You Can’t Drink Cocktails All Day if You Don’t Start at Breakfast

I get that brunch is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch, but breakfast is a  compound word, meaning any meal in which you break your (typically overnight) fast. So, feel free to stop pretending you need to wait til 10 am to order a bloody Mary or mimosa and do what the crowds at any of downtown’s greasy spoons-slash-dive bars do and order a shot of tequila or whiskey, coffee back optional, even if you stumble in for some hair of the dog before the “Democracy Now” broadcasts on KPOV. As such, it’s only proper to start with some of those spots for this truncated list of Bend’s best breakfast cocktails.


Dub-Mosa at J-Dub
Directly across the street from the D, hit J-Dub for a second breakfast and second breakfast cocktail and call it a crawl. This riff on a mimosa, dubbed Dub-Mosa, takes the OJ and bubbly combo and spiffs it up with some peach schnapps and blood orange syrup. It also prudently swaps the dainty flute for a proper pint glass. Wash it down with the Doughnut Breakfast Sando—which is of course a breakfast sando served on a glazed doughnut.









Bloody Maria at Cafe Sintra
To go gangbusters on that breakfast crawl, finish with your pinkies up at this Portuguese-American cafe (no European cafes serve American-sized portions!). The omelets, bennies and anything served with linguiça (Portuguese sausage) are delish, but any possible hangover cares more about booze than food, so order a couple of the house specialty pastry, pastel de nata, and an Iberian twist on a Bloody Mary. A normie Bloody Maria subs tequila for vodka, but Sintra’s house bloody mix mixed with house-made pineapple and serrano tequila makes for a restorative elixir that’s spicy, savory, and ever so slightly sweet.





Bailey’s Comet at D&D Bar and Grill
The D doesn’t do frou frou; but it does do strong. This is essentially an Irish coffee with the addition of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Just like its early-bird specials that put any three various b-fast faves on one plate, this cocktail puts three perfect partners—coffee, Irish whiskey and Bailey’s—in your glass. Oh wait, if you do wanna do frou frou, they’ll happily top it with whipped cream.










Pickle Bloody at The Hideaway Tavern
Whether you’re closer to the Eastside Hideaway or Westside Vic(torian Café), there’s no proper discussion of Bend’s best bloodies without one of these two sister spots vying to be our spicy, tomato-y paragon of morning medicaments. There are five bloody offerings, including the Proud Mary, that’s 24 ounces of pureed salad with vodka vinaigrette topped with a smorgasbord’s worth of garnishment. Yet it’s the Pickle Bloody—yes there’s a pickle sliver among the garnish, but that’s not the star here—made with pickle-infused vodka it's for all of us who love pickle-backs but are too exhausted to shoot that separately