Portland Coffee Shop Matta Cafe & House Music Bar Secret Grove to Open – Eater Portland

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Secret Grove will open on Flanders this month, with live music, DJs, and arepas. It’ll open alongside Matta Cafe, serving coffee from the co-owner’s family farm.
As a city that loves both its coffee and its cocktails, Portland was home to a surplus of combination cafe-bars historically. However, as staffing became more of a challenge and COVID-19 made third places feel a little less comfortable than years’ past, the model started to fade in popularity. These days, many coffee shops shut down for the day between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., just as many of the city’s bars begin to open for the evening.
Soon, a Northwest Flanders space will fill the void in a way that’s meant to revive the city’s social spirit. Opening late this May, Matta Cafe (no relation to the Vietnamese pop-up and former cart) and Secret Grove will open within the same venue, a coffee shop specializing in beans from the owners’ own Colombian farm that will transform into a cocktail bar with live house music from both local and rotating acts. The through line from day to night: Colombian food, using both co-owner Aura Matta’s family recipes and standbys from food cart El Pilón.
The space is a collaboration between Matta and Daniel Maloney, who has thrown underground parties and collaborative events for a decade. Maloney got his start in Boston with the Groove Gallery, which combined visual art and live music or DJ sets; Maloney then moved to Atlanta, creating Secret Grove as an underground event before relocating once again. In 2022, Secret Grove emerged within Portland as a series of pop-ups: DJs would land within food halls, hotels, art spaces, coffee shops, and parks, plus several hidden venues only revealed with a ticket purchase. Maloney would then collaborate with local artists, dancers, tea makers, tarot card readers, and craftspeople for creative events, more interactive than the typical concert or DJ set. “There’s a lack of culture and community related to music a lot of places now,” Maloney says. “I want people to feel like they can be social.”
While Maloney was throwing parties across the country, Matta was learning the family business. Matta’s father, Manuel, is a coffee agronomist, specifically working with coffee harvests in Colombia and El Salvador; twenty years ago, the family purchased a 59-acre coffee farm in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta so he could produce his own coffee from plant to cup. Thus, Matta grew up within the farm and steeped in the industry. She eventually focused more closely on coffee business and distribution, working at Procolombia, a state-sponsored organization that focuses on the promotion and export of Colombian products. Matta moved to Portland and began selling her family’s coffee in the United States herself at the farmers market last year.
Both Maloney and Matta were burning out on working without a home base, so instead of opening two separate businesses, they decided to open one together, landing on a plant-filled, wood-lined, green-hued Pearl District locale for its foot traffic. In the mornings, Matta will serve her family’s coffee in the form of drip, espresso, cold brew, and pour over; the cold brew, Manuel’s recipe, will be kept on tap. The bar will also be in play during the day, serving coffee cocktails like espresso martinis, coffee-whiskey cocktails, and the Sierra Nevada, a take on an Aperol Spritz with a coffee twist — all using Matta Cafe coffee, of course.
In the evening, the bar will begin expanding its cocktail menu, with a more focused Latin American bent: Agave spirits will hold significant real estate, as well as aguardiente, an anise-flavored liqueur popular in Colombia. “It’ll have more of a happy hour vibe, a little closer to what you’d see in Colombia at bars, at beaches,” Maloney says. Some drinks keep the live music venue aspect of the space in mind, like the Verbena, a gin, cranberry, and ginger ale drink, an easy sipper that’s “something to drink while you’re dancing,” in Maloney’s words.
Music will begin around 5 p.m. every day the space is open, varying based on the day of the week: Thursday nights will focus more on jazzy R & B and house, while Fridays will specializes in local acts, Latin house, and reggaeton house. Saturdays are what Maloney refers to as the bar’s “flagship” nights, with an emphasis on minimal house music, particularly tribal and Afro house. Vibru, one of Secret Grove’s longer-standing theme nights, is Maloney’s best encapsulation of the vibe: “You’re not overloading yourself,” he says. “You’re just letting yourself vibrate.”
Excluding the morning pastries, supplied by Jen’s, the food menu will stay relatively consistent throughout the day, with things like plantain chips, arepas, and empanadas. While El Pilón will supply the food for both businesses, some dishes will be specific to Secret Grove, like the sweet potato-cheese arepa and a pico, egg, and cheese arepa.
The physical space will include bench seating designed by Colombia’s Julio Jimenez, designed to be communal and adaptable to both the coffee shop and cocktail bar concepts. The idea behind both businesses is to be a community space, whether it’s over espresso or espresso martinis.
“There are few places where you can enjoy music and also be social, meet people,” Maloney says. “There is an opening in the industry to do this, and we feel like we have the energy for the city behind us.”
Secret Grove is set to open in late May at 1425A NW Flanders Street.
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