A few years back, I walked up to the bar of a Southern-influenced restaurant at Portland International Airport, scanned the relatively well-stocked whiskey shelf and asked for a Sazerac, the classic absinthe-rinsed New Orleans cocktail.

“A what?” the bartender said.

Here’s a fact about American airports: There’s almost always a place to get a pre-flight cocktail, but rarely a great one. Even with the impressive push to improve PDX concessions with more (and better) local food and drinks options, few airport bars reflect the post-2000s cocktail revolution that radically altered bars and restaurants across the United States, particularly in Portland.

Juliett hopes to remedy that. Though its “women in aviation” theme is more muted than advertised, Juliett is still notable for being one of the first cocktail bars (if not the first) to open to the public at a U.S. airport. And it’s the latest addition to an airport undergoing a massive overhaul, with two redesigned concourses (B and E) and a sprawling Main Terminal not set to open until 2025.

Consider the ice: Most airport bars use the same high-volume ice machines as inexpensive hotels, producing rapidly melting crescents that over-dilute drinks before the first sip. Juliett isn’t exactly hand-carving ice spheres for its Old Fashioneds, but partners Lightning Bar Collective and ChefStable did push for a machine capable of turning out tidy little 7/8th inch cubes, a small but important expense in the bar’s multi-million-dollar budget.

“A lot of airports just really lack quality cocktail bars,” said Lightning Bar Collective’s Adam Ohlsson, who researched the subject before crafting Juliett’s cocktail menu. “If you Google it, you probably won’t find one.”

He’s not wrong. Pick a guide to America’s best airport watering holes bars and you’ll find big brewpub chains, cookie-cutter wine boîtes and standard-issue restaurant bars, but few places to find a top-notch Manhattan. (Exceptions include the various Centurion Lounges open exclusively to certain American Express cardholders, with their cocktail menus written by Portland bartender Jim Meehan and One Flew South, an upscale restaurant at Atlanta’s international airport with a well-executed cocktail program.)

Juliett is a craft cocktail bar inside Portland International Airport and is located in the E concourse.

But even opening a boxed doughnut hole kiosk at an airport has its hurdles, most notably cost and logistics. Typically, airports start by putting out a federal RFP (request for proposals), with applicants asked to prove a base annual revenue, generally leading to a high ratio of chains.

Despite coming from two of the better-known restaurant and bar groups in Portland, Juliett is one of the only businesses at PDX that didn’t start with a location outside the airport. And every square inch is valuable real estate — after all, the end of Terminal E could have served a variety of purposes, including an extra gate. And like all businesses at PDX, Juliett is subject to audits to ensure they keep their cocktails at street-level pricing. Here, cocktail menus at other Lightning Bar Collective bars (Jackknife, Victoria, The Sweet Hereafter, etc.) will have to serve as a yardstick.

Most airport restaurants, including those with familiar names, are operated under licensing agreements by massive global corporations, meaning your favorite local brewery or restaurant has little say in whether the bartender brought in to represent their brand knows the difference between a Ramos Gin Fizz and a French 75. (Juliett landed a general manager with 14 years of PDX experience in Bonnie Gaitan; the bar is hiring.)

Then there’s the difficulty in just getting your product to the site. For Juliett’s opening day, Ohlsson whipped up some cinnamon syrup for a Tiki-inspired cocktail blending Scotch, pineapple juice and velvet falernum, served in a tall glass. As with any incoming product, that syrup had to be dropped off at Bradford Airport Logistics for testing and distribution.

To help smooth the turbulence on their first big airport project, ChefStable and Lighting Bar Collective partnered with SSP, the London-based food service multinational that runs the airport’s Deschutes- and Hopworks-branded brewpubs, as well as the new Corner Market by Lardo, which replaced Kenny & Zukes last year.

“Operating in an airport comes with a lot of security and process challenges,” said Mathias Zippert, director of airport operations for SSP America. “Even just hiring an employee, bringing them into the airport and having them background checked takes a couple of weeks. And then operating, keeping our knives safe at all times.”

Juliett is an aviation-themed bar in Portland International Airport, serving classic cocktails, riffs and tiki-inspired drinks.Vickie Connor/The Oregonian

Make one mistake escorting a potential employee — or media member — past security and you might be suspended for a day, Zippert notes. Two strikes and you’re out completely, and likely out of a job.

But Juliett presented an obstacle specific to craft cocktail bars, with their reputation for fussy drinks, multiple ingredients and elaborate garnishes: How do you present a well-balanced cocktail to a customer short on time?

“Obviously because it’s in an airport it’s got to be built for speed,” Lightning Bar Collective partner Liam Duffy said. “You can’t spend 10 minutes building a 20-touch cocktail, as much as that would be cool. Adam designed the menu to be elevated, the cocktails to look beautiful, something you wouldn’t necessarily find in an airport bar, but also to be made quickly.”

Part of the challenge is the sheer amount of business a 90-seat airport bar can do, ChefStable owner Kurt Huffman said.

“The airport is insane, where you’re doing $2,000 an hour,” Huffman said. “That’s similar to a peak Friday night at Loyal Legion, only there you have 220 people. Here the turn is so fast, you eat, drink and boom, you’re gone.”

According to Huffman, Ohlsson’s mission was to transform what could be a 15-step cocktail at a place like Teardrop Lounge or Deadshot in Portland into one with just three steps.

In addition to that Scotch and pineapple juice cocktail, Ohlsson’s menu has riffs on Manhattans and Aviation cocktails and a sure-to-be-popular spicy Margarita with tequila and cucumber-infused agave syrup shaken to order and poured into a handsome glass tumbler. House-branded beers come from Fracture Brewing, Culmination Brewing owner Tomas Sluiter’s just-opened side project with brewer Darren Provenzano, with wines on tap from ChefStable’s own Coopers Hall label.

“I wanted to take it back to 40s-, 50s-, 60s-era cocktails that are very elevated, but also make them appealing to people nowadays,” Ohlsson said. “You can still use quality ingredients, but you can prep them ahead of time to be more efficient.”

Portraits of women pilots sit on display near Juliett, a craft cocktail bar located in the E concourse of Portland International AirportVickie Connor/The Oregonian

Though the rules were relaxed during the pandemic, airport concessions are generally expected to stay open from the first flight of the day until the last, inclusive of flight delays. And while there might not be a robust market for pre-dawn gin drinks, the bar does offer Bloody Mary’s, and Huffman notes that Terminal E is the home of Southwest Airlines and its popular flights to Las Vegas.

Like other airport restaurants, Juliett has a grab-and-go kiosk for early birds. Breakfast, lunch and dinner menus have French-leaning dishes ranging from a croque monsieur in the morning to a salad Niçoise in the afternoon and burgers and fried-chicken sandwiches starting after 10 a.m.

Juliett was pitched as a “women in aviation” themed bar, but don’t go expecting a life-sized replica of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E hanging overhead. Instead, there are fluted, Art Deco-ish light fixtures echoing the shape of the air traffic control tower looming behind; stunning, weather-dependent views of Mount Hood; and a quartet of tasteful portraits and plaques honoring famous women aviators Bessie Coleman, Berta Moraleda, Hazel Ying Lee and Micky Axton. Drink names call out some of those same pilots and female aviating organizations, including WASP, or Women Airforce Service Pilots, a civilian women pilots’ organization that lends its name to a cocktail and the house-branded IPA.

Everything you need to know about the new food and drink options at Portland International Airport

PDX’s newest concourse opens, will serve mostly regional flights

PDX offers early look at construction of massive new wooden roof

— Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell

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