Belly Timber Preview

Preview night cocktail hour party at Belly Timber. Booze from Lance Mayhew of the Oregon Bartenders Guild, petite fours from David Siegel, and so much nail polish.

Okay, a note on the name. Popular opinion is that it’s a bad name. There is no denying that. I do offer this as an explanation: Belly Timber, according to their menu, is Victorian slang for food of all sorts. The restaurant is located in a renovated Victorian home. See where they’re going with this, eh? Eh?

This party feels like one of those parties your yuppie friend invites you to. You know, the ones where everyone is liberal and professional and dressed in tight, shiny clothing. They all have those little rectangular glasses and those laughs where they throw their heads back and touch each other on the shoulders. And you know, you just know, that it’s going to devolve into drunken confessions and maybe someone is going to start getting overly sexual, and by the end of the night that glimmering sheen of scrubbed niceness is going to be totally undone.

All I can do is sit uncomfortably, proceed to get drunk for free and hope that this night is not going to resemble every night in the bar at Belly Timber. That potential definitely exists. The bar space in the lovely Victorian home, at 3257 SE Hawthorne, is like a flame to the slick, well heeled booze hounds who somehow mask their drunkard tendencies by claiming epicurean motives – Oh, this isn’t just a drink dahling, it’s a cocktail. The wood has a deep lustrous sheen; the wallpaper is golden and textured. There is the faint whiff of a deco aesthetic. It is a beautiful space and I realize that I sound too harsh. It’s probably just my dive bar heart, uncomfortable in the wooden chairs, surrounded by so much class.

More preview goodness after the jump…

Right away we are greeted with the DMD: elderflower liqueur, orange bitters and sparkling wine. I have a brief argument with my wife over whether I should be allowed to call sparkling wine champagne, even though it wasn’t made in Champagne France. She says no, I say I have no problem with it because it makes me feel classier than I actually am.

Next, I order a cold smoked vodka cocktail called the John Daly. Yes, cold smoked vodka, which sounds like a euphemism you might use to explain your state of being after drinking a few of them – Shit, bro… I’m cold smoked. The flavor is actually very strange. The apple wood smoked vodka, when paired with iced tea and lemonade, evokes the sensation of eating an apple while smoking a cigar and drinking a glass of lemonade. This, admittedly, is something I’ve never done and now I don’t have to because I actually just drank the experience.

Holy shit, that would be a great ad slogan for this bar – Drink the experience. Okay, if they use that, ya’ll are my witnesses. I came up with it first.

Anyway, my lovely wife orders the rhubarb martini known as the Farmers Market, while I progress to the Novara, a potent mix of local Indio blood orange vodka, Campari, tonic and bitters.

Oh yes, and there is also food. I’m not going to say much about it here. Belly Timber will be serving things like Halibut gravlax, batter fried seasonal veggies with pimenton aioli, rabbit sausage, French fries with bone marrow aioli, as well as house cured meats. Looks like a kind of French/Italian thing happening.

There was not enough food to really form an opinion, and certainly not enough to soak up the booze in my belly. So, around nine pm, my wife and I head for home, leaving the rest of the party to the slow machinations of free liquor. I do look forward to coming back. You can expect a verdict in Last Supper in about a month or so.