Not bad at all
Casa Diablo is a little out of the way, but I've grown to quite like it. The food is better than I expected for being vegan and most is $5 or less. Alcohol prices are average, and the bartender Jessica is quite good (and hot). She makes a wicked Tuaca Sidecar.

The owner Johnny is friendly yet unobtrusive, generally offering to shoot pool with you or even go a round of chess. He spends a lot of time getting to know his customers, which is admirable.

The DJs play a good selection and hip-hop seems to be excluded from the playlists. Also noteworthy is that the DJ doesn't beg the audience to pay the strippers, every 30 seconds. More clubs would do well to follow suit.

My only real complaint is that lap dances are $35 (!!!) and the lap dance room is so dark that you can't see the girl that's right in front of you.

Overall, I recommend it.

Great place
I really like this place! The location is out of the mainstream, but easy to get to. It's less than a mile and a half from the Fremont Bridge, so if I'm somewhere on 23rd, casa Diablo is my next stop. Johnny welcomes me like family, the girls are hot, and they have a really nice pool table, which is free. I LOVE that I can enjoy pool, beer, and hot naked girls without stinking of cigarette smoke.

Casa Diablo
Well, I guess I'm in the minority, as usual! I rather like the place! The two bartenders, day and night, have been great! The owner, Johhny, also has been really cool with me! I never was in here, when it was the Pirates Cove, so I don't have any correlation to offer, but as I've stated, he's been good to me! Maybe, if you naysayers learned to tip, a little better, you might start having better experiences, wherever you go! Lighting does suck and the food, well, I like meat, so I can't comment. My drinks are always good, but it's hard to mess up a shot of Maker's Mark and a beer, no matter where I go! Anyway I will be going back and did just last night! Happy 420, to Karla, Jesse, Johnny and several of the dancer's!

Let a real businessman run this place!!
Horrible food, the owner was an ass, the lighting terrible & drinks were to much $$$. The only things the place had going for it were the girls and the smoke free atmosphere.

adamant is wrong.
Buy a drink, get a free 'lunch' served all day, The food was perfectly fine, the fries were slightly salty, but were nicely crisp and not your soggy type.

Johnny came up to us and talked to us when we first came in there and explained things.

The women were hot, but several of them seemed a bit concentrated on chit chatting to get a lap dance from the customers. For awhile, we were concerned the women weren't going to take all of their clothes off, but that turned out to be just a couple of them.

Yes, the women like to place their legs on your shoulders and so on...I would have never thought a person would complain about that, at a strip club.

smoke-free
Another smoke-free club just opened up — Lucky Devil Lounge. They do have a patio where you can smoke. The girls are hot and the staff seems cool.

meh, with a side of mexican food
I've been a vegan for 14 years, but what drew me to this place was that is the only smoke-free strip club I've ever heard of in Portland.

Places like the Magic Garden and Mary's have great girls, but I can't deal with the blue-cloud of death.

Casa Diablo has terrible lighting. There's a huge neon beer sign on the far wall, so if you're at an of the tables that flow along the long dance floor, all you're going to see are silhouettes.

The food was decent. I didn't get any free food for buying a drink, as was advertised on their website and tv news interview.

One stripper with huge fake knockers would put her legs over the shoulders of guys sitting up at the stage, with her ass or crotch centimeters from their face, and then wiggle around. This is with half her weight on their shoulders.

I ordered a Hennessy, which was underpoured into a regular glass, and charged $6 for the small sip.

The owner came out, leaning on my friends' chair, with some unwanted chatter. I mentioned having been to the pirate's tavern, though I didn't mention I had gotten burned so bad there I had vowed never to return (that would have been paying $10 for a meal which I think the chef accidentally poured a half-shaker of salt into my "pirate burger").

I had been to the Pirate's Tavern four or five times while I worked at Montgomery Park, for lack of vegan options. Each time the service was absolutely terrible, the food was way overpriced, and the area is the pits.

While he was hanging over our table, I mentioned to the owner of Casa Diablo that the Pirate's Tavern likely went out of business due to the location, to which he replied that people made a 3 hour drive from Seattle to eat there. Well, if it was so great, it would still be around, wouldn't it? Evidently, this guy owned that, too.

The girls were not worth it, the food was not worth it, and the drive out to the boonies was not worth it.

Sleazy is as sleazy does
Or, in this case, sleazy does because sleazy is. This reincarnation of the former pirate-themed, over-priced, deep fried mystery-meat, vegan food establishment called the Pirate's Tavern might seem like a good idea at the outset because, as we all know, what Portland needs is one more strip club. However, it remains under the ownership of LA-transplant John Zukle, who has now apparently taken to calling himself "Johnny Diablo," at least when he is not referring to himself as "lord and master" or the "new king in town" (see the "Philosophy" section on his myspace page, to which you'll be redirected when you go to www.casadiablo.com).

When it comes to self-assessment, could this guy have his head any further up his meat-free colon? I guess when you think you are a "king" and the "lord and master," you also think you can be rude to your customers and waitstaff and stay in business. Oh wait, that's right, that’s why he just recently went out of business! Well that and the fact that his pricey food, vegan or not, kind of sucked and what with the other unpleasantries, why would anyone bother! Well now he has upped the ante.

In this newest venture, he is still serving his bizarre brand of calorie- and fat-conspicuous vegan food, as he is a self-described "ethical vegan," the one pillar of “social correctness” to which he clings. But who is really going to go there to eat? What he is really selling is T&A, because he knows most of us will put up with a lot of other shit just to get a little of that. Mr. “Diablo” is making a last ditch effort to stay afloat, and being the sleaze that he is, a strip club, which not only tolerates, but supports men (and women) in being crass and abusive (hey, it’s good fun, right!?), seems like the perfect thing. But I predict it won't be long before this ship goes down just like his last gimmicky adventure because he is, above all else, a bad captain.