worked better than I expected.

At the moment, the draft list is a bit meager. The brewery is still waiting on a permit from the city to install their draft lines, so just four beers in addition to the cask are pouring through jockey boxes. Eventually (soon?), they’ll have a full lineup. Another element that will come online in coming weeks is the Portrait Room, a small space down the hall that will get the olde pubby look, with wainscoting and dark wood—something like a classic snug. The inspiration for the theme came from Enjoy House, a Tokyo club where they found a kitschy painting of the bartender hanging on the wall—behind the same bartender serving them drinks. It will take some time, but expect to see employees’ faces peering down at you will their living inspirations hand you beer.

Despite their hesitation over launching a kitchen, Ben and Van both have a lot of experiences in bars and pubs. Good bars are built from the accumulation of habits, inside jokes, and personalities of the staff and regulars. Owners can plant seeds and hope they flourish, but good pubs are born slowly. A winking acknowledgement is the axiom that has guided their first two locations: “Any successful pub has to have a bladed weapon, a firearm, and taxidermy." At the Champagne Lounge, you’ll find an ax, a Winchester rifle (nod to Shaun of the Dead) and a javelina head. The Robot Room has a stuffed duck, a hatchet, and Han Solo’s blaster pistol. To date, the only member of the triad acquired for the new place is a set of kitanas displayed behind the taps. (Obvious takeaway: be polite to the bartender.) There’s talk of finding a taxidermied fish, a nod to the building’s previous incarnation as a fish house.

I wanted to see how the place felt with people inside, and Sally and I returned during visiting hours. As I sipped my cask IPA, I noticed a couple enter, see people they knew, and chat them up. Neighborhood folk, I guessed. That’s a good sign that the seeds are starting to sprout. Pop in and have a look. And try the fried chicken.