The Rio Theatre on Broadway near Commercial held a Portlandia marathon called Portlandiapalooza, featuring “artisan grilled cheese” and special Portland beers. I had a super-fun time and could’ve stayed a lot longer than I did.

Bread provided by A Bread Affair. I tried one of their “Naked” baguettes years ago and wasn’t too impressed. But here I got the sourdough three-cheese sandwich and the bread fulfilled its purpose fine.

Three-cheese sourdough with Upright Engelberg Pilsner. A fine clean pilsner from Upright.

I let the sandwich get a bit too cold! But otherwise a pretty tasty grilled cheese sandwich. Awesome that they offer these in a movie theatre. The Rio also has their regular menu of less artisinal grilled cheese 😛

I also tried The Commons’ (Sticke?) Altbier and Breakside’s Wanderlust IPA. The Alt had a certain malt/stone fruit character that I’m growing to like in altbiers…still exploring the style. The Wanderlust IPA was great. Big fruity hop aromas and flavours. Not a very complex beer but totally drinkable and enjoyable.

Couldn’t resist movie theatre popcorn, with real butter. At least I hope it was real butter… I bought the sucker size (small).

It’s like having a massive living room! It was soooo easy to sit there and watch episode after episode. I think they just played the episodes off of bluray.

OMG Fred Armisen live via Skype. He was very generous with his time and didn’t rush the Q&A session. Probably spent a good 30 minutes talking to us. At one point he picked up his laptop and showed us some posters and figurines around his house in LA, testing us to see if we could identify his memorabilia.

A fun and relaxed afternoon with great beer. It’s fun when The Rio does beer-related events. Much thanks to the organizers and to Copper & Theory for providing the beers!