Hour-Glass Pub and Eatery

My favorite bar in all of Portland. Great people, great music, and booze. Everyone is so welcoming. If you’re a good person, you’re welcome to join in the good times.

Great place to watch all NFL games! Bartenders are tentative and remember customers!!! And ohhhhhh my the chicken… THE BEST!!!

This is a dive bar. Day drinkers and video lottery. The chicken is ok, as are the jo jo’s. But the bartenders act as if customers are an inconvenience to them. So, after several visits I have decided to get my chicken fix elsewhere. If I wanted abuse I would go to a real hipster bar where people could see how cool I am with my ironic clothing and accessories. Oh wait, my clothes aren’t ironic. I like things authentically, including bartenders that act like they give a shit.

Hole-​in-​the-​wall bar where you’re just as likely to play pool with a 21-​year old as you are a 91-​year old, the food is greasy, the drinks are strong, the bartenders will remember your name, and the prices are stuck in 1989.
Total Epic Win.

We’ll be back! but not for the chicken oddly enough which oozed oil and had no salt (while my dining companion’s was over salted, oops!) Maybe an off day because I came here on a recommendation that their fried chicken was the best in town. For the price though I can’t complain, the coffee and the rest of my breakfast was on point.

I live right up the street and find this to be a great little neighborhood bar with GREAT fried chicken. You order your chicken to go, and then sit and have a couple of pints while waiting. Staff is pretty friendly, not too busy in the afternoons.

I stopped in about 9:00am on Sunday, July 6^th, 2014. I had ordered chicken and waffle and had 2 cocktails, totaling $ 11.50. Shortly before I left, I stepped out for a cig. I reached for a cig from a smoker out there, to light mine. I am 5’2″, and he is over 6′, and 75 pounds more than me. He raged at me. Was told later he’s the weekday bartender. I was very frightened, and went in and paid my bill and fled. I wish I had told him I was sorry, and explained I only reached for his cig, not his wallet, or junk. Maybe he had a bad week. Used to be a great place to duck into. Maybe there’s too many ghosts of people long gone.

This is a 4 star dive as far as I’m concerned. I never even noticed the place before. I had, however, noticed the fried chicken sign next door many many times. As I am want to do with any mention of fried chicken… way to piqué my interest and wet my appetite. But as there is barely a seat in the chicken joint, and it was a lazy saturday afternoon, we hung out here.
It’s bigger than it looks from the outside. Not very busy, maybe 3 or 4 pairs of people in the lounge area and someone playing pool. The bartender gave me the finger when she thought I was taking video of her… which endeared me immediately. I informed her I was simply trying to get enough bars to get online (and check in on Unilocal!). But she had attitude to spare and poured a strong drink. I swear my cocktails were only $ 3 and it wasn’t even happy hour.
Sports were on the big screen — but not too annoying. We decided a few rounds of Keno seemed the appropriately trashy thing to do so we studied the pamphlet painstakingly and asked the bartender any nagging questions. We ended up spending $ 8 total and winning $ 2 back. But we have our system all figured out for next time.
I like this place. The drinks are cheap and stiff, the bartender sassy, clientele dive-​worthy and the food is good — read Chicken Little review for more info on that…

Holy Fried Chicken! The fried chicken is some of the best I’ve ever had. Also, their jo-jo’s are bigger than the majority of potatoes I’ve ever seen. If you are hungry and looking to be satisfied in a naughty kind of way, this is your place!

Cheap, awesome chicken, great neighborhood bar!!!

After living in the neighborhood for over a year I just ventured into this place after hearing about some amazing fried chicken from the place next door that they partner with. I also was in the mood for a few drinks and this place seemed conveniently located right off my bus route.
They are open all day as it appears the sign said they open at 7am. Pretty committed to the early drinkers I guess.
The place only had a few people at the bar and a few in some table or booth seating. It is a lot larger than I expected from the front view. The grounds expand to a back area with a pool table and some seating for a good view of a sports game. They have a lot of TV’s set up all around the pub so you can get a good view from almost anywhere you choose to sit.
The bar has about 5 beers on tap and there is a full bar for cocktails. The food menu looks good overall. Hamburger with egg and ham on top, fried chicken plates with many options of how many pieces. Ala Carte or served with a salad, potato salad, or jo jo potatoes. Breakfast here is bacon, eggs, and pancakes for $ 3.75! Biscuits and gravy, or simple choices like toast and an egg if you want to keep it real simple.
I think it is basically the chicken that everyone goes crazy over here. I ordered the 4 piece meal with a salad and jo jo potatoes. It was awesome! The fried chicken is the BOMB!!! The jo jo also blew my mind. Basically a giant potato sliced into 4 wedges total and deep fried. Yum Yum.
The staff is a little short and sometimes grumpy with customers or just seem overwhelmed. Depends on who you get really and I guess this is sometimes the way a dive bar can have some character and keep it entertaining. Lot of old neighborhood cats that are regulars here. A bit of charm.

good food, strong {cheap} drinks and super close to my house!
service is great from the bartenders & cooks.
the food is way beyond cheap, large portions and delicious!
the menu is a bit limited but they do great specials
if you live in the montavilla neighborhood this should be your main place!

This is a good little dive bar. Parking lot is joke (2 spots) and food service can be a bit on the slow side.
They offer strong drinks, friendly staff, wifi. They have dirt cheap breakfast. Fried chicken is surprisingly good for a bar, i’m not a huge fan of the potatoes… the wedges are a bit big for my liking. (like quarter of a potato)
Regulars are on the old side and have a lot of miles but everyone i’ve encountered has been extremely friendly.

It’s kind of a divey-​lookin’ bar and it’s usually full of old drunks at 11 am on Saturday… but they make some DAMN good food. I’ve been here a number of times and everything I’ve had has been great.
My boyfriend and I go here for breakfast on the weekends sometimes, and oh man, their gravy is absolutely delicious. I’d almost eat that alone as a meal! It’s rich and flavorful and chock full of sausage bits, and is especially delicious when you coat their diced potatoes in it.
I’ve also had their fried chicken with mashed potatoes, and blueberry pancakes, and and and… Well, I don’t remember it all, but you have to trust me, it’s all good.

Ummm…2 stars? WTF?
Anyplace that has chicken gizzards on the menu merits an automatic 2 stars. The chicken is cheap, tasty, and I wasn’t the least bit disturbed by the size of the pieces.
Next star is for the hourly pool table. I fucking adore bars with hourly tables! And theirs is pretty decent.
Next star is for atmosphere. It’s pissing distance from 82^nd, use your imagination as to how it is. It’s full of locals with nary a hip one to be seen. A blessing to this guy.
Final star? Location. Totes stumbling distance from my new Montavilla home. And caddy corner from the Scandelight, should I feel the need to get my kareoke on and or crappy dive bar Chinese lounge food.
You can also get really drunk here for very cheap. Not like I’d know or anything.

Ok, so it was lunch time, I was hungry for Fried Chicken, a few days Earlier I had seen the sign for Chicken Little, So I thought I’d give it a shot. As I was walking in, a very strange lady, obviously a hoarder by the amount of junk in her car, was trying to park in the no Parking area in front of this place. HMMM.
As I walked in I saw a counter with three stools and a very grumpy and harried person cooking and a waitress buzzing in and out from the bar next door (The Hour-​Glass). After a several minute wait and trying to avoid Eye contact with the hoarder lady who was making comments about the menu, I asked Mr Grumpy if he was who I was to order from, he said rather bruskly «Yeah, when I get a minute», so I waited a few more minutes and he finally looked at me with contempt and asked what I wanted. I ordered the two piece with Jo-Jo’s and coleslaw; for here. I told him I was going next door to wait in the bar, he didn’t seem happy about that, because he had written ‘ToGo’ on the tab.
So he handed me the tab and told me to take it to the waitress/​bartender. As I rounded the corner, I was at the end of the bar, where sat a train wreck of a middle aged woman downing a shot (This is 11:30 AM) and looking to start a conversation, I elected to grab a table far from the bar. I sat there calmly watching ESPN, sipping a diet Coke and taking in the normal sites one sees at a dive bar during lunchtime on a Friday.
The food came out about 20 minutes later, The chicken was good, although a little small, the Jo-Jo’s were awful, undercooked and the skin of the potato was tough as plastic wrap-​how do you do that? The coleslaw lacked flavor. All in all a pretty crappy meal. It matched the dirty and smelly interior and clientele.
I doubt I will be back.

i remember this place from way, way back. growing up, my parents loved this place, and would bring home chicken and jo jos ever so often. as a kid i liked it, we’d all dig in and get stuffed. of course, this was over 20 years ago, and the place has changed since then, and my tastes have certainly changed too. i can’t eat it anymore. it’s not that it doesn’t kinda still taste good-​it does. but it just makes me feel too ill after eating it. stomach ache, headache, just ugh. the salt and grease make you feel bloated for the next couple of days. on the upside, the jo jos do actually taste like real potatoes. and i always liked the ranch they used to accompany them. i don’t know why i liked it, i’m insanely picky when it comes to ranch, but their ranch always tasted pretty good with those potatoes. but overall, for me anyways, it’s just not worth it. if i’m going to consume this kind of calorie count, and inflict this kind of salt and grease on my arteries, i’d much rather it be fryer tuck’s chicken and jo jos. or popeye’s for that matter.

I agree with the previous review. We went in «Little Chicken» (what they apparently call the entrance to what really can only be described as the Hour Glass Pub’s tiny, dingy kitchen) a while back hoping for some delicious fried goodness… and what we got was unfortunately pretty foul. In fact, the three of us barely touched our chicken before throwing it back in the greasy white bag and deciding to order Thai food from nearby Paitong instead.
Incidentally, we stopped by the bar side of things to kick off our New Year’s celebration this past year. The place was hoppin’ and it seemed like a friendly neighborhood joint to spend time in– especially now that the smoking ban is in effect. Stiff drinks too!
Whatever you do, just don’t eat the food.

I love a good food-​related adventure.
So I have regular occasion to drive down Glisan from 82^nd to I-​84, and the other day while I was doing so, I noticed a discrete sign on the N. side of the road that said «FRIED CHICKEN». «Holy crap!» I think to myself. «There’s a fried chicken place within 2 miles of my house and I didn’t even KNOW about it!!!»
Fast forward to today. My wife (who usually admonishes me for doing stuff like this) is on a trip, so I, being a free man, decided to go out on the town. What do I do? Go to strip clubs? Go out drinking with the guys? No, I go to some sleazy dirty run down hole in the wall to eat food of dubious cleanliness and suspect quality.
Anyway, I walked in the front door and found (immediately 3 feet inside the door) a janky orange counter with 2 stools in a tiny (maybe 12×12) room with some fryers and a dishwasher. The lady standing behind the counter looked genuinely surprised to see someone come in the door. I did what any normal guy would do in this situation: Acted like I knew what I was doing and grabbed the menu to make an order. The front of the menu was very telling. It said «Hour Glass Pub & Eatery». That’s Funny, I walked into a place called «Chicken Little Fried Chicken»… hmm… That’s when I realized that this was just the kitchen part of a dive bar pool hall. Awesome!
The menu is simple bar food and fried chicken. I opted for the 4-​piece take-​away for $ 5. The menu also includes up to 20-​piece buckets (for $ 19.50) and a few «chicken dinner» options. The offerings also include pork chops, steaks, wings, and other various pub fare. The cook told me that it would be 15 minutes, so I made my order and wandered to my left through the open door into the Hour Glass. Now I see what’s going on. This is a dive bar kitchen masquerading as a crappy hole in the wall chicken joint! You can’t fool me, you sly people, you.
Wow, this place has «82^nd and Glisan» written all over it (even though its at 74^th and Glisan). It is your typical smoky dive sports bar offering TV’s, pool, darts, full bar, video poker, smoking, lots of drunk-​ass regulars and… uh. did I say smoking? Anyway, I grabbed a seat at the bar and had a couple cocktails while I was waiting for my order. The staff was very friendly and the drinks the bartender was pouring were stiff.
The first thing I noticed when I sat down was the clock above the bar. All the numbers were jumbled at the bottom, and across the top of the clock it said «who cares?» Yes, who cares indeed. Classic. It meshed so well with the wood paneling, off-​colored vinyl booths, formica bar counter, and shriveled up regulars. Everyone seemed very friendly (genuinely), and within the 15 minutes I was waiting I had conversations with at least 4 people about topics ranging from football to bicycling to television repair to the going price for NY strip steaks. Let’s just say I was well entertained by the whole ordeal.
After about 15 minutes the cook came over and gave me my bag o’ chicken. I asked to pay my bill: 2 stiff vodka sodas and 4-​pieces of chicken = $ 9.50!!! Wow. I said my thanks and made cordial goodbyes with the regulars, and was on my way.
The chicken smelled so good in the car, and my anticipation grew with every passing minute. I got home and tore into the bag… hmm, wow, these are the smallest pieces of chicken I have ever seen! Do you suppose they have a connection at a midget chicken farm somewhere? Ok, well, maybe the chicken is so flavorful that I won’t notice that the chicken wing was actually a chick wing.
WRONG. The chicken is marginal. DAMN. All that anticipation to find that the chicken is really not that good. I guess the name «Chicken Little» was intended to be a literal label. Maybe a dyslexic named it, and they actually meant «Little Chicken»? Who knows, suffice to say, I am not satisfied. The breading was so so… lacking inspiration, it seems to be merely some batter, maybe some corn starch, but no seasoning whatsoever. The flavor of the old grease was shining (bright as the sun) through the taste of the chicken itself. At least it was cooked all the way through.
So I just ate ½ a chicken and… well, I just don’t feel satisfied. That has to be a first. I thought I was going for overkill, but the price was so low, I couldn’t resist! Maybe I should have gotten the $ 7.25 «chicken dinner» that included jo-jo’s and a salad. Or maybe at least the «2 tacos for $ 1» deal they had going on. I just thought 4 pieces was going to be way too much. After my Fryer Tuck’s experience, I was being conservative. Crap.
So, I give this place 2 stars for the sheer adventure of getting take out from a crappy dive bar in Deep NE PDX on a blind hunch. Plus, the staff and the clientele were super nice. I guess this might be a good place to be a raging alcoholic, drinking away your sorrows or merely living in a state of utter denial, but don’t come here for the chicken.