The soul of Cannon Beach and creativity work hand-in-hand. Artisans use the tools they have in hand to express the soul of this magical town, whether it be a paint brush, a pottery wheel, a camera, a blowpipe, or a beach shovel.
A group of artisans do not use the typical artist’s tools to express their creativity. Instead, their tools may include a set of knives, a stainless steel skillet, an espresso machine, and pizza oven, among other appliances and kitchen tools. Their medium is the bountiful ingredients found in the Pacific Northwest. Their canvas is a plate, mug, glass, cup, or pizza pan. It is their creativity that nourishes Cannon Beach and its people.
The chefs, baristas, wine makers, oil and vinegar infusers, and chocolatiers pour out their hearts to bring creative, delicious food and drink to life. While there are many places to grab a meal, get a hot beverage, enjoy a beer, or reward yourself with a treat, downtown Cannon Beach has the city’s largest concentration of food and beverage establishments.
The Bluesy Traveler wants to help introduce you to the bounty that downtown Cannon Beach has to offer. The foodie tour below takes you on foot to six distinct restaurants, cafes, and shops where, in the course of a few hours, you can experience a feast of artistry.
Sustainability and Fun in a Cup
The tour starts at Elk Creek Coffee, a small, quaint coffee house in the northern end of downtown Cannon Beach. Part of the heart and soul of Elk Creek Coffee comes from the coffee itself. The owners purchase coffee from Caravan Coffee, a Newberg, Oregon roaster which believes in sustainability. Caravan Coffee sources their coffee from growers in developing nations and gives back to the communities where the coffee beans are grown.
Elk Creek’s menu of traditional coffee house drinks is supplemented with seasonal beverages that express the staff’s creativity like a pumpkin chai latte in the fall, a Black Forest chocolate mocha drink in the winter, or a honey lavender cold brew in the summer. Elk Creek’s beverages pair well with the freshly baked scones, muffins, and quiches available at the counter.
Part of being creative is knowing when to have fun. Elk Creek Coffee’s staff show their creativity in different ways, whether it be making pumpkin latte art in October or placing an Elk on the Shelf during the holidays in tribute to the Roosevelt Elk herds that live in and around Cannon Beach.
Artistry by the Slice
Think of pizza dough as an edible canvas. Imagine that canvas topped with locally grown and sourced ingredients that change with the seasons, Montrachet sauce, and cheeses that go beyond mozzarella. The result is Pizza del Mese, a pie so unique that it is served only on the first day of each month. It is the magnum opus of Pizza a’fetta’s pizza makers.
Pizza a’fetta makes the best of its small space, creating works of art that have received honors from Pizza Today magazine. Specialty pizzas such as smoked basil chicken, Thai grilled chicken, Tuscany chicken, and crab, define the creativity that makes the pizzeria stand out. All pizzas can be made with gluten-free dough.
While Pizza a’fetta is known for their specialty pizzas, they place the same amount of creativity into their classic pizzas. The triple cheese pizza, for example, adds parmesan and smoked provolone to the traditional mozzarella. Those three cheeses also top their pepperoni, veggie, and combination pizzas. The takeout window sells those four varieties by the slice, making it easy to grab a quick bite before moving on to the next stop on this foodie tour.
From Boat to Table
Restaurant chefs and foodies want to know where the proteins and produce at the center of their creations come from to ensure that they use the freshest ingredients possible.
Family-owned Ecola Seafoods is a true boat-to-table restaurant. The chefs take pride in knowing that Ecola’s own fishing vessels go out daily to catch the fish they transform into delicious appetizers and entrees.
Ecola Seafoods is a good place to grab a quick seafood cocktail or cup of gluten-free and bacon-free clam chowder. If you’re looking for something more substantive, order a fish and chip platter. Ecola’s fish and chips begins with freshly caught wild salmon and halibut from their fishing boats, which are then filleted, coated in batter, and fried. The same level of freshness is placed into everything on the menu.
If you want to replicate Ecola’s signature menu items at home, you can purchase everything you need at the restaurant’s seafood counter. The fish sold at the seafood counter, like the fish served at the restaurant, was caught that morning. The restaurant’s cocktail sauce and batter mix are available for purchase.
Oil and Vinegar Mix in Perfect Harmony
Foodies know that infusing herbs and spices into olive oil or fruits into balsamic vinegar will create new flavor profiles that turn a culinary work of art into a masterpiece. However, it takes days or weeks to successfully create an infused olive oil or balsamic vinegar at home and most supermarkets carry few, if any, infused olive oils or balsamic vinegars.
This is why walking into the Oil and Vinegar Bar of Cannon Beach is like stepping into a museum of paintings by your favorite artist. The bar’s knowledgeable staff infuses herbs and citrus fruits like basil, rosemary, and blood oranges into olive oil; and Oregon grown huckleberries, peaches, and pears into white or dark balsamic vinegar.
You can taste any of the Oil and Vinegar Bar’s flavor infused olive oils and balsamic vinegars, either individually or in an olive oil-balsamic vinegar pairing. Bring your own bread, like a sliced baguette or sourdough from Cannon Beach Bakery, or use the provided tasting spoons.
The Oil and Vinegar Bar’s staff will answer your questions and suggest additional olive oil-balsamic vinegar pairings. The hardest decision will be choosing which olive oil or balsamic vinegar will best elevate your dishes into masterful chef-d’oeuvres.
Collaboration Makes Masterful Wine
Winemaking is a labor of love not to be rushed. The process of turning grapes into wine combines artistry and science to create the perfect accompaniment to a delicious meal. When a vintner works with winemakers to create varietals that transform regionally grown grapes into fine wine, the result is magic.
You will find magic at The Wine Shack, a wine shop with its own tasting room. The carefully curated selection of Pacific Northwest wines is overshadowed by the shop’s own wines, bottled under the Puffin label. Puffin wines are a collaboration between The Wine Shack’s owners and the winemakers at Lujan Wines and Capitello Wines, using grapes grown in Oregon and Washington.
The Puffin Tasting Room offers two different wine flights, each featuring five Puffin wines. If you want to bring the magic home, the tasting fee is waived with the purchase of two bottles of wine from the tasting line-up. For those who prefer the beauty of locally brewed beer, The Wine Shack offers a flight of four different Oregon Coast and Central Oregon beers. Much like galleries that host visiting artists, The Wine Shack occasionally hosts visiting winemakers, giving connoisseurs the opportunity to meet Oregon’s wine visionaries and taste their latest works of oenophilic art.
Truffles Beautiful Enough to Frame
Chocolatiers are the culinary equivalent of painters. They not only create delectable miniature masterpieces using milk, dark, and white chocolate as their primary medium, but they also take painstaking care in making each individual masterpiece appealing to the eye. The final stop of our foodie tour of Cannon Beach is the Cannon Beach Chocolate Cafe, where each truffle is a masterpiece.
Each Cannon Beach Chocolate Cafe truffle is handcrafted with its own unique personality, thanks to the chocolatiers’ artistry. A miniature candy horn tops each unicorn truffle. Chopped peanuts distinguish the peanut butter truffle. The lavender, Mayan spice, blueberry wine, Dubai, and Irish cream truffles look right at home in an art museum. The shop also creates vegan truffles.
Besides truffles, the Cannon Beach Chocolate Cafe is well known for their drinks, even posting a weather sign at the entrance telling you if it’s a hot chocolate or milkshake day. You can’t go wrong with either beverage, as the cafe’s rich and creamy hot chocolate and thick and creamy milkshakes are decadent works of art. For those who like their milkshakes and hot chocolate spicy, a blend of ancho chili, chipotle, and cinnamon gives the Mayan spice hot chocolate and milkshake some heat.
Beyond the Tour
While this ends the Bluesy Traveler’s foodie tour of Cannon Beach, there are many more restaurants, coffee shops, breweries, and distilleries where chefs, baristas, brewmasters, and other culinary creatives turn food and drink into culinary works of art that heighten the senses and reveal Cannon Beach’s heart and soul. One of Cannon Beach’s many vacation rentals makes the perfect home base for you to take your own foodie tour to discover, taste, and savor the masterpieces that nourish and bring Cannon Beach to life.
About the Author
Jim Parlee is a freelance writer who has written and ghost written for a number of websites, including Tourist Bee and the Connecticut Explorer. Jim also writes screenplays and television movie scripts. When he’s not writing, Jim likes to discover the heart and soul of the United States and Canada.
