Pleasure Mountain To Offer Indian Cocktails and More in NE Portland

Pleasure Mountain, a new bar focusing on Indian cocktails and food, will open on NE 30th Avenue just north of Killingsworth. This is the space that most recently was home to Teote Tavern, which closed this past July. I had a chance to speak with Jim French, Pleasure Mountain’s owner, last week. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Pleasure Mountain

So why “Pleasure Mountain”? I can’t deny that it’s an intriguing name. “It’s a cocktail bar, and I think there’s always a bit of cheekiness with cocktails, and bars in general,” Jim said.

He continued: “Cocktail bars? They’re kind of like an adult theme park. And ‘Pleasure Mountain’ has a nice ring to it. I thought to myself that if I was a customer and I wanted to go somewhere fun, I’d like to go somewhere named Pleasure Mountain!”

About Jim French

I wanted to know a bit more about Jim, who is the sole owner of Pleasure Mountain. He has lived his whole life in Portland, and attended Lewis & Clark College for his degree work.

He has quite a lot of industry experience. He worked at Papa Haydn West for seven years after graduating from Lewis & Clark, and for 25 years he was the owner of J and M Cafe, a terrific little breakfast and lunch spot in the Buckman neighborhood (SE 6th and Ash). Fun fact: they have scrapple on the menu.

“I’ve worked in restaurants in Portland for over 30 years,” he said. “For 25 of them I was a restaurant owner and worked alongside my team—not spending all day in the office. I managed the business, as well as cooking and waiting tables. This kind of approach is important, and I want to bring that to Pleasure Mountain’s work culture, too.”

He owned and operated J and M until December 2022 when he sold the cafe to employees Shanti and Chris. “They are doing a great job!” he exclaimed. After he sold J and M, he took a year off to return to India for another year.  

I was curious as to what drew him to India in the first place. “When I was an undergrad they have an excellent overseas program (60% undergrads participate in the program). It started as a 5-month program in India and I stayed another four months.” Since then I have been back multiple times. I’ve traveled all over India and South Asia, including Pakistan and Sri Lanka.”

Pleasure Mountain: The Concept

Jim offered me a hint of the concept of Pleasure Mountain during one of our initial conversations: “We’re going to do Indian cocktails with a menu that focuses on Indian snacks rotating from north to south to east to west every three months.” Intriguing! I definitely wanted to know more.

First, Jim made an important point: borders change over time, and the territory that we think of as India today is not necessarily the same as the India of years past. He says about 95% of what’s on the menu will be flavors and ingredients associated with today’s India. Other South Asian flavors will also be present (think, mustard oil in Bangladeshi cuisine).

“The thing about South Asian culture is that it doesn’t respect contemporary geopolitical borders. For instance, the Punjab is in both Pakistan and India. Cuisines cross the border. Same goes for the region of Bengal—some of it is in India and some in Bangladesh.” Above all, he wants to present unique and innovative food from India and its neighbors.

He spoke a bit about departing from what we are familiar with in Portland when it comes to Indian food. “Here, there’s kind of a conventional Indian menu with a connection to British Indian restaurant food,” he explains. He calls this type of Indian food (e.g., garlic naan, saag paneer, butter chicken) a “neo-Punjabi style” (the province of Punjab was a part of India under British rule).

Jim does not plan to focus on this type of Indian cuisine. “What I want to do—-because I have been so in love with Indian food my entire life and have gotten to enjoy it in India—-is the break out of that mold,” says Jim. “We will move a little past that with our menu offerings.”

The Menu: To Eat

Pleasure Mountain’s menu will rotate quarterly, and for practical purposes will split the region into north, south, east, and west, in particular shining a light on street foods in those areas. And because this is primarily a cocktail bar, the menu will be on the shorter side with about 10 items. And it will include food that goes well with cocktails, like salty street food and snacks.

I asked him what his favorite food item on the menu is and he replied: a Surati Khavsa. “Surat is north of Mumbai in Gujarat and is known as the best place to eat in all of India,” he explained. “I spent three days there eating around the streets of Surat—they are known for Khavsa.”

He continued, “It’s a Gujarati version of a Burmese dish called Khao Soi. Khavsa involves rice noodles, a coconut broth, Indo-Chinese chutney, peanut garlic chutney, fried garlic, and Indian-style pastry crackers called namkeens, which are quite salty. When they open, their menu will start with food from the west: flavors from Gujarat, Goa, and Majarashtra.

The Menu: To Drink

As I mentioned earlier, Pleasure Mountain is a cocktail bar, primarily. One of the cocktails he told me about (no name just yet) is made with lassi: melon lassi with tangerine liqueur, vetiver sharbat (“a syrup, cooling, made from veitver roots in-house”), vodka, and salted rose petal sugar. “Vetiver is green and grassy, super aromatic, so we use it judiciously,” explained Jim.

For the NA folks, there will be some options. “We will have a small mocktail list, with three on the menu,” explained Jim. “But there will be other alcohol-free beverages, like Indian tea and coffee, and herbal tea.”

I was kind of surprised to hear about Indian coffee. “In southern India, coffee is the hot beverage of choice, not masala chai, which is more common in northern India,” remarked Jim. The coffee will be filter brewed with chicory and served with milk and sugar. 

A Bit on the Emerging Indian Cocktail World + More

Our conversation veered off into the world of Indian cocktails, which is relatively new development, and something I was totally unaware of. “When mixology started in India, it was limited by the pantry they had to work with and the clientele that would patronize them,” he explained. “Popular for years was the mix of Old Monk—a kind of rum—and Coke, but for the most part it didn’t go far beyond that.”

Now that India is continuing to develop, there is a broader clientele for cocktails and bars and they are starting to have a more “swadeshi” sensibility. “This means ‘self-made’,” explained Jim.

“When I was in India in 2007, I traveled to bars all over India and found them embracing India’s regional culinary traditions,” said Jim. “Almost nobody was doing that before. Nowadays there are bars in Sri Lanka, Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbia, Kolkata that are developing a mixology that is more Indian-centric.”

He continued, “Microbreweries are all over India! And lots of hills growing grapes for wine.” There are also distilleries. “Scotch-style whiskeys are huge in India. Pleasure Mountain will offer a small selection of single malts from India.”

“The other liquor they produce in India is gin. There are a number of gins being distilled in India, including the Hapusa brand. Hapusa is far and above my favorite. We will use it in our house martini.” And yes, they will carry Old Monk rum, and will use it in one of their cocktails.

The Pleasure Mountain Space on NE 30th Avenue

When I first reached out to Jim about Pleasure Mountain, he informed me that it was my blurb on the closing of Teote Tavern was the impetus behind securing the space. He told me, “I actually wouldn’t be opening the space without your blog!  I owe you thanks for writing up that note on Teote’s closure. After I saw your article, I walked by the space to poke my nose in the window. And it just happened that I hit it off with the property manager and the landlord.”

There’s a little more to the story, too: When he returned to the U.S. from his most recent trip overseas this past June, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with himself. But he thought, “If the right opportunity came along, I’d get back into the restaurant world.” As I mentioned, he hit it off with the property manager. The landlord has also been really supportive, a great resource, and is excited about the concept.

Jim is also excited to be joining one of the great food areas in Portland (NE 30th and Killingsworth). “Lot of good and exciting stuff going on in that area—it’s got a good community feeling,” exclaimed Jim. “The space is perfect.”

Any Changes To the Space?

I wondered about the interior after Teote’s short time there, and Jim was happy to tell me, “One of the things that attracted me to the space is that it didn’t need a lot of tenant improvements. It has really good bones.” In other words, it doesn’t need a lot of serious structural work, like upgrading plumbing or electrical.

Most of the focus on the interior is on interior design itself. They’ll upgrade lighting, paint, and curtains, to start. “I’m working with a local designer, Peter Dean, of Studio Dad, is absolutely incredible,” exclaimed Jim. “They have done a lot for huge clients like the Oregon Zoo, but also for smaller local businesses like Tumbleweed Boutique on NE Alberta.”

He continues: “We are cooking up some design ideas, which are forthcoming. I’ve been so lucky to get connected with Peter—I can’t praise him highly enough.”

Additional Items of Note

They plan to be open 7-days a week starting around 5pm. On Sundays they’ll close at 10pm; 10:30pm Mondays through Thursdays; and 11pm on the weekends. 

When I asked him, “Is there anything else I should know?” he remarked, “I know I’m a white guy cooking Indian food.”

He added, “India has a colonial past, and I’ve thought a lot about what it appropriate for me to cook as a non-Indian person, especially as Portland is sensitive to that issue, and rightfully so.” (He does not want to be close to anything like 2016’s Saffron Colonial debacle.)

“I’m trying to cook and offer foods that match my credentials and experience. I don’t feel like I’m a complete outsider to India, having spent so much time there, living in people’s home, and studying the language.”

He also says he has no intention of verging into the world of community/traditional foods or offer “ghar ka khana” (home-cooked foods). He wants to focus on the foods that are accessible to everyone in India—and that is street foods. He feels a great appreciation and love of Indian food and wants to share the innovative side of Indian cooking.

Wishing Jim all the best as he puts together Pleasure Mountain and brings it to Portland’s food and drink scene. Looking forward to checking it out when it’s ready!

Pleasure Mountain [projected opening late 2024/early 2025]
5513 NE 30th Avenue, Portland
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