5 Portland Bars and Cafés Serving Halloween Treats
It’s Halloween 365 days per year at Raven’s Manor, a haunted bar inside the former McCormick & Schmick’s.
The days shorten, the leaves redden and fall, and our sunny skies give way to gray clouds and downpours. It’s October, the spookiest of months, which means restaurants across town are busting out autumnal specials and grocery stores are lining their shelves with ghost-shaped Peeps and chocolate eyeballs. But as delicious as butternut squash risotto is, it doesn’t exactly raise the neck hair, and you can technically eat candy corn year-round, if that’s what you’re into. If you’re looking to indulge a little more thoroughly, bars and cafés are often the best dressed for Halloween. Here are five standout spots around town to scratch your seasonally macabre itch, whether boozy, kid-friendly, sweet, or savory.
Blood is everywhere at Raven’s Manor. On the plates, too.
Cocktails and bar food at Raven’s Manor
Old Town
It’s Halloween year-round at Raven’s Manor, one of a handful of themed bars in town. Jack-o’-lanterns and cobweb–covered chandeliers cast a dim light over heavy wooden tables and a dining room adorned with bloody smears, more spiderwebs, and creepy dolls. Costumed servers pour drinks from beakers and vintage stoppered bottles, often roiling with dry ice or flickering with (totally food-safe) lights. Don’t skip out on the bar snacks: Where else can you find a “necropolis of artichokes and cheese,” served with tombstone crostini?
Memento Mori, true to its name, keeps mortality on the brain year-round.
Pastries and coffee drinks at Memento Mori
Northwest District
Opened this month and quickly beckoning in fresh souls, this café in Northwest Portland wants patrons to consider death and mortality as they enjoy their vegan lattes and pastries. Pumpkin muffins come shaped like human skulls and signature blended coffee drinks—“Goth-a-Chinos”—include the bloody-looking Redrum, with coconut and raspberry, and the mint-chocolatey Grave Digger. It’s all best enjoyed between the skeletons and goth art at this charmingly ghoulish café.
Here’s looking at you. Cheese and Crack’s spooky ube sundae, bleeding eye and all.
The Eye Scream Sundae at Cheese & Crack
kerns
This artful snack shop is best known for its industrially presented cheese platters and soft serve—and that frosé. But come Halloween season, Cheese & Crack also serves a sundae that will keep an eye on you while you eat it. In the Eye Scream Sundae, purple ube pudding and chocolate cookie “dirt” are layered with vanilla soft serve and a torrent of raspberry blood flows from a single candy eye perched on top. Eat the eye first, or tremble under its gaze as you devour the rest.
Soro Soro’s Halloween offerings are far more cute than scary.
Buckman
Bordering on “too cute to eat,” this Korean café and bakery’s goods lean toward the cuddly side of the holiday. Think miniature chestnut tiramisus decorated as little frosted ghosts with edible googly eyes, or blueberry cheesecakes with adorable spirits rising from them. If Frankenweenie is the threshold of your Halloween horrors, you (and your kids) can get in on the Halloween spirit here.
The glassware at the Uncanny lives up to the name, especially during October.
Cocktails and Mocktails at The Uncanny
Boise
The Uncanny rocks horror vibes every day: The bathroom is a trip, several drinks come in doll-head glassware, and spookiest of all, it’s entirely vegan. Plus, the bar is a converted Victorian house, one that’s obviously haunted. But this October it’s getting even more into the holiday by dressing up as “The House of Unholy” and adding weekend DJs and extra-ghoulish drinks. The sour-candy topped Tricks, with guava and orgeat; the sanguine rum–filled Machete Kills, with “raspberry guts”; and the Holy Water highball, topped with a citrus crucifix, are just a few of month’s boozy offerings. The mocktail menu runs just as long, including a hot drink with the nonalcoholic amaro Pathfinder and spiced pineapple, and a booze-free version of Tricks, appropriately named Treatz.
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