Güero opens its back patio up for the summer as a fully separate, open-air restaurant. This year it’s a wine and mezcal bar called Farag’s.

You’ve been cooped up in the office all week. You’ve got the dog with you. Maybe it’s the one clear day in the three-week forecast. Whatever’s pulling you out-of-doors, when you get the itch to be outside, it’s hard to settle for anything else. A mediocre meal isn’t so bad when the sun-dappled light is just so. But this is Portland; there are too many good restaurants to opt for anything subpar. If you’re craving harbor-style seafood classics, elegant snacks and a craft cider, one of the best steaks in the city (or a “reverse steakhouse”), you can get all that alfresco. Here’s where.

Bellwether Bar’s shady backyard patio.

Bellwether Bar

Mt. Tabor

Elevated bar food is Bellwether’s game, burgers to chicken liver mousse. The aesthetic follows suit, with the lived-in charms of a storied bar and the subtle touches of a refined restaurant. A few seats on the front porch look out onto the street, great for a quick drink, but the back patio is lush and shady like the ultimate backyard, the kind to linger in for hours. Cocktails never have names. They’re instead numbered arbitrarily, which carries the theme of under-promising and over-delivering. 

The patio behind Bauman’s new tasting room is arguably the best place to sip cider and catch some sun in the city.

Bauman’s On Oak

Buckman

This new tasting room from the 100-year-old cider company is as much about the food as it is the cider. The warehouse dining room feels halfway outside already, but the large, open patio around back is best for catching some rays while sipping a signature loganberry cider. The menu is snacky but counterintuitively substantial. Tartines on several house-baked breads hold the likes of Alaska-caught salmon, procured and smoked by the owner, and a tangy, caramelized onion butter. The little miso crab roll is gaining a reputation. 

Coquine Market

Mt. Tabor

Next door to one of the city’s most ambitious restaurants is its casual market café, which serves coffee and stellar pastries by day and a counter service French bistro–inspired menu in the evening. The patio wraps around the building, stretching into its residential neighborhood in Mount Tabor’s shadow. It’s equally good for a 10-minute pause with coffee before a hike as it is a memorable dinner watching the sunset.

The steelhead sandwich at Flying Fish Co., one of its countless harbor–style staples.

Flying Fish Co.

Kerns

The built-out parking lot patio of this fresh-catch market is a true, ahem, catch-all for iconic seafood dishes, often featuring wild Pacific-caught fish. It feels like visiting your friend’s very favorite crab shack, except it’s on East Burnside. They serve a hodgepodge of seafood-forward dishes: clam chowder, the Korean mussel and noodle soup jjamppong, salmon burgers, fish and chips, Oregon rockfish tacos, and a whole menu of pokes. The lengthy weekday happy hour is a nice time to visit for oysters on the half shell and something bubbly (beer or wine).

The sidewalk lounge at G Love’s sister bar next door, the Love Shack.

G Love

Northwest District

Local vegetables star at this “reverse steakhouse”—but don’t skip the tuna poke stuffed “crusty avocado.” Large tents (nice ones) out front make an ideal patio to sip cocktails, snack on your veg-centric meal, and get you fill of Slabtown people watching. The patio's real highlight is G Love’s "private dining room," a converted VW bus parked on the curb out front—it's a smart move for dates, if you're looking to impress. Next door is the Love Shack, a lovably kitschy sister bar with its own lounge-y patio (think poolside cabana without the pool). 

Gado Gado

Hollywood

Specializing in Dutch-Indonesian “Rijsttafel,” or rice table, Gado Gado serves a prix fixe, family-style feast of curries and dumplings with house pickles and sambals, all of which centers on the titular, clove-scented coconut rice. But for something more casual, you can also order a la carte dinners of steak tartare with squid ink krupuk or citrusy grilled albacore with dragon fruit sambal matah. Dining here strikes a perfect balance of ambitious cooking and casual fun, both inside and on the covered, enclosed, really very nice patio that happens to be in a strip mall parking lot. Check out the few private tables covered by individual A-frames. 

Tough to beat an ice-cold cocktail and a hamburguesa on Güero’s sidewalk patio.

Güero

Kerns

Güero may well have the best patio on Portland’s best patio strip, NE 28th Avenue. It’s the ideal setting for a carnitas torta and mezcal margarita. Low stools line the sidewalk with tables that swing out from the wall. Misters rain from above on hot days, and a wealth of bar-height seating fills the more substantial patio built into the street. In the summer, a third option is the popup space around back: a full-service, fully outdoor restaurant that rotates concepts each year. Chef and owner Megan Sanchez is usually cooking in the food truck–style kitchen that overlooks the crowd, next to the open-air bar.

Laurelhurst Market

Kerns

Sure, there's a lovely dining room inside, but the sizable covered deck at this butcher shop and steakhouse is the go-to place to gorge yourself on lunchtime roast beef sandwiches or evening steak frites. The deck takes up most of the former parking lot, illuminated by a canopy of twinkly lights; its size and vibe make it a worthy contender for large, alfresco celebration dinners—particularly those involving updated steakhouse classics, from caramelized onion mac and cheese to baked sweet potatoes with Rogue Creamery blue.

There’s no classier place for a patio date night than OK Omens’ tree-covered sidewalk setup.

OK Omens

Hosford-Abernethy

If you want a slightly cheffy meal and an excellent glass of wine—and you want to have fun on a patio while doing so—this is the place. It’s one of the city’s dreamier outdoor dining spaces, a sunny sidewalk courtyard on the edge of Ladd’s Addition. Wine and food are as playful as they are well-executed. A burger with raclette cheese and caesar salad in tribute to El Torito sit next to more classic cut-of-meat-with-a-nice-sauce entrées. One Oregon orange wine, per the menu, “tastes like dancing in the desert while the gods rain down nectarine and mandarin juice on your clove and sage dusted half-naked body.” But the Rieslings here are nice, too.

A few window bar seats opposite Phuket Café’s train car–style streetery.

Phuket Café

Northwest District

No white tents or hasty wood-and-plastic structures here—Phuket’s patio is creatively and adorably designed to look like a streetcar, its wood painted in peachy and rosy hues and outfitted with little booths. Order a tropical-vibed cocktail from the ambitious bar and devour what’s become a signature: dry-aged steak with spicy-funky gang ke-lek dip. For a more casual patio meal across the river, check out sister Malaysian-style fried chicken and roti spots, Hat Yai.