So-fishticated dining
Blackfish Café celebrates 25 years in Lincoln City
By Eliot Sekuler
for the TODAY
“I adore restaurants with a sense of place; the ones that become synonymous with where they are. You can taste a city just by visiting these places.”- Danny Meyer, author and multiple James Beard Award-winning restaurateur.
Those searching for a casual dining experience here on the Oregon Coast can choose from a variety of culinary traditions: restaurants that can transport them to Thailand, Italy, Japan, China or Spain. Alternatively, they might choose establishments with food representative of our own Northwest region. In the latter category, perhaps none captures the essence of the coastal Northwest with the consistency and longevity of the Blackfish Café, which is marking its 25th year as a crown jewel of casual dining in Lincoln City.
Founded and continuously operated by Mary and Rob Pounding, the Blackfish celebrates a sense of place by presenting fresh-from-the-ocean seafood and locally sourced seasonal vegetables and meats.
“We serve really good food prepared well and having fresh ingredients is key to that approach,” Rob said. “I got on the farm-to-table bandwagon before it was popular.”
Though the Blackfish Café is an unapologetically casual dining establishment, Rob brought a fine dining background to the enterprise. A 1976 graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, he cut his teeth in several top-tier kitchens in New York before traveling first to South Carolina’s Kiawah Island Resort as an executive sous chef and then to the Sheraton Hotel in Billings, Montana, to serve as corporate executive chef. He arrived on the Oregon Coast when he was hired as the executive chef at Salishan Lodge and presided over that kitchen for 14 years, winning such top fine dining accolades as the AAA 4 Diamond, the Mobil 4 Star and the Distinguished Restaurants of North America Award.
The Poundings’ commitment to the farm-to-table way of cooking is underscored by the credits featured on their menu, which highlight the sources of their provisions, including local seafood vendors Oregon Oyster Farms, Sea Q Fish and farmers Lil Swiss Farms and local mushroom grower Devils Lake Mushrooms.
As much as consistently good, fresh food has been a hallmark of the Blackfish Café’s past 24 years, the Poundings attribute a good part of the restaurant’s success to excellent service and the loyalty and longevity of their employees.
“It’s about the way we treat our customers and our staff,” Rob said. “The woman who just seated you, Linda, has been working here for 22 years. There are three guys in my kitchen who have been here for over 20 years. We treat them with dignity and respect and they stay with us year after year.”
Inside a spacious dining room lined with booths and generously-spaced tables, the Blackfish serves a good variety of Northwestern fare. The skillet-roasted chinook salmon with fennel lime butter, steamed green beans and Oregon blue cheese potato gratin is a crowd favorite. On a recent lunchtime visit, a plate of crisp buttermilk and cornmeal fried oysters arrived perfectly golden-brown, plump and juicy. An Aegean salad, ordered with a vegetarian option, was a lightly-dressed and satisfying take on the classic Greek dish.
“Most of the dishes on the menu have evolved slightly over the years, but there are some that are stalwarts,” Mary said. “The salmon, in particular, is a favorite with many customers. It’s always cooked perfectly and some people who come in regularly don’t want anything else.”
The wine list, though showing a clear preference for Pacific Northwest labels, also includes a well-curated selection of French and Italian imports and offers well over a dozen selections of wine by the glass.
There are only four items on the dessert menu but they include such classics as a key lime pie, a caramel pot de crème and a peanut butter pie. And then there’s the signature dessert showpiece: the Ding Dong, playfully re-constructed with a shell of dark Swiss chocolate enclosing a rich cream filling atop chocolate cake and served with a dollop of raspberry coulis. “When we were first getting ready to open, I didn’t have much in the way of desserts,” Rob said. “So, I called a good friend who owned a bakery down in Yachats and she suggested the Ding Dong. We set out to make it very special with good Swiss chocolate and really good ingredients. And now, I couldn’t get rid of it even if I wanted to. Our customers would be too unhappy.”
The Blackfish Cafe is located at 2733 NW Highway 101 in Lincoln City, and is open for lunch and dinner Wednesday through Sunday. For more information, go to blackfishcafe.com or call 541-996-1007.