New Record Bar Opens in Northeast Portland

In 2021, Momofuku alumnus Gary Ly and his partner Lung Ly opened 93 ’Til in Houston, Texas, a bar and restaurant named for the Souls of Mischief song “93 ’Til Infinity.” “Take that song as a foundation for the music the restaurant plays,” wrote Timothy Malcolm for Houstonia, soon after the restaurant opened. “You’ll hear hip-hop and rap, funk, soul, worldbeat, classic rock, African jazz, and much more, sometimes in one dinner service.” Four years later, bartenders at 93 ’Til play both drink maker and dj, shaking espresso martinis and pouring glugs of Hibiki Harmony while pulling vinyl from the the tightly packed shelves between orders. All the while, tempura-fried catfish and smoked pork chops with salsa macha roll out of the kitchen, serenaded by the ’90s hip-hop vibrating from the speakers.

Earlier this year, Portland chef Richard Le found himself at the Lys’ bar with two friends, Portland Cà Phê owner Kim Dam and Mikey Nguyen, known for his sneakerhead church of a consignment store, Index. The three of them had discussed opening a bar together; Dam and Le already co-own Vietnamese American brunch spot Mémoire Cà Phê, and Nguyen is a co-owner of Old Town mainstay Deadstock Coffee. They had been considering something dive-esque, but sitting at 93 ’Til, Le couldn’t help but wonder: Why doesn’t Portland have something like this?

Record bars, more commonly known as listening bars, are a quintessential part of Tokyo’s music and beverage scene, places where people take their extensive, well-maintained record collections and sound systems as seriously as their spirits and cocktails. In Portland, records and turntables can be found at cafés, bars, and restaurants around the city—Courier, Sweedeedee, Expatriate—as well as combination record store–bars, like Replicant and the Record Pub. Nodoguro’s Ryan and Elena Roadhouse even talked about opening their own record bar, Peter Cat, now an on-hiatus sake pairing pop-up in search of a new home. But the closest Portland-side analog would be Sonder, a ’70s vibed, true-to-form listening bar in the Hollywood District with such a staggering record collection that it overflows into the building’s rafters.

But Portland doesn’t have a parallel to 93 ’Til, a cool-kid, hip-hop influenced record bar with equal emphasis on the food and beverage programs. That changes on August 7, when Le, Dam, and Nguyen open After Ours on Northeast Broadway—an all-day Vietnamese American café-to-cocktail bar with late-night pho, banh mi avocado toast, yuzu whiskey sours, a DJ booth, and plenty of vinyl. “I brought my entire collection over here,” Le says, calling from the After Ours space, once home to the short-lived Italian restaurant Scholar. “I’m literally digging through it right now—A Tribe Called Quest, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Sade, Wu-Tang…”

The records in Le’s collection reflect the larger soundtrack at After Ours: some Motown, some hip-hop, R&B, jazz, funk. The vinyl library will take up one of the walls, a towering stretch of shelves adjacent to a wall displaying the covers of a handful of favorites. Folks can peruse and pick out a record for themselves at the headphone-equipped listening station, straight out of an indie music store. The team will invite DJs to take over the aux periodically—only if they have an affinity for LPs—but After Ours isn’t meant to feel clubby. “There’s enough bars and spaces where you go there to dance and mingle,” Le says. “This is meant to feel more like, you can come down and sit and have a drink, chat…kinda moody and vibey.”

Those who have followed Le’s career can likely guess what will come out of the kitchen. The California expat and b-boy opened the buzzy Matta food truck in 2018, originally specializing in the Vietnamese recipes cooked by the women in his family—dishes like caramelly pork and egg braise thịt kho and herby omelets filled with plump shrimp. Over time, he developed his own culinary voice, informed by those family recipes but also his San Jose upbringing, eating fast-food sandwiches and McDonald’s breakfasts. Matta has existed in several different iterations over the last seven years, most recently as a residency within Mémoire Cà Phê; Le calls it a Việt Kiều experience, referring to the Vietnamese diaspora. That artistic ethos informed the menu he designed for Mémoire Cà Phê as well, which involves fish sauce bacon–topped pandan waffles and milk bun breakfast sandwiches stacked with eggs, American cheese, and turmeric-scented mushrooms.

At After Ours, you’ll hear echoes of those past eras, plus some new releases. From the moment it opens at 9am to its 2am last call, the kitchen will churn out many of the greatest hits from the Matta cart (yes, that dazzler of a fried chicken sandwich will return, as well as its catfish counterpart), plus furikake fries. In the mornings, most will probably roll in to visit the coffee bar, a collaboration between Dam’s Portland Cà Phê and Nguyen’s Deadstock. The latter’s “Mikey’s Blend,” originally made with Brazilian beans, is getting remixed with Vietnamese beans sourced by Dam, which will appear in cà phê sữa đá but also cold brew and cortados.

By 5pm, dinner service will begin: salt and pepper squid, garlic noodles, fried rice, snacky things like skewers and wings. We’re eyeing the fish sauce caramel–lacquered ribs, with an herby coconut sauce. Le even teased some potential birria-style tacos made with bò kho, a spicy Vietnamese beef stew. Thursdays through Saturdays, from 10pm to 2am, Le will ladle bowls of Hanoi-style pho for the late-night menu, characterized by its thicker rice noodles, clearer broth, and minimalist approach to toppings. Each bowl will come with a side of nước chấm, so diners can pull the pieces of beef or chicken from the pho to dunk directly in the fish sauce–based condiment. And a Friday–Saturday brunch menu will involve Cali-style breakfast burritos stuffed with fries, avocado toast with the flavor profile and accoutrements of a banh mi, and egg-topped burgers.

Over at the bar, Ketsuda “Nan” Chaison, of Norah and Libre, designed a menu of cocktails like salted lime gin and tonics, lychee martinis, and yuzu-oolong whiskey sours. A Hennessy old-fashioned gets its sweet-salty funk from a salted plum cordial, while the Pandan Colada tops a pineapple juice–spiked blend of rums with an electric green pandan coconut cold foam. And a mezcal-and-blanco margarita gets its righteous savory edge from a tamarind–fish sauce shrub. “We definitely going for Vietnamese vibes, little touches of Vietnam in there,” Dam says. “I really just wanted a fun, moody, sexy bar.”

Nguyen has been handling the decor, giving the space a midcentury modern feel. The chrome green of the space will be soft lit, fading to a romantic dim as the sun sets. “The reason it’s called After Ours, it’s meant to be built for our community,” Le says. “The three of us have been community figureheads for a while; we wanted to do a project for our peoples.”