Bluehour (sometimes erroneously called Blue Hour) was a Mediterranean restaurant and bar located in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon, United States. The business began operating in September 2000. Bruce Carey and Joe Rogers co-owned the business with Kenny Giambalvo, who also served as an executive chef until 2011.
The changing menu included French and Italian cuisine, as well as food with Asian and Latin-American influences. Bluehour garnered a positive reception; Michael J. Rosen described it as "nationally acclaimed". The restaurant was considered a place "to see and be seen", and was recommended in many regional guide books. Bluehour hosted many notable people and was included in CNN's 2015 list of the "best places to eat with celebrities" in the United States. The restaurant closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Description
Bluehour operated in the Pearl District of Northwest Portland, Oregon; it was located in a five-story structure that was built in 1910 and known as the Ice House, and later as the Wieden+Kennedy Building because of tenant Wieden+Kennedy. The business had been described as a fine dining and upscale Mediterranean restaurant with dim lighting and "dramatic" curtains. The restaurant's event room L'Heure Bleue accommodated approximately 64 people.
Food & Wine and Michael Russell of The Oregonian described Bluehour as "hip" and "swank", respectively. Food writer Laurie Wolf called the restaurant "sophisticated". Portland Monthly described Bluehour as "a Portland institution" and said its "loading-dock seats offer prime people-watching and a perch for one of Portland's best happy hours". In Fodor's Gay Guide to the USA (2001), Andrew Collins said Bluehour offered a changing menu "to an arty and urbane crowd". The restaurant sometimes hosted jazz on weekends.
Bluehour employed a fromager using a rolling cheese cart, and served brunch on weekends until 2011.
Menu
The French and Italian menu offered fare "as American as European", including gnocchi with black truffles, octopus terrine, risotto with sturgeon, red peppers, and basil; as well as sea scallops with bacon. The restaurant also served charcuteries, pasta, duck breast with root vegetables and huckleberries, salmon tartare, a Caesar salad, veal sweetbreads, caramel pot de crème, and options with "Asian and Latin influences".
The happy hour menu included fried picholine olives, Italian white bean purée, pork belly sliders, bruschetta, a burger on ciabatta, and vegetable sandwiches. On the drink menu, the Bluehour Breeze cocktail had grapefruit-infused vodka with cranberry, and the Chocolate Chai Old Fashioned had chai-infused whiskey, simple syrup, and chocolate bitters with an orange twist. The dessert menu included hazelnut buttermilk cake with peaches, served with candied hazelnuts, apricot gelée and milk sherbet.
Protestors picketed outside Bluehour because the restaurant served foie gras.
History
Bluehour opened in September 2000. Bruce Carey and Joe Rogers were co-owners with Kenny Giambalvo, who also served as executive chef. The architect was Brad Cloepfil, whose first restaurant project was Bluehour.
In 2004, Bluehour hosted the first Chef's Invitational Dinner, which Willamette Week described as "a cooking-school contest à la Donald Trump's TV hit" with menus submitted by 38 Western Culinary Institute students.
Giambalvo resigned as executive chef in 2011. He continued to serve as a member of the limited liability company (LLC) that owned the restaurant. The same year, Thomas Boyce became head chef, and Dolan Lane of Clarklewis replaced him in January 2013. Chefs Kyo Koo and Manuel Lopez also worked at Bluehour.
The restaurant served a morel-and-fromage blanc pizza during Eater Portland Pizza Week in 2013. The same year, a bartender suffered first-degree and second-degree burns while making a cocktail. Funds were raised to help pay for his recovery. The bartender later sued Carey and Giambalvo, seeking $600,000 "for pain, permanent disfigurement despite skin-graft surgeries and physical limitations", according to The Oregonian.
Notable people who dined at Bluehour include Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, John Kitzhaber, Robin Lopez, Wesley Matthews, and Gus Van Sant, according to CNN's Jordan Burchette, who included Bluehour in a 2015 list of the "best places to eat with celebrities" in the United States. John Legend hosted an after-party at Bluehour in 2005. In 2016, Bluehour was ranked thirteenth in The Oregonian list of Portland's most expensive restaurants.