When Monocle unveiled its annual Quality of Life Survey earlier this month, US cities continued a run of gutter balls that now stretches nearly a decade. The most recent – and only – stateside entry to ever feature on our list was Portland, which last nabbed a spot in 2017.

The years since have not always been kind to Oregon’s largest city. In 2020 and 2021 destructive street protests, violent acts of political extremism, escalating homelessness, rising crime and a disastrous statewide drug-decriminalisation scheme all contributed to drastic reductions in quality of life that caused the once fast-growing city to shrink for the first time in decades.

In 2022, however, Portlanders voted for one of the farthest-reaching municipal reforms in recent US history – the professionalisation of the city’s government. And since 2024, city and state leaders have taken corrective action, including standing up much needed shelter beds, ending laissez-faire policies on public drug use and ensuring that protests remain peaceful and do not veer into property damage. 

In the wake of these changes, a new wave of shops, restaurants and cultural venues have been opening – many of them in the city centre, which just a few years ago had been written off as a moribund office district that would never bounce back. The influx of new businesses could help the city take off once again. 

Here are five addresses you should know for your next visit to Portland.

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1.
Chess Club

While there is surely somewhere in Portland to practice the Queen’s Gambit, this Chess Club is a paean to print, or as the owners put it: “A playground assembly of visual cultures.” There are more than 400 magazines and design books for sale, including lush glossies such as contemporary art mag Hi-Fructose and food and fashion mash-up Family Style. Chess Club also aspires to cultivate local print culture – it’s a must-stop location during the Portland Art Book Fair and hosts a recurring workshop, How to Start a Magazine, that might just yield the next great title in the city that birthed Kinfolk and Berm. In September 2026, they will move 15 blocks from Old City to the heart of downtown with the promise of more space for the printed word.
chessclub.art

2.
Rothko Pavilion

Abstract expressionist Mark Rothko was born in Latvia but in 1913 immigrated to the US and took his first art classes at the Portland Art Museum. More than a century later, the city’s leading visual-arts institution honoured its former student with a glass-fronted entrance, part of a 2,044 sq m expansion that opened in November 2025. The redesign connects the museum’s two aboveground buildings for the first time and creates more gallery space to show new acquisitions by the likes of Jeffrey Gibson, Simone Leigh and Ugo Rondinone. Don’t miss the Rothko cake at Coquelico, the museum café inspired by the artist’s colour-field paintings. Meanwhile, the next great artist embarking on their art education will soon have roomier digs as Portland State University’s Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Art Design inaugurates a new building by Lever Architecture a few blocks down leafy SW Park Avenue.
portlandartmuseum.org

3.
Nodoguro

Perhaps it’s the resemblance between Mt Hood and Mt Fuji – but Portland and Tokyo have a long love affair. You can find Portland-themed coffee shops and bars in the Japanese capital and tasteful tributes to Japanese cuisine in the Rose City. At Nodoguro, the nightly omakase tasting menu blends Pacific Northwest ingredients with Japanese techniques at the hands of chef Ryan Roadhouse, who trained to prepare kaiseki in Fukuoka prefecture. Roadhouse does a more avant garde take on the Japanese haute-cuisine tradition with menus inspired by indie rock albums and Studio Ghibli films. Last year, Nodoguro moved downtown and this year won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific. The dean of American cookery and namesake of the country’s top culinary award was born in Portland – next year, the James Beard Public Market opens around the corner to celebrate the food scene in his hometown.
nodoguropdx.com

4.
Mono Space

Japanese-style listening bars are popping up in cities from Abu Dhabi to São Paulo and Sofia. Portland takes a different spin with Mono Space, which operates as a gallery rather than a watering hole. With a hi-fi Ojas sound system designed and built by audio craftsman Devon Turnbull, the curators at Mono Space treat music as an artform. July’s schedule alone includes album listening sessions and talks covering the likes of Brazilian soul musician Tim Maia, hip-hop production pioneer J Dilla, psychedelic country music and the 1990s alternative scene (where Portland played a supporting role). The converted warehouse space in the Pearl District opened in June 2025 and features a lending library with print titles on audio culture as well as a record shop for home listening.
mono-space.org

5.
The Downbeat

Since February, nighttime has once again become the right time in downtown Portland. Afrobeat, blues, R&B, jazz and hip-hop are bubbling up from a basement in Old Town. The brainchild of Nike product designer Cyrus Coleman – whose father played drums for BB King – and Nigerian-British photographer Adewale Agboola, the music club evokes a bygone era of smoky underground jazz clubs. And with an art gallery perched on the ground floor, the endeavour is part of a larger vision for a building-wide “creative gym” serving the city’s artists of colour.
thedownbeatbar.com

The post Once the US’s kitschy capital in decline, Portland is bouncing back appeared first on Monocle.

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