Erik P.
Yelp
This is the hotel restaurant for the Duniway Portland hotel by Hilton. We booked our hotel through American Express, and I have status with Hilton, so we received daily food and beverage credits to use here.
The vibe is pretty cool, definitely modern and definitely representative of Portland.
I found the cocktail menu to be surprisingly inspired for a hotel bar. The bartender mis-poured my Trailblazer cocktail the first time, so I got to try it twice and loved it. I also enjoyed the Hummingbird, a sort of tequila twist on a Paper Plane.
We had the chocolate tart for dessert one night, and it was divine. A couple other guests ended up ordering it after they saw ours. We tried to get the seasonal Sorbet a different night, but they had run out.
I personally don't think I would have chosen to eat at the restaurant for breakfast had we not had free credits. The food was fine, but not amazing, and the prices are a bit high. Basically what you expect for a hotel breakfast. They also were out of waffles and the blueberry dish the entire holiday weekend.
A note on service - they really need to throw more bodies, more training, or both, at the restaurant and bar. Perhaps they were busier over the long weekend than normal, but nothing ran smoothly and guests all noticed and commented. During breakfast, multiple tables would routinely sit open for stretches of time while a queue of new guests formed waiting. Staff were doing anything besides seating guests or clearing tables. Our last morning, they even had the audacity to say "we're a bit full right now, so it'll be about 15 minutes" to guests in line, while half the tables sat empty. I could believe it was about not overburdening the kitchen, except the kitchen was still filling to-go orders just fine, and the bursts of seating guests and taking orders that they did do would only be worse for the kitchen.
At the bar, there was one or occasionally two bartenders during the busiest hours. This would be fine for a bartender used to working in hectic environments and making multiple drinks while taking the next set of orders. These bartenders would have struggled to keep pace at a quiet artisanal cocktail lounge. There also seemed to be very little done in the way of "speed bottles" to speed up mixing, which only hurt the performance. On the one hand, cool for actually mixing the drink live. On the other, I waited half an hour to get the drink.