East Burnside's Casual French Bistro With Serious Bottles
Portland · Portland · French · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · April 9, 2026
RagingWine reviewed Canard’s wine list and gave it The Wild Card — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
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Wingman Metrics
You walk into what looks like a lively, unpretentious French bistro — duck confit on the menu, open kitchen humming, people laughing over croque monsieurs — and then you pick up the wine list and do a double take. This is not a casual bistro wine list. Canard has a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence, and the list earns it.
The 200-300 bottle list punches well above Canard's relaxed neighborhood bistro weight class, with a deep focus on France — particularly Champagne and Burgundy — and serious Italian representation. Names like Domaine Leflaive, Rousseau Gevrey-Chambertin, Bruno Giacosa Barolo, and Domaine Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet sit alongside prestige Champagne houses like Krug and Billecart-Salmon. This is a cellar built by someone who actually cares, not a list assembled from a distributor's catalog. The gap, if there is one, is for drinkers who want broader New World exploration — this list knows where it lives and leans into it hard.
Twenty to thirty options by the glass is genuinely impressive for a room this size and vibe, running $12–$25 a pour. That range gives you real entry points into the French and Italian focus without committing to a full bottle. We'd love to see more rotation to keep regulars on their toes, but the depth of the program at least means the standing list has options worth returning to.
Billecart-Salmon Champagne — $25 (by the glass est.)
Billecart-Salmon by the glass at a lively bistro is a rare thing — this is a grower-adjacent grande marque that consistently over-delivers on elegance relative to price. Order it while you wait for your moules frites and feel like you made good decisions today.
Domaine Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet
Most people at Canard are scanning for the fun bistro stuff — and fair enough — but Ramonet's Chassagne-Montrachet on a French bistro list is the kind of bottle that makes serious Burgundy drinkers quietly very happy. It rarely gets the attention of flashier names but it's as precise and mineral as white Burgundy gets.
Krug Champagne
Krug is always delicious and never a mistake, but at a casual East Burnside bistro the markup on prestige cuvées like this one is where restaurants recoup margin fast. Unless it's a special occasion, the Billecart-Salmon does 90% of the job at a significantly friendlier price point.
Rousseau Gevrey-Chambertin + Duck liver mousse
Rousseau's Gevrey has the earthy depth and red-fruit tension to cut through rich duck liver without overwhelming it — it's the kind of pairing that feels inevitable once you try it. This is exactly the wine and the dish this list was built around.
The Bottom Line
Canard is the rare neighborhood bistro where the wine list would embarrass a much fancier room — casual vibes, serious bottles, and enough by-the-glass options to make every visit feel different. Yes, send a friend here for wine. Send yourself first.
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