Star Bar

This is a great dive bar, based on the ambiance alone. I love the kitschy black velvet art, photo machine, and pinball machine.

Dive bars of my youth this place reminds me. Little rock n roll bar with good food and great people. The bartender is beautiful and has a great sense of fashion. Happy hour kicks ass and food was good. Love the people who work there and eat there. Love Portland and can’t wait to go there and visit again,

The best dive bar in Portland and my local go to. Cheap beer, great food and the bartenders are fantastic.

Surprisingly I’ve had some great cheap meals here for happy hour, and the drinks during that time are good and priced very affordably. Good burgers good fries. The music can be very loud at times and this is a dark bar, but often i’ve really enjoyed the music being played or spun. Staff has always treated me better than average for a dive bar. Good people watching during summer in outdoor tables.

Didn’t have any of the food but I saw they had vegan wings made of chickpeas? Awesome. Seemed to had a decent bar food menu.
The vibe was great. Super dim with the glowing red lights. Loved the velvet paintings. And of course had to use the photo booth!
Possibly the coolest thing was that the old school 80s metal-​rock was being played by a girl with actual vinyl! Freaking awesome.
Good prices, steady stream of people in and out. Lots of open space.

Tried to go here on a Saturday night around 12:30am. Emphasis on TRIED. The entire place was jam-​packed with people I can only assume were all attendees of the same douchebag rally. The bar itself is kind of whatever — liquor, nachos, ironic modern art on the walls. We waited for drinks for about 3 – 5 minutes, and then got the f&%k outta there. Head over to Gil’s Speakeasy Tavern. Far superior watering hole for people who just want to get drunk with their friends.

I had the best, thickest, loaded nachos here I have had in a loooonnngggg time. Well done! My hubby had a grilled chicken sandwich and said it had really good flavor as well.
The inside is eclectically decorated and reminds you of a fun SE dive. Music was a little nails on chalkboard, but I’ll go with the flow — what the hell.
I’m sure we’ll be back. Prob my only wish is I’m a lover of table service when I’m eating dinner, but otherwise staff was great and we enjoyed ourselves,

Star Bar has a generous happy hour, a fun rock ‘n roll vibe, and stiff drinks. Go here for great deals and great booze, but eat elsewhere, unless you’re down to get the house special burger.
While their beer list isn’t huge, it’s well-​curated, with a diverse array of good local microbrews on draft for $ 4 (cider for $ 5). I’d definitely recommend the Fearless Porter they had, which was caramel-​y and dark, but not overpowering, and light enough for session drinking. They’ve also got a PBR tap, if that’s your thing.
Hoping to beat the heat later on into the evening, I ordered a cheap Jamaican rum and tonic with a large wedge of lime. The bartender set the ratio just right, making it stiff, but still refreshing and summery. For $ 5, it wasn’t at all a bad deal, especially considering the drink’s strength.
Star Bar’s Happy Hour rocks! Microbrews are $ 3 per pint, cider is $ 4, and PBR is $ 1.50. Well drinks are $ 3 each. It lasts from 4:00 to 8:00, giving you plenty of time to drink for cheap. Just in case you needed additional deals, look for the A-​frame sign in the bar that features the daily drink specials. You’ll be impressed.
The food varies. The fries are serviceable. My coworkers’ totchos were hot, but needed more cheese on them, making them effectively tater tots with a few jalapeños and a smattering of cheese, salsa, and sour cream. The happy hour burger I ordered was pretty lame. Overcooked and lacking in flavor, I barely tasted the meat, cheese, or garlic spread. It mostly just tasted like char and bun, and it shared the totchos’ cheese deficiency. That said, the house burger I had most recently was delicious! While it’s got a lot of ingredients (lettuce, tomato, bacon, garlic spread, bleu cheese, caramelized onions, and crispy shallots), they work together really well. When I had it, despite the Burger Week rush, it was plenty juicy and brimming with flavor. Even the lettuce and tomato, which I normally think should be banished from most sandwiches, served an effective purpose, taming the more strongly-​flavored ingredients somewhat.
I like how Star Bar is laid out. It’s got booths, coffee tables and stools, picnic tables, and and varying areas of light and dark. Likewise, the art is great, and perfectly fitting for a Portland rock bar – pinups, rock stars, and a picture of .44 magnum laid across a TV dinner, emblazoned with a warning to DJs not to play Warren Zevon to excess. As you would expect, the background music is great. Mostly Otis Redding and The Dirtbombs, with the occasional Judas Priest when I was there, but I suspect that it’s great all the time, given who’s depicted in the bar’s paintings.
Star Bar pours good drinks at low prices and has one of the best atmospheres I’ve experienced in Portland. Is it fancy, gimmicky, or gourmet? No. Is it fun? Absolutely!

Great happy hour! We had the vegan chix wings in Thai and Buffalo, as well at the tot-​chos. Everything was delicious and the service was excellent. Quality photo booth as well. We’ll definitely be back.

I come here a lot. I really love this place. The negative reviews seem to gripe how ‘hip’ it is here. It’s a rock and roll bar guys, of course you’re going to feel out of place if that’s not your scene. Go back to Hillsboro if you don’t like it.
The drinks are strong, the barkeep are always nice, and I’ve never had a bad experience here.

Hey Star Bar. You don’t need my review but here goes. You’re cool. Cool but not intimidating and not fly by night. Kind of like your favorite dive bar which also has friendly faces and good music. Did I mention there are booths? And cheap food? And cool owners? This is the good stuff Portland but please don’t go here if you’re a jerk, it’s not for you.

Great vegan food and consciousness employees. And they spin vinyl. Really cool. They go above and beyond. We will be back!

You want fancy and a nice place? This is not the place for you. You want good priced beer and shots, metal music, and cheep jello shots go here. The crowd is fun and it’s a good stop when working your way around Portland bar hopping.

Great bar. Great music. Fun scene if you’re a Hot Topic punker or a 1980s veteran. As an old geezer I got a kick out of the punk uniforms but hey I’m sure the geezers said that about us in the 80s and 90s. Music is tops and the French fries were good too.

Ok, this place has redeemed itself in my eyes. Dive? Yes. Patrons? Questionable. But, super friendly and smokin’ hot bartender who is great at her job and doesn’t throw an inch of attitude? I like.
I may not fit in here (unless I’m wearing my leather jacket and studded boots, which happens occasionally), but it’s decently priced, unpretentious, and within spitting distance of my fave taco joint. I’m over my previous disdain for this bar and they’re doing alright by me. *insert that «A-​OK» emoji right here*

Apparently the objective of this place is to not sell drinks? Went there with a party of twenty people and the 70 year old bartender just ignored me all night. I was planning on dropping some $ 200 in this closet. I’ve NEVER been so disappointed w the service anywhere. To be told I’m intoxicated after two drinks? Ha, that’s funny because you’re a bar right? It’s not named star-​playland or star-​junglegym? Well, whatever star“bar”, you can discriminate all you want, the plan was to spend money at your bar, instead slowbar and Morrison hotel got our business (and tips). Stay classy, and remember, it is a business, you personally don’t decide who to serve because they don’t look like your crew. You keep people coming back by actually serving them. Worst service ever.

«I’ll take 2 hefeweizens and… HOLY SHIT YOU HAVE MANNY’S.»
^me at Star Bar the other night.
Manny’s Pale Ale from Seattle’s Georgetown Brewery is my favorite beer.
The thing is, you can only really find it in Seattle.
… and I kind of hate Seattle.
I don’t want to go there.
*GIF of Tracy Morgan shaking his head*
Turns out, I don’t have to. Oh, and my 2 hefeweizens and Manny’s were only $ 11 total. This is the beginning of something great, Star Bar.
If you get too drunk (which you should here, it’s so stinkin’ cheap), they have an amazing and large food menu that is even friendly to those ninnies we call vegans. The «Damned» burger is spicy with jalapeño chutney that tastes an awful lot like wasabi, while the «Big Star» is a freaking delicious ‘shroomy, cheesy and roasted garlic-​filled creation. They use fresh brioche buns too.
Good luck finding parking,
but at least our city finally has Über (!!!)

I had a terrible experience once during Santa Con at Star Bar which made me really want to give it a 1 star rating. My friend basically was looking for another friend who disappeared and asked if anyone was in the bathroom stall to see if he had passed out there or something. I guess one of the bartenders was in the stall and got pissed off, so he came out and threw a huge fit and kicked my friend and all the rest of us out. Pretty damn ridiculous and the guy was a complete dick about it, but every time I’ve been back I haven’t seen him so maybe he got fired.
This story aside, this is one of my go to bars on the close in east side. The music is always great, the décor is divey which is my prefered décor, and the food is passable. The beer selection is always good, they have a good happy hour as well with cheap beers and the food which is not bad not great though. There are several seating options outside which are usually taken, but the inside is where you want to be anyway.
Gotta mention the velvet painting on the wall, many of which I have dreamt of stealing including the few creepy clown pictures on the wall towards the bathroom. I don’t know who does them or if they are all different artists, but as a drink more I find myself losing myself in the majesty of them. If you get pretty drunk at Star Bar but don’t want to eat at Star Bar, I’ve heard really good things about Robo Taco next door and especially their Burrito Al Pastor. Check it out!

I guess this is a pretty typical Portland bar. I wish I’d had more time to hop around, because I would have liked to compare it to other places.
Service seemed pretty scattered– I wasn’t sure if there was more than one queue or if people were being served across the entire bar. I did appreciate that the bartender who took my order seemed pretty good at monitoring a first-​come-​first-​served type system.
Their house cocktails seemed inventive, though I didn’t end up trying any of them. Plenty of seating inside, including low and dark couches. Red/​orange lighting and velvet paintings reminded me of one of my favorite Seattle bars.
Bathroom was pretty gross. I liked the patio seating, though, and patrons seemed really nice. Having a DJ there on a fairly slow Friday night was interesting. I’d definitely return.

You had ONE job, Star Bar. Give me drinks. And you can’t even manage that anymore.
Dead to me.
Second star only fo’ the memories and still existing, sort of.