Tag: Big Wave Café

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Our Suppliers Offer the Best of the North Oregon Coast

Darus Peake
Darus Peake of Tillamook Bay Boathouse (Photo courtesy of 1859 Magazine)

When you dine at the Big Wave Café you experience the bounty of the north Oregon coast.

We proudly serve as much regional food as possible. Fortunately, there are many local food producers offering everything from vegetables to free-range chicken.

Here are some of our local suppliers:

• Sleepy Monk Coffee Roasters – We serve coffee brewed in Cannon Beach, which is just 12 miles north of Manzanita off U.S. Highway 101. Owners Jane and Victor Harding started what evolved into Sleepy Monk Coffee Roasters in 1989 when they began selling coffee in the Seattle area from a cart Victor built himself. Three years later they opened a bonafide coffee house in Redmond, Wash., where they thrilled at the coffee-centric community that sprang up in their sit-down establishment. Over the years they cultivated their knowledge of coffee beans. When they moved to the north Oregon coast, Jane and Victor built a coffee roastery by hand, just as they did their original coffee cart. Today they roast fresh, organic fair trade coffee at the Cannon Beach location, which also features a tasting room.

• Tillamook Bay Boathouse – Our seafood comes from throughout the Pacific Northwest. We often hand-pick the catch of the day from local suppliers. One of those, Tillamook Bay Boathouse, is 17 miles south of Manzanita in Garibaldi. Tillamook Bay Boathouse offers Dungeness crab (live and cooked), Willapa Bay steamer clams, Netarts Bay oysters, fresh rockfish and troll-caught salmon. From July to September proprietors Darus Peake and Cam Holtz also offer fresh albacore tuna caught off the local coast.

• Reed & Hertig Packing Co. – Much of our beef, pork and poultry comes from longtime north Oregon coast meat purveyors Reed & Hertig, of Warrenton. The company has offered USDA-inspected meat to local dining establishments for more than 45 years. Carl Hertig, who co-founded the company with Bob Reed in 1959, was born in Garibaldi and raised in Seaside. He operated a meat market in the local Piggly Wiggly on the corner of Broadway and Holladay before going into business with Reed. Today Kevin Hertig owns and operates the company.

As you can see, it doesn’t get much more local than that.

The next time you’re in Manzanita, stop by the Big Wave Café for a taste of something local prepared by people who love food.

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Short Sands Long on Mystery

From the Statesman-Journal: ¨As rare January sun shines at the Oregon Coast, a surfer take to the waves at Short Sands beach.¨ (Photo by Thomas Patterson)
From the Statesman-Journal: ¨As rare January sun shines at the Oregon Coast, a surfer take to the waves at Short Sands beach.¨ (Photo by Thomas Patterson)

Just a few miles north of the Big Wave Café is the hauntingly beautiful Smugglers Cove and Short Sands beach.

The Salem Statesman Journal recently published a piece on the spot’s allure to surfers. However, while the surfing there is widely acknowledged as excellent, the beach makes a fine spot for meditating, picnicking or just taking a nap in the sand.

Short Sands can be reached through Oswald West State Park, named for Oregon’s 14th governor and a champion of keeping the state’s ocean beaches accessible to everyone.

The nearly 2,500-acre park offers paths that cross footbridges over Necarney Creek and wind through an old growth temperate rainforest, some leading to the beach and others leading to Neahkahnie Mountain or Cape Falcon.

As for the name “Smugglers Cove,” we don’t know if the smugglers were the rumored moonshiners who reportedly performed illegal booze runs in the area during Prohibition, or the “pirates” who, legend has it, buried treasure somewhere on Neahkahnie Mountain, who may have taken shelter in the cove before continuing south.

… Either way, the spot fairly crackles with a sense of the mysterious, and remains one of our favorite places in the world.

 

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The Big Wave Café Earns a TripAdvisor 2013 Certificate of Excellence

tripadvisor

 

MANZANITA, Ore. – May 31, 2013 – The Big Wave Café today announced that it has received a TripAdvisor® Certificate of Excellence award. The accolade, which honors hospitality excellence, is given only to establishments that consistently achieve outstanding traveler reviews on TripAdvisor, and is extended to qualifying businesses worldwide. Only the top-performing 10 percent of businesses listed on TripAdvisor receive this prestigious award.

To qualify for a Certificate of Excellence, businesses must maintain an overall rating of four or higher, out of a possible five, as reviewed by travelers on TripAdvisor, and must have been listed on TripAdvisor for at least 12 months. Additional criteria include the volume of reviews received within the last 12 months.

“We are honored to receive a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence,” said Brian Williams, who, with wife Carol Williams, owns the Big Wave Café. Their son, Sam Williams, serves as the restaurant’s general manager. “We strive to offer our customers a memorable experience, and this award is evidence that our hard work is translating into positive reviews on TripAdvisor.”

For TripAdvisor, the feeling is mutual. “TripAdvisor is delighted to celebrate the success of businesses around the globe, from Sydney to Chicago, Sao Paulo to Rome, which are consistently offering TripAdvisor travelers a great customer experience,” said Alison Copus, TripAdvisor for Business vice president of marketing. “The Certificate of Excellence award provides top performing establishments around the world the recognition they deserve, based on feedback from those who matter most – their customers.”

About the Big Wave Café:

Brian and Carol Williams purchased the Big Wave Café in 2011 after moving back to Oregon from Chicago, where Brian served as senior vice president at Career Education Corp. for Le Cordon Bleu. An accomplished chef, Brian presides over the Big Wave kitchen. Carol, meanwhile, is responsible for the restaurant´s much-loved desserts. She graduated from Le Cordon Bleu Portland and studied with French chef Pascal Tisseur at Petite Provence, a Portland bakery.

 

About TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel site*, enabling travelers to plan and have the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors**, and over 100 million reviews and opinions. The sites operate in 30 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors.

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Big Wave Cafe to host benefit dinners

MANZANITA — Following the success of last year’s dinner that raised several thousand dollars for a local handicapped access ramp, Brian and Carol Williams plan to use their Big Wave Café, 822 Laneda Ave. in Manzanita, to drum up more support for the Pine Grove Community House, the Rinehart Clinic and the Manzanita Business Alliance.

The first fundraiser, scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, is an all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner that will benefit the Pine Grove Community House. The cost is $10 per plate. Those who attend are invited to bring a dessert to share.

Last year, the Williams hosted a benefit for the local nonprofit organization, raising $2,400 toward the $15,000 needed to build a new handicapped access ramp at the downtown Manzanita venue.

At 6 p.m. Feb. 4, the Big Wave Café will host a low-cholesterol, low-sodium, low-fat meal in conjunction with American Heart Month, with proceeds benefitting the Rinehart Clinic in Wheeler. Tickets will cost $20 each, and will be good for a complete heart-healthy, multi-course served dinner with pre-dinner heart-healthy appetizers and post-dinner heart-healthy desserts.

Tickets will be available at Manzanita Lumber and the Rinehart Clinic. There will be 70 tickets available for one seating.

“Brian and his family at the Big Wave exemplify the community spirit which makes the area so special in supporting the time-honored medical care provided to North County for the past 100 years,” said clinic CEO Ellen Boggs.

The Williams will round out their series of fundraising events with the Manzanita Business Alliance March Open House, at a future date.

The Williams moved to North Tillamook County from Chicago to purchase the Big Wave Café in September 2011. Brian Williams left his job as senior vice president at Career Education Corp. for Le Cordon Bleu to return to Oregon, where the couple grew up. Carol Williams, who makes desserts, is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Portland and studied with French chef Pascal Tisseur at Petite Provence, a bakery in Portland.