Oregon City Grille
Venue celebrates year of farm-to-table cuisine, blues
Oregon City has another great place to eat these days. The Oregon City Grille, 220 Molalla Ave., is about to celebrate one year of serving traditional farm-to-table style cuisine. The kitchen features a wood smoker, wood broiler and wood oven to provide that traditional, great outdoor smoked flavor.
Oregon City Grille
(Photo by Steve Rodin)
When the Keg Restaurants began closing in Oregon, Oregon City Grille owner Wayne Patterson left his position as regional manager; he saw an opportunity to take his over 30 years of personal and corporate restaurant management experience in the Pacific Northwest and open his own establishment. After an extensive remodel of the building, the Oregon City Grille opened its doors on June 26 of 2008. It is a stylish, open structure featuring wood beams and ample glass, much like a large rural farm home might look.
The kitchen only buys farm-fresh local area produce, fresh Northwest seafood, and high quality Northwest-bred beef, pork and chicken. Then the kitchen slow cooks the meats and seafood using wood to provide the heat and naturally smoked flavor. The finished platters look as good as they taste and have amazing flavor.
Everything from the appetizers to the desserts shows a personal touch that can be enjoyed by any person with a hunger for great food. You can start off with crispy onion shoestrings, BBQ chicken drumettes, crispy buttermilk calamari, copper-kettle nachos or the wonderful wood-oven potato skins, featuring pulled pork, kitchen-prepared bacon bits, cheddar cheese, local onions and sour cream.
For your next course, you can choose the chef’s soup or a field greens house salad, served with apple cider vinaigrette or Caesar salad. All three items come in small and meal-size portions. The Oregon City Grille also offers an iceberg wedge, served with blue cheese, apple wood bacon and chopped tomatoes.
Entree items are either prepared in the wood smoker or on the wood grill. Smoked options include a pulled pork platter, Nola Dixie BBQ half chicken, St. Louis style pork ribs platter and of course, a baby back ribs platter. All come with your choice of sauce, Kansas City, East Texas or Alabama-style, as well as homemade coleslaw and French fries.
Wood-grilled entrees include a flat iron steak, baseball sirloin, boneless rib eye, pork tenderloin, lemon herb chicken and wild northwest salmon. They also offer a delectable fresh fish entree. The night this writer was there it was halibut, slow cooked with herbs, lemon beurre blanc and served on wild rice. Cooked to perfection, it was firm, yet flaky and juicy and extremely tasty. On Fridays and Saturdays, they offer slow oven smoked prime rib platters.
All meals can be topped off with Northwest wines, domestic, foreign and micro-brews, or a cocktail from the full service lounge. The lounge has happy hour from 4:30 to 9 p.m. daily, with a selection of menu items priced at a tempting $1.95 each.
If the meal isn’t enough to get you to come to the Oregon City Grille, they also offer entertainment on Friday, Saturday and Sundays. The area’s finest acoustic guitarists perform in the restaurant. Steve Cheseborough, Town Rill, Dave Mullany and Jessie Meade are regulars. Sunday features “Blues and Bar-B-Que,” when the music is always blues; they add slow-cooked brisket to the bill-of-fare. The special “Blues and Bar-B-Que” menu offers a half a dozen specially-priced meals, all for under $20.
Monday through Thursday, the Oregon City Grille offers a 2 for $22 special. Each meal starts off with a cup of soup or house salad. Entree choices include smoked salmon fettucini alfredo, a six oz. flat iron steak with garlic mashed potatoes, a quarter slow smoked chicken, six oz. of smoked brisket, or ale-battered fresh salmon and chips. The meal is finished off with their homemade bread pudding. Some of these dishes can be upgraded to a larger size for a small fee.
The Oregon City Grille is a dinner house that opens daily at 4 p.m. If you have not visited yet, you should consider the drive south to do so. On June 26, a one-year anniversary celebration features many specials. You can find out more at their web site, OregonCityGrille.com or just call 503-496-3642.