01
The Main Floor
Our open dining room with full table service, the longest view of the stage, and the loudest corner of the building. Best for date nights, group dinners, and anyone who wants to eat and watch at the same time.
Est. 2014 · Downtown Portland, OR
A 1920s Garage.
Forty Taps.
One Loud Room.
DNA Rock Cafe is a chef-driven restaurant and live music venue carved out of a converted 1920s auto garage in downtown Portland — 5,200 square feet of steel, brick, smoke, and sound.
Forty taps. More independent craft than any venue within 25 miles.
Our Origin
We didn't open a bar that plays music.
We opened a restaurant that builds stages.
In 2014, three friends walked into a 1920s auto garage on Riff Avenue with a hand-drawn floor plan and a stubborn idea: that a great dinner and a great set deserve the same room — and that the room itself should be loud.
Ten years later, the grease pits are gone and the lifts are out, but the bones of the building never changed. Original brick. Riveted steel trusses. Roll-up doors that throw open to the alley on summer nights. Inside those bones, we built a 220-seat restaurant, a state-of-the-art sound stage, a forty-tap craft wall, and a kitchen that takes the food as seriously as the headliner.
The pairing isn't an accident. We wanted a place where a hand-cut ribeye and a limited-edition IPA sit down next to the front row. Where the kitchen closes at 1:30 AM on a Saturday because the band is still on. Where 280 nights a year, the lights drop and the room becomes a venue.
Book the room for your night →The Space
Three rooms. One stage.
Pick where you want to sit.
220 seats split across three distinct vantage points. Same menu, same taps — wildly different nights out.
02
The Mezzanine
A quiet(er) perch above the room. Bird's-eye views of the stage, leather banquette seating, and enough distance from the PA that you can actually finish a conversation between songs.
03
The Stage-Front Rail
Twenty bar stools. Three feet from the monitors. Reserved with dinner or show ticket. The closest seat in the house to whoever is playing that night.
By the Numbers
Ten years of receipts.
4.7/5
Average Google rating across 9,400+ reviews
280+
Live shows hosted every year
1,800+
Five-star reviews across Google, Yelp & TripAdvisor
220
Seats across the main floor, mezzanine & stage rail
Six weekly stages · Six full-time musicians on retainer · Kitchen open until 1:30 AM Friday & Saturday
Awards & Press
The rooms we'd brag about,
if anyone let us.
Press-wary? Fair. Here are the third parties who walked in, ate the burger, listened to the headliner, and wrote it down.
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2023 & 2024 Downtown City Press
Best Live Music Venue
Back-to-back reader-voted wins. The city's only venue on the city's shortlist every year since 2023.
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2022 — 2024 City Eats Magazine
Best Burger — Three Years Running
Hand-pressed daily, custom grind, brioche from two blocks over. The same burger every critic has come back for.
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Engineering Pedigree Acousticians
Sound System by the Builders of Three Billboard-Ranked Venues
The same acousticians who tuned three of the country's highest-grossing rooms tuned ours. Front row, balcony, bar — every seat hears the mix the way the engineer mixed it.
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Yearly Chef-Partner Program
Six Guest Chefs from Six Regional Kitchens
Every year we hand the line to six acclaimed guest chefs from across the region for limited-run residencies. The menu is never the same menu twice.
Plus: caterer of record for three nationally televised music awards held in the state. 180+ private and corporate events booked in 2024 alone. Kitchen & venue are regularly inspected.
A Word From The Room
“The brief we wrote in 2014 was one line: good food, loud music, no attitude. Ten years, 280 shows a year, and one Best Burger trophy later — we're still trying to live up to that sentence. That's the job. That's the only job.”
Marisol Vega
Co-Founder & Music Director, DNA Rock Cafe