Oregon Coast Today

Let Kendra and the crew at the Whiskey Creek Cafe show you why they're a repeat winner of the People's Choice at Newport's popular Oyster Cloyster.

The transporter is the Blue Bacon Burger, one of 16 on Hall’s heavy-on-the-comfort winter menu. It has homemade blue cheese dressing on the bun and a sculpture of cheese crumbles and smoked bacon on top. There’s even blue cheese pressed into the ground beef before it is shaped into the 1/3-pound patty.
“When you fry blue cheese, it takes on a whole third dimension that is obviously addicting, because I have several people who drive out here just to eat it,” Hall said. “I know when (one customer’s) husband is out of town, because that’s when I’ll see her here. It’s a total addiction. It’s like she’s sneaking around, getting her blue cheese burger fix.”
But if blue cheese is not your drug of choice, Hall has other options. The Teriyaki Burger has the sauce mixed in to the patty, topped with a pineapple wedge and melted Swiss. The Roasted Garlic Burger, according to the menu, is packed full of “oodles of slow roasted garlic” for an aromatic, mouth-watering delight.
Burgers come topped with mushrooms and Swiss cheese, green chiles and Monterey Jack. Vegetarians can choose Garden or Boca burgers, topped with grilled seasonal veggies, or the Portobello Mushroom Burger, a meaty mushroom steamed with balsamic vinegar and garlic butter. She tops all three non-meat alternatives with Tillamook Vintage White Extra-Sharp Cheddar, which she believes really enhances the flavor.
Since she bought the business four years ago, Hall has made her reputation with seafood. In particular, this transplant from Utah has displayed a talent for preparing the sweet, clean oysters farmed in Netarts Bay, which at high tide laps right outside her restaurant’s door. Her recipe for Chili Lime Oysters, which won the People’s Choice award at the Oyster Cloyster in 2005, is listed on the menu next to Halibut Fish and Chips, Steamed Blue Lipped Mussels and creamy clam chowder. Hall serves salads, with seafood, buffalo and chicken, plus calamari, clam strips and other fried delights.
Before it was the Whiskey Creek Café, the restaurant was called Wee Willie’s and was known for its burgers and pie. Hall has carried on the tradition of both, serving beef and oyster burgers throughout the day, plus 10 kinds of pie, from marionberry and strawberry rhubarb to sour cream lemon and chocolate peanut butter. Hall’s daughter, Galena, makes them all from scratch. The same goes for the the quiche — crab, spinach and mushroom and oyster, bacon and onion — that bear Galena’s name.
During the summer, business can get pretty brisk at the Whiskey Creek Café, a favorite of car and bicycle tours between Pacific City and Tillamook on the Three Capes Scenic Route. This time of year, it’s a quiet stop for comfort food like burgers, pie and clam chowder. In a few weeks, when the first of the Dungeness crab arrives, Kendra Hall will be lovingly ladling hot bowls of cioppino, too.
“This is the time of year I get to talk to the customers. I like to find out where they’re from, and talk to them about how they got here. I always tell people, if you were here in July we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You wouldn’t even know I exist, because I don’t get to come out in the dining room in the summertime,” said Hall. “I like this time of year. The oysters are fat and plump, and the people are great.”
But, even though the café was named for a bootlegger’s hideout, Hall still chooses not to sell alcohol at her Whiskey Creek Café. The road is just too curvy, both to the north and the south, and her karma just can’t handle the strain, she said. Customers may have to stay desperately addicted to her Blue Bacon Burger instead.
The Whiskey Creek Café is four miles north of Cape Lookout State Park on the Three Capes Scenic Loop. Hours in this cell-free zone (there isn’t any coverage, anyway) are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. They accept cash and checks, but no plastic. For information, call 503-842-5117.


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