New Downtown Hotel Adds to Portland’s Style

En route to Portland from Los Angeles, I’d glanced at the airline magazine and seen something about how Portland is called “The City of Roses.” Though I have no grudge against these flowers, this sobriquet somehow invoked visions of a place filled with Mamie Eisenhower look-alikes fretting over their meatloaf and macaroni and cheese.

Never having been there before, I knew almost nothing about the city--save that it was the headquarters of Nike and White Stag--and so was still puzzled as to why an American friend from Paris had chosen to settle here on returning to the United States. So far away from everything, and all those pine trees.

So it was with visions of white bread, heightened by just having spent a week in the multicultural furnace of Los Angeles, and the week before in New York, that I arrived in Portland.

A few days later at Pazzo Ristorante I found myself nibbling on a delicious piece of warm focaccia--the fluffy Italian flat bread seasoned with olive oil, rock salt and sprigs of rosemary--and gushing that I hadn’t been anywhere I’d liked so much in years. It was the first American city I’d been in since the Boston of the late ‘70s that seemed so intelligent and attractive and pleasant and well-run.

And in a way, much of what I liked about Portland was summed up by its new downtown hotel, the Hotel Vintage Plaza, which opened in May and is the latest venture of San Francisco hotelier Bill Kimpton. (Kimpton, who has developed 11 “boutique” hotels and nine restaurants in San Francisco over the past 10 years, also recently acquired Portland’s RiverPlace Alexis Hotel.)

Like the city, the Hotel Vintage Plaza was sophisticated without being pretentious, offered excellent service but was still natural and friendly, and somehow seemed to project a hybrid of Pacific, European and East Coast themes so distinct as to constitute a whole new indigenous style.

Most refreshing of all was the theory of hospitality, communicated by everything from the complimentary Oregon wines served in the lobby every evening to the design of the rooms. Rejecting the tired European concept of the grand hotel as sort of larger-than-life chateau, the Hotel Vintage Plaza aspires to human-scale, home-style comforts and amenities, right down to discreetly encouraging its guests to interact with each other via lobby wine-sippings and the hors d’oeuvres and wine served nightly in the “living room” to guests in the hotel’s Concierge Level rooms.

Seen from the exterior, the hotel is a big red-brick, Chicago Renaissance pile that occupies much of a city block. It’s been respectfully renewed, but the renovation has not excerpted it from its surroundings, as is so often true of renovations in many big East Coast cities. The hotel and its neighbors have also avoided the type of corny flourish--carriage lamps for example--that usually is used to call attention to a renovation.

Inside, the lobby is more like a tasteful living room than the customary no-man’s-land in front of the check-in desk. There’s a cranberry-colored marble wood-burning fireplace, upholstered sofas and chairs in green paisley chintz, and carpeting and wall coverings in tones of burgundy and green that reflect the general theme of the decor--Oregon’s increasingly well-known and respected vineyards.

Grape-leaf sconces and a metal grape arbor accent the reception area, which is gently lit by daylight from the 10-story center atrium. At night, a pianist settles in at the baby grand in the lounge area just to the right of the front desk.

Upstairs, there are 107 rooms, each named for an Oregon vineyard and divided between what are called Guest rooms and Concierge Level rooms. The Guest rooms are handsomely furnished with custom-made, Empire-style cherrywood furniture, well-stocked miniature bars--as opposed to mini-bars--and such extras as the nearly extinct overnight shoeshine and complimentary morning paper.

All Concierge Level rooms share access to a common living room where complimentary hors d’oeuvres and wine are served nightly, and there is a concierge on duty to make reservations and see to other services. These rooms range from doubles and suites to the most special accommodations in the hotel, the bi-level townhouse suites and the Starlight rooms.

The $185-a-night townhouse suites have a living room, bar and powder room on one level, and a bedroom and bath with jetted Fuji soak tubs upstairs, and are delightful places to camp out for a weekend. Similarly, the $145 Starlight rooms, which are decorated in rattan and pastels instead of the burgundy, gold and green found elsewhere, occupy the top floor and have spectacular views from their conservatory windows, making them a fine setting for some romantic languor. They, too, have Jacuzzis in their spacious, well-appointed, European-style bathrooms.

All the luxurious fixtures and good decorating in the world does not necessarily equal a good hotel, however. This depends on the human factor: To wit, can the staff find a balance--different for each guest--between good manners and friendliness, and, most of all, does the place have a sense of authenticity?

There are ways to test this. Would you, for example, really feel comfortable reading a newspaper in the lobby? But the ultimate question, I believe, is one of the simplest--come checkout time, are you really sorry to be leaving? I was, very. In fact, the only real criticism I’d make is that it seems a little stiff to charge $9 a night for parking when the hotel’s downtown location makes this a necessity.

I returned to the hotel later in my visit, though, to have dinner at Pazzo Ristorante, the Tuscan grill just behind the lobby that Kimpton also owns and brought in chef David Machado to develop. (Among other hotel/restaurant duos managed by Kimpton are San Francisco’s Prescott Hotel, which is paired with Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio.)

Working from a base of Northern Italian cooking, the Pazzo Ristorante kitchen showcases local ingredients--seafood, lamb and veal--and tempers tradition to contemporary tastes for light, healthy food. And having just sampled several trendy new American restaurants in Los Angeles and New York, I can say that this was one of the meals I enjoyed most, and at prices that were almost 50% lower than big-city tariffs.

My appetizer, a superb roasted garlic and melted Cambozola cheese--a mild, creamy blue--with focaccia, here called “pizza bread,” was only $4.95. My friend’s spinach salad was among the best and most imaginative I’ve ever tasted--the big fresh leaves were garnished with cubes of Italian bacon, grilled mushrooms, red peppers and goat cheese and dressed in a perfectly balanced warm sherry vinaigrette.

Main courses were outstanding, too, especially the grilled Oregon chicken with an arugula, tomato and red onion salad, the penne with lamb sausage, and the lamb chops with asparagus and fennel risotto and tomato rosemary sauce. They offer a well-chosen selection of Italian, French and Californian wines, but we went with an Oregon Pinot Noir, and were surprised by how good it was, being at least the equal of any of the better Alsatian Pinot Noirs.

Appreciative though I was of the natural beauty of the countryside surrounding Portland--we made a trip to Mt. Hood, 50 miles east of the city, and the Timberline Lodge, a WPA-vintage masterpiece that is a monument to enlightened plowshares-instead-of-swords government spending, and also spent a day on the magnificent coast--I found myself curious to learn more about the city and constantly looking forward to my next meal. The food here is extremely good, and not just in the restaurants.

The Saturday Market in the northwest district (Portland is divided by the Willamette River and Burnside Street into geographical quadrants, much like Washington, D.C.)would have tantalized the late James Beard, an Oregon native whose successful life work was to wean the country away from such Eisenhower standards as cream of mushroom soup and green bean casserole. Here they had an extraordinary range of imported groceries, along with every baby vegetable you could ever name: fresh pasta, fine cheeses--including Maytag Blue, an American blue cheese that’s hard to find even in New York--and ready-to-go specialties such as rolled marinated boneless leg of lamb (it was, as we discovered, delicious flattened out and barbecued).

Downtown Portland was filled, too, with wonderful little cafes, all catering to the Northwest’s current obsession with designer coffee. This trend has been popularized by Starbucks, the Northwest chain of cappuccino-ries that has several branches in Portland.

But one of the best coffee bars was at another of the city’s great institutions--Powell’s Books, which claims to be America’s largest store selling new and used books, with more than 550,000 titles, including 9,000 different poetry books, and 132 different subject sections ranging from the three aisles devoted to theology to seven shelves of Japanese-language literature.

On my last night in Portland, I went to dinner at the Bread and Ink Cafe in the southeast district. It’s a casual, drop-in bistro with a vaguely ‘30s decor, friendly service and excellent food.

We had a good pasta special, juicy, locally made grilled fennel sausages, salads and another fine bottle of Oregon Cabernet Sauvignon, and then ended up at the Starbucks across the street for coffee.

It was a mild night, so we sat out on the sidewalk and, though I’ve been in a lot of cafes, I’ve never been in one in America that was in the middle of a busy, safe, old-fashioned, authentically urban neighborhood, one with children playing in the middle of the sidewalk at night, people lining up at the local movie theater and everyone greeting each other, since most people were on foot.

Thinking about this scene as I gazed out of a taxi window at Brooklyn the next day, I felt hopeful that maybe this crusty old borough and other American cities aren’t doomed. Portland makes you think like that.

GUIDEBOOK

Portland, Oregon

Getting there: United, Delta and Alaska Airlines fly nonstop from LAX to Portland. American stops in San Jose. Fares cost about the same: $218 round trip weekdays, $278 weekends, with a 14-day advance reservation.

Where to stay: Hotel Vintage Plaza, 422 S.W. Broadway, Portland, Ore. 97205, (800) 243-0555. Guest room, $115 single occupancy, $125 double; Concierge king, $135 single, $145 double; bi-level townhouse suite, $185 single or double; Starlight rooms, $145 single or double.

Where to eat:

Pazzo Ristorante, 627 S.W. Washington St., (503) 228-1515. Dinner for two with wine, approximately $60.

Bread and Ink Cafe, 3610 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., (503) 239-4756. Dinner for two with wine, about $50.

Powell’s Books (also housing the Anne Hughes Coffee Room), 1005 W. Burnside St., (503) 228-4651.

For more information: Contact the Portland Oregon Visitors Assn., Three World Trade Center, 26 S.W. Salmon, Portland, Ore. 97204, (503) 275-9750.