About Vino Paradiso
Vino
Paradiso Wine Bar & Bistro is downtown Portland's only bonafide wine bar, located in the Pearl
District. It was opened June of 2005, as a warm,
inviting, hip, yet casual place for friends to hang out for fabulous
food and a wine list that is at once easy to read and eclectic, with
choices for the meek as well as the wild. Our goal is to
shake the notion that one must know a lot about wine or have a
lot of money to enjoy
wine at a restaurant.
• Full dinner menu, which changes regularly.
• Wine, beer and now cocktails served, lists change regularly
• We are a retail wine shop as well. Take 50% off wines on glass
list, 30% off bottle list
• Premium Wine Flights, change often
• Wine Dinners & Classes
• Private Parties of 15 to 125 guests
• Art Gallery, new artist every month
• Sidewalk seating, weather permitting
• Free Wi-Fi access, with purchase
• Gift certificates
• Reservations encouraged
• Ample street parking available
• Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover accepted
• Non-smoking, except outdoor seating
• Minors allowed until 10 pm
• Open Tuesday through Saturday 4 - 11pm (or so), Sundays 3 - 9pm
• Wheelchair accessible
• Free from downtown, on the Streetcar, in "Fairless Square." Get
off at the Glisan Stop. See the Google Map Below.
CHEF PAUL LOSCH
Chef Paul Losch received his formal training at Vong in London under Jean Georges Vongerichten, and the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York, where he graduated with honors and amongst the youngest graduates the school had seen to that time. However, his first introduction to the culinary arts came at the age of 13, when he learned how to make pasta from scratch from a library book. “I rolled the dough by hand and cut it with a Pam spray can lid,” he remembers. In the 17 years since then, Losch has worked as a pastry chef, appetizer chef and executive chef, and proven himself to be creative and versatile in the kitchen. He has worked as a butcher at an artisan grocery in Brooklyn, as a poissonier at Rene Pujol’s iconic French restaurant in the Theater District and ran the kitchen at Frederick’s Downtown in the West Village before moving to Portland.
Now he brings his varied breadth of experience to Vino Paradiso, where he was sous chef for a year before taking over as head chef in January of 2010. Losch’s dinner menu at Vino Paradiso is modern American with a focus on Northern Mediterranean flavors, featuring flatbreads, salads, cheeses and at least two or three house-made pastas. Expanding upon solid past menus, Losch includes more sharable small plates, as well as entrées, seafood and fresh, local ingredients. Seafood, one of his passions and specialties is often prominent. “The key to making the best-tasting food is to highlight the ingredients,” he says. “And being in the Northwest, you can get the best quality for basically everything you need within 100 miles of where you stand.”
TIMOTHY NISHIMOTO, Owner/Sommelier
Timothy Nishimoto was born in Florida and grew up
in Long Beach, California, the second of three children. He credits
his Japanese grandmother with teaching
him that food and drink are so much more than nourishment. “From her, even
a plate of peanuts was well-presented,” he recalls. Timothy graduated from
Cal State Long Beach in 1990 and moved to Portland, Oregon in1991, where he has
held a variety of restaurant jobs (Bima, Papa Haydn, Santa Fe) both on the floor
and in management. In 1999, he began work as a wine steward for what was then
Nature’s Northwest Fresh in Laurelhurst district.
At Nature’s (and then at Wild Oats, once the store changed ownership),
Timothy created a wine selection that was thorough, approachable and complex.
Now that his keen interest in wine was set, Timothy couldn’t shake this
notion: a cellar and a setting with a convivial environment that would complement
moods and intensify flavors. In fact, for the last ten years Timothy had been
hatching a plan to start a wine business of his own. But parallel careers as
a wine steward (now certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers as a Sommelier) and a vocalist (he started singing with Pink
Martini in 1994 and officially joined the band in 2003) kept his spare time
to a minimum. When the opportunity arose to acquire Vigne, he leapt at the chance.
Thus Vino Paradiso is the realization of a years-long dream.
When cornered into naming a ‘favorite’ wine, Timothy will allow that
it would probably be a Pinot Noir. Place he’s most enjoyed drinking wine? “In
Paris, on the steps of Sacre Coeur,” he says, without missing a beat, “After
the opera, Fall 2000.
How to Find Vino Paradiso
We are located at 417 NW Tenth Avenue Portland, Oregon between NW Glisan and Flanders, on the Eastside of the Gregory Building
Map Links: Google
Local
Pearl District Area Map:
