Summer 2014, by Karen Brooks, Foodie.com
From a den of dark shadows and dripping candles comes exacting cocktails, turntable spins, and the spicy surprise of Burmese noodles, courtesy of budding bar star Kyle Webster and his James Beard-winning wife, chef Naomi Pomeroy. Order whatever you like, but the eight nightly specials are the show, each formulated to the drop and accompanied by a historic footnote.
Text and Photography by Karen Brooks
While everyone crowds into Beast following chef Naomi Pomeroy’s James Beard win, turn 180 degrees and bolt across the street for Expatriate’s yellow, curried Burmese coconut noodles, a cousin to Thai khao soi, but souped up here with fried duck confit, a ramen egg, and tamarind. Wave across the street to Pomeroy: it’s her recipe. 5424 NE 30th Ave
Julian Smith, Special for USA TODAY
At first glance, this 30-seat place looks like one more dark, candlelit bar with two turntables and thrift-store decoration. But Expatriate goes well beyond its six nightly cocktails, as creative and expertly mixed as they are. Local celeb chef Naomi Pomeroy has created a fantastic menu of spicy Asian-inspired bites like shrimp toast, crab rangoon, and a Chinese sausage "corn dog" that will dispel all memories of County Fair abominations forever.
Story by Martin Cizmar, Photographs by Molly Woodstock, Willamette Week
Recently it’s become vogue for Portland’s trendier drinking establishments to offer a selection of fine old books to peruse while one sips. Among the tomes at Expatriate: Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Kingsley Amis and a 1922 edition of National Geographic featuring an article called “A Caravan Journey Through Abyssinia.”
The stacks provide a nice welcome to Expatriate, the bar Beast chef Naomi Pomeroy and her husband, shaker-mover Kyle Linden Webster, opened across the street from that prix-fixe dinner house last summer. It’s a self-consciously worldly affair, the sort of place you expect people to swap stories about traveling by camel as they munch on Burmese tea leafs.
True, you could drop $100 on drinks and snacks. But the cocktails are some of the finest in town. The six I’ve sipped were all stiff and balanced, especially the No. 8, a tonic of Pierre Ferrand 1840, Dickel rye, génépi, Italian vermouth and Regan’s orange bitters. Also enjoyable is a cocktail called the Dorleac, which is quite a bit sweeter, though not out of balance, with vodka, Aperol, lemon, honey, elderflower and Angostura bitters. In an era when so many Portland bars endeavor to make their own bitters with mixed success, Webster says he remains a defender of the classics, and makes his case well.
The food menu is diverse and playful, with everything from corn dogs (crumbled Chinese sausage encased in supple breading) to a Burmese coconut noodle bowl built from wheat noodles, coconut sauce, cilantro roast chicken, duck confit and a gooey half-egg. Best of all is a Brussels sprouts plate that finds Napa cabbage, Szechuan pepper vinaigrette, and caramelized squash with a little smoky ground lamb.
Among the city’s new wave of reservation-recommended watering holes, Pepe Le Moko and Multnomah Whiskey Library might be fun for an hour, but Expatriate left a lingering impression. Walk through the green canvas tent that separates this little world from the big world around it, and you feel privileged to live such a smart and fashionable life.
Text and photo by Emily McIntyre, Paste Magazine
For a conclusive sample of the cool, creative, and sometimes confusing Portland food & beverage culture in one glass, stop in at Expatriate, a bar built around the personality of Kyle Linden Webster and his James Beard-nominated wife and nearby Beast owner, Naomi Pomeroy. Anything you drink here will be balanced, boozy, and damned cool, but try the Precariat and see if it reminds you of the crisp mountain air Webster had in mind when he created it.
March 25th, 2014, by Emily McIntyre, Serious Eats
Enter through the curtained, sign-less door of Expatriate in NE Portland, and you are in another world. A world where famed Beast chef Naomi Pomeroy imagines a menu of riveting pan-Asian-inspired bar food, where owner and pedigreed bartender, world traveler, and DJ Kyle Linden Webster bends in total concentration over his spinning records, and where a Chinese moon gate inspires a moment of worship between sips.
The oft-neglected art of mixing a balanced cocktail is central here, and an unashamed focus on hospitality. Sit yourself at the long mahogany bar and soak in the sheer atmosphere of the place. Above your head, on the top shelf of the spirit library, is a round-bellied Blanton's bourbon bottle that glows like molten gold next to a world globe. Know that wherever you are, at this moment you are an expatriate from your home scene. Your explorations end here, with a perfectly executed cocktail and some really great music.
Come for: A livey blend of cognac, rye, Dolin Génépy des Alpes, sweet vermouth, and orange bitters dubbed No. 8.
Come back for: Candles everywhere, carefully selected vintage vinyl, and luxuriously tufted bar stools make this easily the sexiest bar in town.
It is laughably easy to fall under Expatriate’s spell. It begins when you walk in the door and find yourself in a discrete world of warmth: thick red candles flicker, dark booths ooze that come-hither look, a well-coiffed bartender flashes a knowing smile, and jazz purrs from a turntable. It is gritty and glamorous, playful but self-assured. You may find yourself musing, “This is exactly where I want to be right now.” The 30-seat haven of dimness is the brainchild of bartender Kyle Linden Webster and wife Naomi Pomeroy (whose bastion of communal dining, Beast, is just across the street). This communion of casual but carefully engineered ambience is enhanced by confident cocktails and bold, crunchy, loosely Asian drinking snacks (order the Chinese sausage corn dog!), not to mention one very simple, very satisfying onion and butter sandwich inspired by James Beard. Each of Webster’s eight nightly cocktails is calibrated to the drop and comes with a footnoted backstory. Read up and order the No. 8, a spirited mix of cognac and rye amped by herbaceous liqueur and orange bitters. From there, let the candles be your guide as you freely roam both sides of the globe-trotting menu. 5424 NE 30th Ave
by Chris Onstad, Portland Mercury
My days, like anyone's, are mundane hashes of sock hunting, empty toothpaste tubes, automated phone systems, and noticing weird new lumps on the dog. When I walk into Expatriate (5424 NE 30th) it's as though I assume the identity of the urbane, civilized person I was meant to be. It's said that the clothes make the man, but it can also be said that the room makes the evening. Expatriate is a room to disappear into, adjacent to the current universe, where adults are treated like intelligent things, where they can feel good looking and witty, and let their evening unfold in an intimate space whose attendant pleasures are the most refined of their kind. Kyle Linden Webster's house cocktails are as meticulously crafted as they come, but he's also talented at inventing drinks on the fly. ("Name a color, I'll come up with a drink," he said. "Copper," she said. He came back with something involving tequila, sherry, apricot brandy, citrus... there was more to it, but in a word, it was sublime.) And getting to enjoy Naomi Pomeroy's world-class cooking alongside—without the commitment of a reservation at Beast—is, to me, one of the best developments of 2013.
Story by: Hoke Harden / Portland Spirits Examiner
Have you been to Expatriate yet? If not, what in the world have you been waiting for?
Expatriate is located in Northeast Portland, 5424 NE 30th Avenue, across the street from Cocotte, Beast, and Yakuza. (Beast diva Naomi Pomeroy is Webster’s significant other and had sizable input into some of the touches at Expatriate.) There’s no sign on the handsome period building, and little of note outside to indicate what’s inside. But it’s well worth going in.
Kyle Linden Webster, one of the most consistently creative bartenders in Portland, finished his reign at the outstanding St. Jack’s bar and opened his own place. It’s very much a reflection of his philosophy and style: cool, cerebral and seemingly detached on the surface but roiling with dynamic tension underneath.
Webster is quiet, reserved, laconic---until you touch on a topic near and dear to his heart, like music (he’s a DJ, and has two turntables at the bar with an eclectic selection of vinyl that will instantly change the tone and tenor of the room); or literature (he’s a voracious and quite sophisticated reader); or his travels in some of the more exotic countries of Asia; or his fiercely held views on the necessity of precise balance in any cocktail he makes.
Webster’s Expatriate Bar is a reflection of all that. If all you require is a clean, quiet, fashionably dim place to sip your beverage and chat with friends, Expatriate will be that place for you. If you aspire to more, and want to pleasantly engage your mind on music, travel, art, exotic cuisine or even philosophy, Expatriate will be that place as well. From the precisely selected color of the midnight blue walls, to the almost cloistered isolation of the curly maple wood booths along the side of the room, to the welcome and inviting polished mahogany bar with the colorful Chinese salvage piece in a brilliant array of lacquered red and gold, Expatriate is an intriguing appeal to all the senses.
What you will definitely see is a list of incredibly inviting and devilishly delicious cocktails, from tweaked revivals of classic pre-Prohibition potables to modern invocations of exotic flavors to startling combinations of ingredients that you’ve never thought of but will likely not forget.
Perhaps the foundation cocktail on the list that has become an instant standard, the Shanghai, provides the best insight into Webster’s style and approach. The original inspiration came from a pre-Prohibition cocktail, which Webster tweaked to become one of the standout cocktails of St. Jack’s, then tweaked yet again to conform to the nature of Expatriate. It’s a testament to absolute balance in a cocktail, with the choice of fine ingredients and perfect combination of those ingredients creating a “modern classic.”
The Shanghai is composed of Appleton V/X Jamaican Rum (the V/X signifies the rum is blended from 5 to 10 year old casks), Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao (one of the most astonishing “new-old” spirits to debut in recent years, a dry and spicy version of the usually overly sweet and bland triple secs in the market), fresh limes, real Grenadine (fresh pomegranate syrup), and Kübler Swiss Absinthe. Trust me: it’s exquisite. You really do have to try it for yourself.
Consider as well the fascinating Mood Indigo (gin, cognac, violet liqueur, Aveze Gentiane liqueur, Cocchi Americano, and del Maguey Mezcal! Or Habitué (Irish whiskey, Sardinian Myrtle liqueur, Mandarine Napoleon Curaçao and Noilly Prat Dry French vermouth.) Finally, consider a crowd-pleasing Expatriate favorite, the No. 8, an intoxicating (in all senses of that word) blend of Pierre Ferrand Original 1840 Cognac, rye whiskey, Dolin Génépy des Alpes, a bittersweet elixir from the French Alpine slopes, Cocchi sweet vermouth from Italy, and Regan’s No. 6 Orange Bitters.
Fact is, there’s not a single entry on the cocktail list that fails to intrigue the adventurous drinker. Which, of course, requires multiple visits to Expatriate to complete the challenge.
There is also a short but exceptionally well selected list of sake, wine and beer available.
A word about the food: no standard blah bar snacks here. You will not be bored. The Expatriate kitchen puts out a startling array of Drinking Snacks of mostly pan-Asian delights, from Dungeness Crab Rangoon to a Burmese fermented tea leaf and papaya salad, to Brussels sprouts that will force you to forever change your mind about Brussels sprouts.
So, to repeat: Have you been to Expatriate yet? If not, what in the world have you been waiting for?
From left: Owner, bar man, and turntable master Kyle Linden Webster; Korean fried game hen with pickled watermelon ranch dressing; the No. 8 cocktail. Image: Stuart Mullenberg
4. EXPATRIATE
HE IS A BUDDING BAR STAR, a Reed grad, and a fiend for old records and classic Hollywood movies. She is queen of the kitchen at Beast and a Top Chef Masters vet. Together, Kyle Linden Webster and Naomi Pomeroy are captains of ambience and ingredient geeks searching for the interesting moment, the unforgettable drink, the groan-worthy bite. The couple found it at Expatriate. Their 30-seat bar is unlike any other, dancing on the edge of gritty and glamorous, high-quality and highly personal. In this joint venture, she cooks and he shakes old-school cocktails—four or five ingredients only, one full-flavored experience.
The first thing you notice is the blackness, the shadows, the “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” vibe. Expatriate is darker than a planetarium, and it works. Flickering votives and fat red candles oozing wax on brass holders spotlight what matters here: vintage records, two turntables spinning moods throughout the evening, six nightly cocktails, each balanced like the scales of justice, and a collection of crunchy, herbaceous, heat-packing Asian snacks dispatched with ornate gold silverware. Lost and found objects stand in for décor, each encapsulating a personal story—the copy of The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by famed expat Henry Miller, the elaborately carved arch reclaimed from a Chinese restaurant, the pile of French Vogues on the bar.
Ambience aside, what really caught my attention were Pomeroy’s corn dogs—corn dogs!—remodeled as super-delicious cylinders of dainty corn bread and spicy Chinese sausage, with hot mustard and sweet chile sauce on the side for dunking. That was before the Korean fried game hen arrived, blistered beneath pickled watermelon ranch dressing, and after a Scandinavian daiquiri, deep with licorice tones and generous acidity. You can request any drink from the bar, but the six nightly sips are the focus, meant to pair with Pomeroy’s loose take on Southeast Asian street eats, with the occasional nod to James Beard (a simple onion and butter sandwich). It all could feel pretentious if weren’t so damn good and this much fun. So pull up a plush white bar chair and say hello to your neighbor. Expatriate is the meeting place of the year.
ORDER THIS
This is the Barkeepers, a feature in which Eater meets the fine ladies and gentlemen behind the bar at some of Portland's hottest cocktail parlors.
Thursday, October 31, 2013, by Jen Stevenson, PDX Eater
When acclaimed Portland bartender Kyle Linden Webster opened his first solo project, Expatriate, a buddy handed him a scrap of paper — a postcard Webster had written him years ago while mixing well drinks at a Clackamas dive bar, declaring his resolve to someday open a bar of his own. This past July, Webster did just that, uniting his exceptional, cool-headed cocktails with partner/wife/Beast chef Naomi Pomeroy's sophisticated, hot-tempered drinking snacks, under the watchful gaze of a repurposed landmark moon gate. He added a Grace Jones song or two, nixed the lights, and almost instantly became a prominent fixture on discriminating cocktail connoisseurs' regular rounds.
Eater sat down with Webster to get the skinny on humble double Greyhound beginnings, the role hot water and negative ions play in cocktail recipe development, the proper way to handle would-be Marie Antoinette champagne flute purloiners, and why every good bartender needs jiggers, sound judgment, and Sade in his arsenal.
Where did your initial interest in cocktails come from?
Well, like most people in their early 20s, I drank gin and tonics. And in my mid 20s, I started drinking gin martinis, and in my late 20s I started making them. That was the progression for me. I wanted to work in bars, and so I developed an interest in cocktails. The first bar I ever worked in was a humble tavern in Clackamas, because they were the only place that would give me a shot without experience, and you've got to start somewhere. Then I got a job at the original Noble Rot on 28th and Ankeny, and I was studying lots of wine, so I became sort of a go-to person for wine knowledge on the floor there.
How'd you transition from wine into cocktails?
When Noble Rot moved up into their new space on Burnside and 11th, the former Rocket space, I had to give the bar manager a weekend, so I started bartending two days a week. That was my first exposure to jiggers and juice, to careful cocktails as opposed to the "double Greyhounds, don't be shy" call that I would always get in Clackamas.
Did you always want your own place?
Yes, in fact, one of my best friends from high school, as I was opening this place, gave me back a postcard that I'd written to him after having worked in the dive bar for two months, and in it, I announced my intentions to own my own place. I remember having those intentions, but I didn't remember writing them down on a postcard, so it was quite something to have him hand me back a piece of paper from five years ago that said XY and Z as I was finally getting to Z.
Is this exactly how you envisioned your bar, or did your concept evolve over time?
Yes and no. A lot of the things in this room are mine, I've had them for years. The Chinese-American moon gate was an accident but I saw that and knew I had to get it, even at the risk of being pigeonholed as Southeast Asian. That was never the intentional focus here, despite the fact that we have a lot of Southeast Asian food.
What's your creative process for developing a new cocktail?
It's always different. If you say, I'm going to go in and develop a drink today, sometimes it flows easily, and then sometimes it takes 10 tries, and you're frustrated and your palate is blown, and you have to walk away. One of my most popular drinks ever, I made up in the shower.
That always happens.
Because hot water and negative ions stimulate the brain and body and soul. Some of these I made up on the spot, one of them was a dealer's choice and it was just perfect. The Habitue. I actually tried to change it many times, but always went back to the original. And the No. 8 was something I've been playing around with in various forms for years. I probably first learned this flavor combination and profile at Noble Rot, before I was even a full-time bartender, and I've been playing with it every since.
What's the most popular drink on your menu right now?
The Replica. Because people love tequila, ginger, honey, lemon and mezcal. We can't make them fast enough.
What's the crowd like in here on a typical evening? Neighborhood folk, foodies that read about you, industry people?
It's all of those things, which is great. I love it so much. It's so important for me to be here for the neighborhood. There isn't a cocktail bar anywhere around, so that's why I'm here. I've been living on and off in this neighborhood for over 10 years. I moved up to Alberta and 23rd when there was just Joe's and Binks, and Binks didn't even have a liquor license, it was a beer bar.
Expatriate's still new, but do you have any devoted regulars already?
I have people who are in here three times a week. Some of them live across town and come anyway. I have a lot of friends from St. Jack who travel here, and lots of new people who aren't even necessarily cocktail nerds, who just want to come here for the atmosphere and experience. It feels really nice in here at night.
True, the lighting is great.
What lighting? The funny thing is, I actually had to toss my lighting design for this space. It's totally unfinished. These are my lights for cleaning. I was told I might get rejected by inspectors because what I wanted to do was something not yet in practice in commercial applications. So rather than risk losing thousands of dollars, I just did nothing. I will fix it, but it works for now.
Considering the low light, any interesting PDA observed?
Nothing out of the ordinary. There's always some slight snuggling and the occasional liplock with the hours passing. It's inevitable. Especially when we play Sade. And we do play Sade. We go from Grace Jones right into Sade if the moment is right. Andrew at Beacon Sound, this incredible record shop, my favorite in Portland, he gave me this record by Rhye, called Woman, and even if people are in committed relationships, it's breaking hearts every time it goes on. It's perfect, even better than mood lighting.
Has anyone ever ordered a drink that's so cheesy you refuse to make it?
We'll make anything.
Even an appletini?
I don't have the ingredients to make an appletini. I might try to make a fresh one, I might try to do something with Calvados. I'm not in this business to say no to people. I certainly have a very carefully selected range of bottles, I don't have poor quality spirits with bad ingredients or stuff made from gross sugars and shelf stabilized dairy. I don't have stuff like that because it's not good, not because I'm trying to be contrary. If you want the drinks I used to make in Clackamas, we're not the place, but that's not because I'm trying to turn my nose up, it's just a matter of being very specific about what I want to do, which is make cocktails well.
Have you had to boot anyone out yet for being rowdy, or too drunk, or having a fake ID, or something in that vein?
Oh yeah. I had a woman with a healthy sense of entitlement, who'd had dinner at Beast, come over here and order a drink, and then when her cab came, she looked at me and said, "I'm going to steal your glass and go get in my cab." And I said "Actually, that's a really nice piece of glassware, and I'd rather you didn't take it out of here, not to mention the fact that it's completely against the law and I can't allow you to do that." And she sort of went, "Hmmph!" and set her glass down, and then I turned around and she was out the door with my beautiful Marie Antoinette champagne flute. A total violation of liquor law. I yelled across the room for someone to get it, so someone went outside, and as she was getting in the cab, got the glass back from her. I was completely blown away by that. But not as blown away as by the fact that her friend then came angrily back inside because she'd tossed down a $20 dollar bill on the counter to pay for the glass before she left. I gave it back to her, then went went outside and asked them to never set foot in this place again. Because that's my liquor license at stake. That's my livelihood.
Expatriate is a collaboration between you and your wife, Beast chef Naomi Pomeroy, so you've gotten a lot of attention for both your cocktails and your bar food. How has balancing the two gone so far?
My wife happens to cook better food than most people will ever eat in their life, and I'm around that all the time, and it's a constant source of discussion and inspiration and playfulness. A lot of what we're doing here came from the spirit of the snacks she would make for me at night after getting off work at one in the morning, needing to quickly pad my stomach before I passed out for a few hours and then did it all again. The food's meant to satisfy on a very basic level, it's gratifying in a purely sensual gut way.
How closely do you two work together on the menu? Which comes first, the drink or the dish?
They are not meant to pair specifically, they just pair because they're both about the same things, which are quality, execution, and balance. A lot of people think they're meant to go together because they'll take a bite of something, and a sip of something, and be like "Oh wow, this was totally intentional," and it wasn't. We each do our own thing and it works. The food is meant to be drinking food, and so a lot of it is heavier, saltier, brighter in flavor, the flavors are louder. A lot of the food is quite spicy, we're not shy about it. It's meant to stimulate the palate and thirst.
What's your favorite cocktail and drinking snack combo, what do you have after work?
Siete Leguas tequila, and if I'm eating here, a tea leaf salad and some crab paste and corn noodles.
Where do you drink when you aren't here?
I'm always here. Honestly I haven't been going out. But I can't wait to go visit Eric Nelson at Trifecta Tavern.
And finally, what is your must-have bartender tool?
Sound judgment. You need to be the calmest, most self possessed, and obviously, the most sober person in the room, because you've got a lot of responsibility, you're dealing with taking care of people on many different levels, and if you're not present, and don't have good judgment, you're driving a car with one eye closed. So, sound judgment and presence of mind. And jiggers.
PORTLAND, OREGON - October 09, 2013 - Expatriate, a cocktail lounge, is the latest addition to NE 30th and Killingsworth. It is the creation of Kyle Linden Webster, who has crafted the drinks menu, with an assist from his wife Naomi Pomeroy on the food menu.
Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian
We walk down rain-soaked streets and into the bar, passing under a pair of ironclad bells chiming in the wind. Inside, sheltered from the storm outside, we sit near the darkest corner and order strong cocktails. A blood-red candle gutters at the table.
Expatriate, the new Northeast Portland cocktail bar with drinks from Kyle Linden Webster and drinking snacks from chef Naomi Pomeroy, looks like a four-star opium den. It lurks, coiled and expectant, within sight of Beast, Pomeroy's fine-dining destination.
You might have thought Webster, dressed in a striped shirt borrowed, it seems, from the costume department of a Jean-Luc Godard film, had already found his ideal perch at St. Jack, the Lyonnaise-inspired bouchon where he tended bar for nearly three years. But after Pomeroy returned from a recent trip to Myanmar inspired by that country's cuisine, the husband-and-wife act began plotting the bar that became Expatriate.
Near the window, Webster swaps the dimly projected movie on the wall -- "True Stories" replacing "The English Patient" -- then heads back behind the bar. There, he and his team shake and stir a list of eight cocktails, some originals, some tweaked classics, the dominant themes being mature, citrus-forward flavors drawing from the bar's selection of ornate liqueurs. My favorite, the Shanghai, is a high-wire act blending aged rum, Curaçao and Pomeroy’s own vanilla and lime-infused grenadine. You’ll want to order the Ornament And Crime, a mix of bourbon, Becherovka and fresh lemon, for the name alone. And you would be right to. Expatriate's take on the Pegu Club, the 80-year-old gin drink made famous at the Yangon hotel of the same name, might be the most straightforward Burmese item here.
At first glance, Expatriate's food menu looks like Portland's latest stab at the kind of Asian fusion 2.0 currently in vogue from here to New York and back. But the influences are more complicated. How do you reconcile a menu that includes samosas topped with sumac ranch and James Beard's unreasonably delicious butter and onion sandwich? The answer might lie in the decor. The red-and-gold arch framing the back bar was once a part of The Pagoda, the former Hollywood Chinese haunt known for its chintzy-glam decor and terrible food. Some dishware comes from Southeast 82nd Avenue's Chinese Village, built when Portland's Chinese restaurants doubled as honky-tonk joints. This is orientalism through a historical filter, with all the nostalgic appeal of a vintage cookbook.
Which might explain why decadent, soy-ginger-infused shrimp toast arrives alongside a plate of corn dogs, their golden batter enveloping a loose Chinese sausage, each dog meant to be dipped into a sinus-searing mustard. Other smart chefs beat Pomeroy to using Dungeness crab in Crab Rangoon, the faux Burmese dumplings usually credited to Tiki pioneer "Trader" Vic Bergeron. But kudos to Pomeroy for knowing a good idea when she sees it. At Expatriate, crisp, tidy packets stuffed with generous Dungeness and mild cream cheese arrive under Thai chili slaw with a pool of light curry sauce. They're delightful.
There are missteps here and there. The spice-tossed fries cancel out the flavor of the accompanying curried ketchup dip, and each overpowers the delicate halibut sandwich. You might wish the "Burmese tea leaf, papaya and cherry tomato" dish were renamed -- I expected lahpet, the fermented tea leaf salad that is Myanmar's national dish; what arrived was a papaya salad with some tea leaves (a fine papaya salad, but still). Another salad, with cucumbers arrayed in a mandala-like pentagon, would pick up the Szechuan-ish flavor of the "very spicy" sauce better if the cucumbers were sliced more finely.
If you stick to the bottom quarter of the menu, you might encounter a bowl of sticky brown-butter noodles dotted with fresh corn kernels; a Korean fried game hen with a rich, tangy pickled watermelon ranch; and a strawberry-filled, coconut-glazed doughnut with black sesame ice cream. And you might walk away thinking Pomeroy is Portland's new queen of comfort food.
-- Michael Russell
EXPATRIATE
Grade: B+
Cuisine and scene: A new Northeast Portland cocktail lounge with drinks from ex-St. Jack barman Kyle Linden Webster and drinking snacks from Naomi Pomeroy, the celebrity chef behind nearby Beast restaurant.
Recommended: Shrimp toast, James Beard's onion and butter sandwiches, crab paste and corn noodles, Korean fried game hen, the Shanghai cocktail.
Vegetarian friendly? French fries, samosas, salads.
Sound level: Conspiratorial.
Beverages: Cocktails, sakes, wines by the glass, bottled beers, soda.
Price range: Cocktails, $10; small plates, $4-11; salads, $6-$12; larger plates, $12-$13; dessert, $8.
Extras: No reservations; major cards; street parking; handicapped access.
Serving: 5 p.m. to midnight, daily.
Details: 5424 N.E. 30th Ave. expatriatepdx.com
Written by Anne Marie DiStefano, Portland Tribune
A new bar co-owned by Naomi Pomeroy and Kyle Webster certainly deserves special attention.
Pomeroy is one of the best chefs in Portland, and she’s been keeping herself fairly exclusively at Beast, where meals require a serious commitment — even brunch is a multicourse event. And Webster was formerly head bartender at St. Jack, where a lot of people fell in love with his floral, intricate concoctions. It turns out that one of them was Pomeroy: The two recently married.
Their co-venture is called Expatriate, evoking international romance that takes on an Eastern flavor as soon as you step in the door. There’s a warm scent of curry in the air. A showy moon gate from a Chinese restaurant is repurposed for a back bar. The cocktails have names to match: the Pegu Club, the Shanghai, the Habitué.
The menu takes the idea further. The description of the Pegu Club claims that “traces of ghosts remain from its origin at the edges of the British Raj (at the officers’ club of the same name in what the colonials then called Rangoon, lower Burma).” The drink itself is extremely citrusy, as if to ward off scurvy.
A cocktail called Ornament and Crime is more balanced. A base of good bourbon is bittered up with the Czech digestive Becherovka, freshened with lemon and sweetened with palm sugar, for a grown-up version of a whiskey sour. It’s got a solid structure that’s built for the long term — in other words, it doesn’t lose its appeal as the ice melts.
A more unusual drink is the Queen Elizabeth, which mixes dry vermouth with Benedictine. It’s a collision of herbs and liquor that creates an almost savory flavor, with lime as an intermediary. This cocktail goes very well with some cute little tea sandwiches — crusts removed — which are called James Beard’s onion and butter sandwich. Apparently Beard had the inspiration that thinly sliced onions have more crunch and more punch than the traditional cucumber.
The Anglophile angle stops here. The rest of the menu is Asian, with ingredients ranging across the map from China to Thailand to Korea to India — and to Trader Vic’s, for an upscale version of crab Rangoon made with Oregon Dungeness crab. Actually the crab inside the crisp wonton packets could have been a bit more tender, but the surrounding curry was fantastic, vivid with lime and basil and chili, and crunchy with dried peas and crisped maitake mushrooms.
In general, I am opposed to gourmet corn dogs, and Expatriate’s version didn’t do anything to make me change my mind. Mild Chinese sausage is wrapped around a stick, blanketed in sweet breading, and served with a dish of head-clearing hot mustard. Boring — but the french fries totally make up for it.
They have that perfect crisp-and-tender texture that comes from being fried for precisely the right amount of time, at precisely the right temperature, and they glow with spices. This is why the room smells like curry. They are served with three condiments: a curry ketchup, a sumac ranch, and, best of the three, a cool green cilantro-raita aioli.
All this care and detail requires money. Your bar tab can accelerate quickly as you sit in a shadowy corner, or on the most comfortable bar stools of all time.
There are votives and tall red candles flickering everywhere. The walls are black, and the ceiling is unfinished. Books are strategically strewn about, with appropriate titles like “Lost Horizon,” “Burning Desire!” and the definitive Kingsley Amis “On Drink.” But it’s too dark to read.
That’s the thing — at times this bar is too stylish to be practical. There’s no sign outside: You just have to know. The music is exclusively on vinyl, with turntables built right into the bar. On some nights, the staff plays records, and on others there’s a DJ crammed in behind the bar along with two servers and a bartender. The elaborate drinks take time to mix, requiring the bartender to shake and stir at top pace. So you’d feel like a jerk if you took the menu’s suggestion to “inquire for additional information concerning” aged rums, whiskies, and “unusual and delicious liqueurs.”
It’s a little cramped and hectic, and likely to become more so. With its pedigree and its compelling narrative, Expatriate is intriguing — and with a name like that, you can hardly blame it for being somewhat rootless and aloof.
5 p.m. to midnight daily, 5424 N.E. 30th Ave., no phone, expatriatepdx.com, drinks $10, food $4-$13
Story by Jamie Feldmar, Serious Eats
At her highly regarded Portland restaurant Beast, chef Naomi Pomeroy is known for a sophisticated French-accented prix fixe menu that changes by the week. But when Pomeroy and her cocktail maestro husband, Kyle Linden Webster, took over the bar space across the street from Beast, they looked beyond Europe for menu inspiration, traveling to Southeast Asia this winter to research the colorful flavors of Thailand and Burma (Pomeroy has also clocked considerable mileage in India). So while the appropriately-named Expatriate focuses primarily on cocktails (check them out here), there's also a full menu of South Asian-inflected "drinking snacks" to pair with the beverages.
The flavors are not for the timid—this is tongue-busting fare; spicy, salty, sweet, and sour, sometimes all at once—but even deep-fried dishes (of which there are several) are shot through with a fresh crunch of raw herbs or pickled vegetables. It takes a skilled hand to keep all of those loud flavors in check, and while the food at Expatriate is bold, it's still balanced. Nothing here is presented as particularly traditional, and it's not meant to be. These are just well-crafted, highly craveable bar bites that pair well with the long, late nights that Expatriate is preternaturally conducive to.
An impartial review of the food is tricky for me since I'm friendly with the couple, so instead I took it upon myself to order every single thing on the menu (hey, it's called research) and ask the chef to walk me through the creation of each dish. Check it all out in the slideshow.
About the author: Jamie Feldmar is a noodle aficionado, barbecue lover, and the managing editor of Serious Eats. You can follow her on Twitter at @jfeldmar.
Story by Greg Harned, Serious Eats Photographs by Sheldon Marrow
Portland, Oregon's Expatriate was founded over a conversation aboutThe Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Kyle Webster was working a guest shift at Kask when he struck up a conversation with a friend across the bar about the social fabric of the world and the history of the way people interact.
"I've found a shrinkage of the public space and a rise of solipsism and loneliness," says Webster. "I wanted to create a space that encourages interaction outside of the digital life we've grown accustomed to." Webster points out how the layout of Expatriate was planned with that goal in mind: "The backrest in each of the booths is purposefully set low to create one contiguous space so that guests can easily converse with their neighbors," says Webster. The rest of the bar faces a carved golden arch of birds mid-flight framing a collection of spirits, classic cocktail books, and some of Webster's favorite works of fiction.
We asked Webster how he goes about developing cocktails. "I try not to over-think the recipe," he answered. "I try to relax and hone in on the flavor I'm seeking, and always involve the kitchen in sampling to provide feedback." The kitchen is headed up by Webster's wife, chef Naomi Pomeroy of Beast.
When asked about what the future holds for the Expatriate bar menu, Webster says he is looking forward to digging back into some of his favorite classic cocktail books, including an original two-volume set of The Gentleman's Companion by Charles H. Baker Jr. borrowed from one of his regulars. For a peek at what he's shaking at Expatriate now, check out the slideshow »
About the Author: Greg Harned lives in Portland, OR, where he enjoys cocktails, drinking, and general mischief-making in candlelit speakeasies, swanky cocktail lounges and dingy dive bars. He manages Portland Craft Cocktails where he writes about his various exploits. You can follow him on Twitter @craftcocktails.
