Slabtown

Closed.
Used to have the best falafel on this side of the river.

The falafels here were so tasty! The best I’ve had, and all the ingredients were super fresh do everything appeared to be made on house.

This place will be missed. A really cool punk style club with amazing food (all vegan!) with a cool mission and great live shows. Sad to see it go…

I have never gone to a show here but the food is spectacular
Dingy as fuck/​wonderful
Between the four of us we got the shwarma sandwich, shwarma fries, falafel sandwich and the hummus and pita. All of the meals were amazing it would be awfully hard to choose the best one
The vegan meats were not your average weird after taste seitan but a perfectly flavored piece of heaven.

To call this a dive bar would be an understatement. Black and red walls, brick, pleather booths with exposed foam and the ratty duct tape holding it together. Five pinball machines and Ms. Pacman and a vending machine that dishes out guitar strings, cables and Vic Firth drum sticks. Dim red and orange lighting. You’re not supposed to see much.
I came to see some live music. A soul shakedown party, in fact. A couple of local acts and one from San Francisco. Ska and soul music. Nice combo. This is a great place to be intimate with the bands that’s for sure. You can be front and center with the acts.
The surprise for me was the food. I’m learning quickly, don’t judge Portland restaurants by what they look like. Vegetarian /​vegan fare and falafel and fries are the stars.
The food was great! The fries were fresh cut and had little seasoning, they didn’t need anything. The falafel was similar to the Lebanese places I’ve been to and it was wrapped up with crunchy veggies and really good. I wasn’t hungry afterwards. Add a couple summer shandys and the music and atmosphere were terrific.
Stop by, see a band and eat some falafel.
Enjoy.

Beers were decent. Venue is kind of a dive, but awesome if you like metal music. Shows there all the time. Hardcore, punk, thrash, deathmetal, etc.
Food was surprisingly good. I’d suggest it if you’re there and hungry.

Cheap, dark, and divey. I was in love from point go. Wasn’t very busy when I went in, but that gave me and my 2 pals free reign of the pinball machines and my fave, ms.pacman. Would love to come see a live show here sometime. A few people were eating the falafel from next door that serves to the bar. It smelled amazing.

First off, in summation, do not go here. Go to Paymaster around the corner. I have no affiliation, but this was a blessing after the experience of Slabtown. Thought I would say this before I lost your attention.
I have only found it necessary to write a negative review once… for a car dealership that sold me a car with bread ties holding together parts of the car. With this said, I begin.
I work about eighty hours a week, and decided to arrange to get off work early to check out this place. It looked fun with the Ping Pong, games, etc. Well, it wasn’t and we walked right out within ten minutes.
This is not a bar for those outside of the three regulars and pretentious bartender with bleach blonde hair and a nasty attitude. I wanted to share a pitcher with my partner, who wanted to taste a whiskey ginger for the first time as well. She looked at me and said «I can’t serve her an entire pitcher of beer» as if I was not standing there and is if I am a drunk. What about me makes you think that I could/​would drink an entire pitcher of beer to myself? Was it my stocking cap? Rules are rules, and I understand this. I do not need to be looked up and down like an alcoholic and disrespected because of this. I also don’t need the suggestion to buy a beer first, then buy the pitcher on top of this. Nor do I need the hesitation (100 percent sober) to serve me happy hour when it is 6:45 and it ends at 7:00.
The whole atmosphere was unwelcoming, and the bartender was lousy. There is an awesome place right around the corner called Paymaster. It has a great game room, huge outside area with heaters, a pool table, etc. Great atmosphere, great food.
Blonde bartender: Thank you for allowing me to see this epic Paymaster place. I will never go back to Slabtown.

I love the warm loving atmosphere on Sunday’s for the poetry slam

classic dive bar in Portland.
Raw music scene.
Open windows — -great for traffic watching. Nice tap selection. Cheap Happy Hour.
Not sure on food these days. Good pinball offerings.

I didn’t go to the bar – it looked like a normal dive bar. I wouldn’t rate down stars for the fact that the place was a dive… you go to a dive because its a dive. Don’t complain about a dive bar being divvy when it’s obvious, ya know? This review is only for the music/​shows.
Crappy, crappy, crappy sound quality. I was disappointed cause I went to see one of my favorite bands (who I’ve never seen live before), and this band is KNOWN to be amazing live (and they are already good recorded), and the sound quality was just too muffled and bad to even hear them singing, let alone appreciate the drums, bass, guitar, etc because the sound quality was just THAT bad.
I don’t recommend going here for music.
Lots of different people here, but majority are punks… I thought it was interesting to see the diverse array of ages… young people to old people!
But always, yeah. So that’s that.

Great dive bar that reminds me of the places I used to enjoy in the Mission in SF. Super cheap drinks including ice cold PBR on draft for $ 1.50 (insane!) and the amazing Falafel House. We came on a Saturday evening around 6 and the place was quiet but enjoyable for some afternoon beers and sandwiches. The space is big and has many entertainment options including air hockey and pinball in the front and more arcade games in the hidden back room such as ski-​ball, basketball and more pinball. They also have live music with a well situated stage. The bartender was friendly, vibe was cool. Probably the perfect dive bar, right down to the dirty restrooms.

I love me a dive bar, and first and foremost that is what Slabtown is. It’s not all shiny and new, but it does have some great new grub available (Vegans rejoice)! I’m omnivorous myself, but damn that falafel was TASTY.
I’ve heard story after story about how gross the bathrooms are, etc. But they must have done some serious work on that, because I just don’t agree. It’s a public bathroom, but I’ve seen some doozies in my day and this isn’t one of them.
They also have pinball. LOTS of pinball. If you don’t dig the crowds at a place like Ground Kontrol, this may be your Pinball Mecca.
If you’re in this ‘hood and need a drink and/​or a bite to eat don’t shy away, it’s worth a visit.

Since I moved to Portland about half a year ago, Slabtown has become my favorite place. Apparently it has been under new ownership for a year or two, and it really shows– there is no place quite like it. It’s a 21+/ all-​ages venue, a bar, a delicious inexpensive falafel joint, with a DIY space in the back. Everybody involved in Slabtown are there to service the audience and service the artists.
I’ve performed there multiple times as well as attended shows– and the experience is always stellar. As an artist, the sound guy was patient and professional, and I was treated with great respect. Slabtown even had their whole back room (a popular place for their weekly All-​Ages Church of Rock N Roll Shows) turned into an art gallery during their awesome Slabtown Grrrl Front event. I was able to feature my art on the walls and the proceeds went to Planned Parenthood.
As an audience member and consumer though, it really cements that this place is one of my fav hangouts. Eclectic music, pin ball and arcade games, the BEST ‘bar food’ you could ever hope for (vegan gyros, falafel, tater tots, etc). The owner preaches inclusiveness and rock and roll. That’s basically his mantra. Unlike many bars and venues in Portland, Slabtown is feminist friendly, queer friendly– anything friendly. They’re just friendly.
There’s a reason why touring bands clamor to play there, why it is featured in Portlandia countless times, why there’s writing on the walls– this place has spirit. Weird, Portland-​y spirit. And I expect even more awesome shows in the future! And now i’m craving one of those pita sandwiches.
No where in Portland is doing this right now.

It’s a dive bar with great bartenders, an unusual food menu. I enjoyed a Cider on Tap and a Falafel Sandwich. My friends ordered various beverages, pours, shots and beers as well as food and we all left happy.
There is a game room in back and a pinball area in front.
It’s not pretty, but hey, it’s called Slabtown so what do you expect.
Highlight for my group: It has a kissing booth.

Slabtown’s my neighborhood bar, and very specifically because they have skeeball, air hockey, and lots of space to roam. It’s a party bar.
The only thing that blows is that I have to pay cover every time they have a band, and I am never, ever there to see any of the bands that play. Haha. I hate metal and heavy rock; but I love live music, so sometimes I tolerate it when I want to duck in and have a drink. That must say something about the atmosphere of the bar, if I like it enough to pay $ 5 to get into a dive.
And also, this place is DEFINITELY a Portland institution. I’d put the reputation up there with Satyricon, La Luna, Starry Night, etc. in terms of the town’s music/​club history. That alone makes it worth stopping by for.

It is what it is, as the cool kids say about any given topic nowadays, when lacking anything coherent or even slightly interesting to say.
With no other rational basis other than the name of the place, I went to Slab-​Town thinking perhaps it might be a hitherto unknown spot for great bbq. They’re open late every night, until at least beer thirty, so that gets at least one star from this ol’ cow-​poke, purty near every time.
I quickly learned that whatever the mode or theme is for Slabtown, it surely isn’t bbq, and may not be any sort of meat whatsoever, if the current chalkboard menu is any indication. It’s falafel platter heaven up in Slabtown, that, and the «So Rock-​n-​Roll it hurts» vibe make this an instant, west-​side version of Slim’s in St John’s — only the prices are higher, and the toilets are even more revolting @ Slabtown — which may be the original source of the name of the dump? Who knows…
I greatly enjoyed the commitment to 80s arcade entertainment @ Slabtown. I wonder if all the pinball machines that periodically blink the mantra of old, «Just say no to drugs» is an obvious display of kitsch on the owner’s part, intentional irony, or otherwise, being in such an overtly sleazy dive.
According to tradition from Antiquity, Moses lead his people through the wilderness, having freed them from centuries of captivity, only to hear them whining continuously of their relative days of ease in captivity — and how they longed for their flesh-​pots. That phrase long puzzled and intrigued me — - fleshpots. I get the feeling that, whatever else these fleshpots may have been precisely, they would have fit right in a place like Slabtown. And for that, they earn a highly prized second Unilocal star from THIS reviewer…

Why would you go here when Yur’s is one block away?
Drinks are average, bar is dirty. Sometimes they have music and I would not try the food here unless I really had to. Servers have never really been rude to me, but have not really ever been friendly to me.
Generic Every-​Bar America… (with cool windows)

Usually this wouldn’t be my type of place. But, every once in awhile I feel like Eddie Murphy in «Coming to America» and intentionally want to be somewhere that’s a bit less upscale than I’m used to.
I could go here without worrying what I have on or what I look like on a particular day. From looking around I get the sense most others that go here feel that way too. Yes, the men’s bathroom isn’t clean, but the rest of the place isn’t that bad (especially once you start drinking). This is a funny place to hang at and you get the sense everyone is welcomed.
I haven’t ate here and I haven’t played the pinball machines either. I’ve drank super cheap beer and listened to what was probably even cheaper live music. Maybe 2 to 4 people would get up at once to dance to whatever band was on, while about half the crowd looked on in amusement and the other half was oblivious to the fact there was a performance going on at all. I swear one guy performed for 45 minutes then afterwards went to sit with his friends, and they asked him would he had been doing tonight, not realizing he was just up on stage.
If this place was a bit closer walk I’m sure I’d stop by frequently to drink and hang. Just not after work in my business attire.

Brenda is awesomesauce. Found this on a business trip whilst getting frickin’ LOST. Lucky us!
We walked in asking about the menu, and Brenda was funny and no BS — «It’s BAR food darlin’» :) I am a HUGE fan of the Sea Cow, so I felt right at home. Manatee love.
The food was fast and tasty, the drinks just right. I felt like Goldilocks in the baby bear of dive bars. The bathroom was entertaining even if a tad scary.
I’ll make an effort to go back when traversing P-​town again.