Portland Bar Mermosa Opens with French Haitian Lowcountry Food and Wine | Eater Portland
"Opened earlier this summer on Northwest 23rd, I found Mermosa PDX to be a beachy, azure-toned bar at 1422 NW 23rd Avenue that pairs citrus‑sweetened wine cocktails with dishes like coq au vin and Haitian griyo. The space was created to showcase Desiree Noisette’s nationally distributed bottled and canned Mermosa wines—including the first canned Mermosa, which blends orange and pineapple juice with Oregon pinot gris, chardonnay, and riesling—and to honor Noisette and her husband Aaron Davis’s French Haitian and Lowcountry roots. The menu, led by executive chef Philip McAlister, mixes French technique with Haitian ingredients: shrimp marinated in house-made Haitian epis on creamy Carolinian white grits with a tomato sauce bolstered by a dark roux; culotte steak frites marinated in epis and served with smashed plantain chips; brunch griyo (double-cooked pork with plantains); and sos pwa, a black bean–coconut puree served with Carolina Gold rice or alongside a whole fish. The cocktail program also references Haiti (for example, the ‘Haitian Liberation’ riff on a Cuba Libre with Barbancourt rum, Jones Cola, a house epis sugar tincture, and an epis rim), and the ‘Noisette’ dessert—meant to pair with the Noisette Rosé—arrives as a dark West Ghanan chocolate mousse in a house-made hazelnut-cinnamon crust topped with brûléed bananas. Mermosa PDX is open for dinner Wednesdays through Sundays and for brunch Fridays through Sundays." - Eater
