After arriving in Depoe Bay, we drove north a little bit more to do more roaming. We couldn’t help but stop at Lincoln City, which is truly a big coastal town. There’s even a big ugly casino. Trusting the yelp app again, we stopped for dinner at Blackfish Cafe. This is truly a fine dining establishment, without any of the snoot. J had been yammering on the whole trip about wanting to order calamari, so he finally did. It was cornmeal crusted and served with a horseradish aioli. I wasn’t particularly impressed, especially because I’m not a big fan of horseradish, so J ate pretty much all of it. And he loved it. There were some edible flower looking things on here, but neither of us dared to eat it. What is this, does anyone know?

I had a cup of the clam chowder, which they boasted on their menu as being the best clam chowder in the oregon coast. You know what? They were right. As far as among the three chowders I had that week, it was definitely the best one. And it might be one of the best chowders I’ve ever had. J’s entree came with a caesar salad.

So J wasn’t sure what to get as an entree. We asked our very nice server for recommendations and she gushed about the Cioppino. So he went with it. Damn, this thing was amazing. Chock full of pacific northwest seafood, it included scallops, salmon, prawns, clams, mussels, dungeness crab, and other fin and shellfish, and was braised in a red wine, tomato, and herb broth. It was served with grilled crostini. Oh this was a thing of beauty. It was absolutely delicious and stuffed with fresh seafood. And there was plenty left over for J to enjoy the next day, even though the server did not include any of the broth in the to-go box, which bugged him to no end. This really was worth every penny, and then some!

I should have gotten a bucket of that chowder, but since I wanted something small and not hearty, I went with the seafood pizza, which came with shrimp, crab, and capicola ham. This was thin on the crust, and heavy on the cheeses and the seafood. It was nice and light and did just the trick. There were those flower things on the pizza too. Again, I avoided them.

Service was excellent. The staff definitely knows what they’re doing, and obviously, so does the kitchen. There was also tons of art hanging on the walls, which was also cool. It was the entire private collection of a local and it was quite unique. The proprietors are also super nice and friendly and came by to check on us and to thank us for stopping in. It’s a great place!

We took a little drive further up the coast to visit a few more little coastal towns. Waldport turned out to be a dud, but Yachats turned out to be an adorable gem. It’s pretty teeny, but it has a little area with some restaurants. We checked out the yelp mobile app and found the Luna Sea Fish House. It’s also teeny, with maybe about 20 seats indoors. It’s all about the seafood here, duh! They have a boat, or perhaps boats, and they catch things in that big vast ocean, come back, and sell it here. That’s a brilliant business model if you ask me. Unless someone just spilled bajillion gallons of oil into your particular vast ocean.

J got the fish tacos (sense a theme yet?). These were hearty with guacamole. And they must have been particularly juicy, as the fish dripped fish juice all over the fries. J liked the fries. I did not care for them. They were too thick for my liking.

And me? I got the slumgullion. What the heck is a slumgullion? It is a big bowl of clam chowder with white cheeses and bay shrimp. And man, it is big and it is great. I ate the whole thing and could have eaten more. The chowder itself was good, and the addition of the cheeses and the shrimp just made it better. It’s served with garlic bread, which is too crunchy and too burnt. So don’t waste your time on that, and just slurp down the darn slumgullion. Slumgullion. Say that five times!

The service is nice, but not the fastest. One person does everything up front. And man, did she have gravity defying hair! It was remarkable! And there’s probably only one or two people in the back cooking. But the food is excellent, fresh, and it’s a real homey place. When in Yachats, it’s a must-do!

Our next stop on the central oregon coast was Florence. By the way, driving up the coast is pretty amazing. Seriously, it’s picturesque beyond picturesque. It’s also twisty and bendy and a bit scary, but the nature and scenery is pretty stunning. Ocean and cliffs on one side, trees, trees, and more trees on the other. I loved it.

So Florence is a much bigger town. There are several large grocery stores, lots of restaurants, and a cute little historic area. After roaming that historic area a bit, we decided on dinner at Bridgewater, partly because the building was so cool. It’s an old and historic building. The place is pretty large inside with plenty of dining space as well as a bar. The bar is called Zebra, so there’s a zebra theme all over the place. We weren’t big fans of the zebra stuff, but otherwise, we liked the decor, especially the dark wood floors. When we sat down, we were presented with complimentary shrimp cocktail. Who doesn’t love that? The shrimp were pretty small, but they were still tasty. We were hungry so we totally appreciated getting these right away!

J was extra hungry, so he ordered the shrimp and scallop skewer appetizer. These were large shrimp and scallops that were grilled with a sweet and tangy sauce. The scallops were cooked perfectly! There was probably too much sauce on these, and they would have been even better with a more subtle touch of the sauce, but we both enjoyed these.

Because I ordered a proper entree, I got a side salad. I could have had a plain one, but the waiter pointed out that I could get on of their fancier salads as my side salad. When I was floundering, he said that they were extremely popular. So I went with it! Look at this thing! It’s a pretty regular salad to start, with romaine and re onions but it’s topped with mandarin oranges, avocado, and crushed hazelnuts! Whee! It tasted like a mild nutella with every bite! Loved it! It was a strange combination of sweet and tangy from the mandarin, sweet and nutty from the hazelnuts, spicy with the onions, creamy with the avocado, and crunchy with the lettuce. It had everything!

J got a cobb salad. It was only $10, and now we could see why. For whatever reason, they decided to chop up every single element of this salad down to nearly the molecular level. Everything was diced extremely fine,and the lettuce was absolutely shredded to the thinnest I’ve ever seen lettuce. The lettuce would have been good for taco bell tacos, but not for salad. When something crunchy gets shredded so fine, it loses the crunch. And lettuce should be somewhat crunchy, am I wrong? It tasted fine to J, but it still was not what he wanted or expected. So a bit of a letdown on this one.

My entree was the halibut. Man, did we eat a lot of halibut on on this trip! It was another big honkin piece of halibut with mashed sweet potatoes and sauteed veggies. Everything was just perfect. The fish was cooked just right, and plainly grilled, but that was just fine. The veggies were great, and I love me some mashed sweet potatoes! I had plenty of this fish leftover for J’s snack the next day. All of the staff is super young, like fresh off the bus green, but the service was fine too. No complaints here. All in all, this was a nice dinner, even despite the great minced cobb salad fiasco.

Bridgewater Restaurant
1297 Bay Street
Florence, OR 97439-9648
(541) 997-1133?