Shift Drinks

Love this place! Everything is absolutely perfect! Especially this Brooklyn I’m enjoying right now! Don’t forget to eat their amazing food!

Stopped by after seeing a show. Open late, great drinks. We had the meat cheese platter. Plenty of food, good price, delicious, and presented well. They accommodated our drink request and it was perfect.
We will be back.

Move Beverages comes with an fascinating location, such as an upstairs area and some booths downstairs to sit down. Around the week-​ends this location comes complete, and appears to constantly have a big group on vacations. They provide a couple of specialized drinks and all of your common beverages. The design intrigues me. Move Beverages is an element of the group of pubs in OR. It’s certainly a determining area in OR.

Great drinks!
Love the wine choices here. They also have amazing rushers and pano is late night. One of my favorite late night spots!

We were at Teardrop and asked the bar tender where he goes for a cocktail. He told us Shift Drinks or Hamlet. I think he is on to something. We loved Hamlet, and last Friday we went to Shift.
I wasn’t too impressed when I went in after work. Kind of spartan interior, a bit industrial. But then my handsome date walked in and my spirits lifted. We read the drink menu and I honestly didn’t see anything that interested me. He suggested we move to the bar, where he asked the awesome bartender if she had anything warm to drink. She offered to make a toddy and asked us which booze? Rum, we said, and she practically cheered. She said not enough people appreciate a good rum. And she had a great one! She mixed a little of this and a bit of that and then voila! Put a perfectly sublime hot toddy in front of both of us.
We also had the garlic tomato bruscheta, which I wasn’t expecting much from except to fill the empty place in my tum, but it was delicious, garlicky and warm.
Best bartender ever then directed us down the street to an incredible Italian restaurant. I’m learning it pays to listen to your bartender in this town. Forget that menu — just talk and listen and prepare to be amazed.

We had tried to get into a whiskey library bar but they were full and had recommend this place. It was really dark and very hard to read the menu. Our waitress was very helpful and extremely knowledgeable in the complex drinks that they offered. I didn’t really care for their fancy drinks that I thought were a little pricey for their size. Overall the place was just okay, nothing fancy.

Best bar ever. Tasty drinks and good mood. I think this place is perfect for dating too :))

Anthony and team always make us feel welcome. The crew makes some of the best cocktails. Anne has a wonderful menu of fresh, local ingredients thoughtfully prepared. So much better than the usual burger and fries bar food.
All in all an excellent experience that my wife and I love.

My fellow server friends and I find it absurd that a place called Shift Drinks is not an industry bar. Servers usually want cheap drinks after their shifts and this place has ridiculously priced and fancy drinks. I think it’s just a novelty type ploy to get the monied people in to feel as if they are hanging out with people in the industry. We’ll stick with Virginia Café and Scooters me thinks.

Best old fashion I’ve ever had. Buffalo trace and some magic. Wow.
Food was light and delicious, but it’s all about cocktails

Amazing. Ridiculously fresh-​tasting. Incredibly nice staff. Quaint place with a unique feel. Feels nice yet relaxed. I definitely recommend the bruschetta, which changes periodically (seasonally, I believe). Good place to come and have dinner/​drinks and enjoy yourself.
Another thing, they’re actually open late, unlike many places in SW. Great for us neighbors :)

I’m a big fan of the current expansion of high-​level cocktail bars in Portland. And everywhere else, for that matter. The trend away from the cheesy martini variations of the early 2000’s towards more carefully refined imbibables makes the world a better place. Shift Drinks falls into said category. This bar has quite a few things going for it, and maybe a few working against it.
First, as always, the positive. Shift Drinks is open late. They have an interesting menu of small bites and upscale bar eats all priced at $ 8. I didn’t try the food, but it looks good and it’s nice to have something other than «whatever comes out of the fryer» after the 11pm witching hour. The cocktail list is interesting and tasty, with well-​balanced flavors and fun concoctions (that actually taste good). The wine list is downright impressive, and they sell bottles to go all the way until OLCC dictates they have to stop (2:30am). Service is super friendly and quick. We had multiple servers checking on us during our short visit. And the seating… there’s TONS of seating. You could have a lot of people in this joint and still find a seat. That’s pretty rad.
The bad? The atmosphere is pretty boxy and hollow. Almost beer-​hall style, which doesn’t, in my opinion, mix with the caliber of wine and cocktail fare. I like my craft cocktails paired with a more cozy vibe. The space itself is somewhat limiting and I love what they’ve done with the lights up above, but still, I’m not vibing on the feel of the joint. Also, there are a few incongruously-​priced things on the menu. Like the Stephen Smith tea for $ 5 and the Mexi-​Coke for $ 4. I don’t mind spending $ 11 on a quality craft cocktail but I’d be pissed if I were a DD and had to shell out a 525% markup on tea, which takes almost zero effort to prepare (especially compared to a cocktail). But aside from a few of these oddities I noticed while perusing the extensive menu, the other prices seemed concordant with the product delivered.
I am a little conflicted by what’s going on here. I love the open-​late concept, the commitment to good food options late, and the versatility of the wine (and to-​go wine) options. But the lack of vibe might keep me away more often than not. I definitely give an extra star for the effort and look forward to seeing how this concept evolves.

The PLT is amazing. The service is top notch. So happy this space opened up in this block. Ask for
recommendations they’re very helpful and take their craft very serious. I enjoyed sitting at the bar even though I only drank wine, they were more than gracious to answer questions about the signature cocktails they were mixing and add their stories to boot. A plus. Keep up the good work crew.

The bar itself is fine. It’s sparsely decorated and has decent atmosphere. It was completely dead on the Friday night our large group of friends rolled in (which makes sense given the lame experience we ultimately had). We immediately received great service at the standing table from multiple servers. No issues there.
The 2 stars are for the insanely rude dude working there (tall, bald, glasses, nerdy as all hell, looks a lot like my skinny middle toe) who went to collect our drinks after last call. My friends were wondering why he was snatching their drinks out of their hands so rudely after our party dropped easily $ 500 on drinks throughout the night. He had a point, it was Oregon State law that they couldn’t drink after that point, but it’s the ridiculously rude and unprofessional way he handled delivering his message.
Instead of simply stating the law in a polite enough way, he starts shrieking for us to GET OUT OF HERE multiple times like an absolute idiot. He went from 0 to 60 and lost his shit. I calmly reminded him that he didn’t need to talk to my friends that way, that an ounce of diplomacy is the least the dude should have toward really generous customers spending a ton of $$$ on a dead Friday night, but he just seemed indignant and incapable of acknowledging his horrible attitude. If that’s the case, then leave the service industry. You don’t have to treat people like a complete douche at the drop of a hat, no matter if it’s closing time or not.
Seriously dude, if you’re reading this, perhaps look for a new line of work. Treating customers with respect isn’t really your forte. There’s too many awesome bars in Portland for anyone to have to endure your level of disrespect.

I wanted to try Shift Drinks as I had heard good things and told it was a hot spot right now. A group of 4 of us ventured over there on Friday night to check it out. It was full when we got there, but we were able to find a place at the window bar for all of us.
I don’t quite get this kind of atmosphere. It’s basically just an empty, concrete room. It’s very minimalist with the only decorations being a few candles and some black and white (I think movie scene) prints hung up high on the walls. Basically the whole bar is a grey box. The issue with it being so empty is that it’s incredibly loud for a small space. There is so much echo in the room, mixed with the music, that even though the 4 of us were all right next to each other, we found ourselves having to talk really loud.
It took a good 5 minutes before a server came over. It looked like they only had 2 servers (plus 2 bartenders) for the whole place. On a busy night, they could have used more staff. The server was nice and had an incredible memory for the whiskeys they had available. The Old Fashioneds that we ordered were really good, but we just couldn’t get over the atmosphere.

Hurray for more bar seating capacity in our fair just-​south-​of-​Burnside district! which has become drastically overrun by bazillions of weekend visitors and isn’t likely to get less packed anytime soon. Shift Drinks has a lot of seating.
Super hurray for the late night hours! We need waaaay more of that in Portland!
The ambiance is relaxed but sophisticated. Big black and white photos on the wall. Monotone color scheme. Vintage, and modern. It’s like an upscale neighborhood bar that’s really nice, that you could come to frequently but not get really burnt out on.
The downside– I feel that the cocktails, although very drinkable, are not yet up to par with the rest of the area’s (truly incredible, nationally-​renowned) cocktail bars. That’s really hard company to keep up with, though. And I’m not sure that’s the point of this place anyway. Part of me hopes that I’ll be able to come back and update this review to five stars after many more visits over the next few months, but part of me doesn’t really care. This place stills serves a great purpose.

Yay Shift Drinks, for being one of the few places in SW open past midnight! My friend and I wound up here after realizing Kask and most places close by 12 on weekends, but it turned out quite well for us!
Shift serves up some fantastic cocktails (albeit pricey), and their staff is quite accommodating in making sure you find a drink that you like (gin/​vodka/​whiskey/​etc., fruity/​floral/​etc.). They also were very attentive, making sure our drinks were replenished while we were there.
Definitely recommend this place (and for you to order a Bee’s Knees!).

Lovely and well thought out and just a little spendy. I will say though that my drink was delicious and the service was fantastic and while the price ($ 40 for 3 drinks) won’t keep me away, it likely won’t make this place a weekly occurrence either.
I think one of the things I like most about this place is the building. It’s not a hole in the wall where you can never really tell what’s going on outside; this place sits on a corner with huge windows all around. There’s lots of space for bigger groups to grab a table and intimate bar top seats on the windows.

Great new place in Portland! Amazing drinks, cocktails, wine, etc. the food is even better! You cannot go wrong with anything here. It is an old bank so the inside décor is super cool as well! Definitely a new PDX hotspot!

Decided to check this place out after work. They do not offer Happy Hour specials but always have a $ 7 red wine, white wine, and cocktail available.
They offer an array of wine options but the cheap+white+delicious caught my eye of course, cause I’m classy like that.
Service was on point.