Road Trip! PDX to Sonoma

[stevea]

Since the gas prices are so reasonable my wife and I decided to take a road trip from Portland to Sonoma (to visit friends on Thanksgiving). We're taking a few extra days and doing the leisurely sightseeing thing, stopping to see friends at Florence and to stay at the Benbow Inn in Garberville, CA along the way. Any restaurant advice (lunch or dinner) would be appreciated. We'll probably go down much of the way on 101 and come back via I5.

[Marshall Manning]

Steve, if you can plan your trip enough to know when you'll be passing near Ashland, New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro in Talent is a must-stop, but you'll need advance reservations.

Marshall

[stevea]

Steve, if you can plan your trip enough to know when you'll be passing near Ashland, New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro in Talent is a must-stop, but you'll need advance reservations.

Marshall

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Thanks. There are definitely some interesting articles out there about the folks who run the place. Such as this one. I will certainly try to get a reservation.

[wundermunk]

Steve, if you can plan your trip enough to know when you'll be passing near Ashland, New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro in Talent is a must-stop, but you'll need advance reservations.

Marshall

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Thanks. There are definitely some interesting articles out there about the folks who run the place. Such as this one. I will certainly try to get a reservation.

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Maybe Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg, if you have time.

[ludja]

Just saw a write up on "Red Tavern" restaurant in Chico, CA which is about 160 miles north of Sonoma, off of Rt 5. It was listed as a "restaurant worth a detour" in this month's AAA mag. They describe the food as having a Mediterranean/Spanish influence.

Here's the website: http://www.redtavern.com/

Has anyone else been here? When I've ventured north above Sonoma it's been on Hwy1, so I don't have recs from personal experience...

[Pallee]

We'll be taking the same trip, going to Santa Rosa from Portland the same week. If you have the time on the way back, try to stop for a night in Dunsmuir. There is a railroad motel where all the rooms are in cabooses and there's a beautiful view of Castle Crags. The Cafe Maddalena in Dunsmuir has been quite good for dinner the 3 times over the last 2 years we've been. For breakfast, the Cornerstone Cafe is wonderful. Who'd have guessed Dunsmuir had so much to offer?

[bbqboy]

For me, Granzellas in Williams

http://www.granzellas.com is the better olive sampling place over The Olive Pit

http://www.olivepit.com in Corning, but I usually do both. The Bartel's at the North Corning exit off I 5, west side,

serves great juicy giant burgers.

Old country musician and wife have taken over Klub Klondike in Lakehead, in the midst of Lake Shasta. It's a great place to relax and have a beer, and sometimes food.

The best place in Dunsmuir to me is Senthong's Thai/Asian, open 5-9 usually. They used to be over in Etna, now with a cafe, food store and music place in Dunsmuir.

Besides New Sammy's, the Arbor House in Talent serves inventive dinners a few nights a week. Los Morenas on North Riverside is my current Mexican favorite in the Rogue Valley. Moist Tamales, shrimp tostadas.

Muchas Gracias at the North Grants Pass Exit is a 24 hour Mexican drive thru,

on 7th and the Southbound freeway entrance. Get a breakast or an Oregon Burrito to go..

Don't forget Peggy's at Rice Hill, NB,a nice spot for a break + Umpqua Ice Cream. Better than the driveinn on the southbound side.

I must add Chico is not really near I 5, being clear over on 99.

ps:Morning Glory and the Apple Cellar are worthy choices for breakfast/brunch in Ashland,

and the Wild Goose, a diner with NW emphasis, just off the south exit in Ashland, is open early to late.

Edited November 2, 2005 by bbqboy (log)

[stevea]

We returned from the road trip to Sonoma yesterday, and we had a great time. It's a beautiful drive down the coast (101), and the drive back on I-5 was speedy and uneventful.

Thanks to a suggestion in this thread, we had dinner at New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro in Talent (just outside of Ashland), and it was fabulous. As reviews point out, it's very hard to find the building, especially in the dark. From the outside, it looks like a shack, with just a blinking arrow above the front door. As my wife said, it took a leap of faith to open that door. Inside, however, was a lovely restaurant with only about six tables.

The food was terrific. They have a fixed price dinner, but we opted for the ala carte selections. For appetizers, we had 1) a breaded and fried green tomato with some kind of smoky pepper sauce, herbed gnocci, and sauteed shrimp; and 2) Fresh mozzarella over perfectly cooked polenta with anchovy broccoli florettes that were delicately crisped (how they did that I can't imagine, but the broccoli was a revelation).

For main courses, we had 1) roast quail served over a tomato sauce with sauteed mushrooms and sausage and home made ravioli stuffed with collard greens. (the ravioli were unbelievably good; and 2) trout with a dill sauce (has a name but I forgot) served over the most delicious kale I've ever eaten and fingerling potatoes. The kale is inspiring me to try some greens of my own this evening.

The prices are about what you'd pay at a high-end Portland restaurant and the quality is every bit as good as the best of them.

Another restaurant of note is the Waterfront Depot in Florence. We were visiting friends in Florence the next day, so we stayed overnight and had dinner the night before. The Depot isn't in the class of New Sammy's, but compared to what one expects to find at the coast, it's a godsend. It's an attractive and comfortable little place on Bay St. with only a few tables and a long bar. The menu is on a chalkboard and consists of a regular menu and a tapas menu. Prices are very reasonable. We opted for the tapas and had several well-prepared items. Breaded and fried oysters were very good. A shrimp with lime tapas was interesting, but slightly overdone.

We also stayed at the Benbow Inn in Garberville and had dinner there one night. The hotel is nice and so are the amenities (free tea and scones at 3:00PM, happy hour tidbits at 5:00PM in the bar, and a decanter of sherry in the room). But the food in the restaurant was basically fancy but uninspired hotel food that is overpriced.

In a non-food related note, listening to the local radio station in Garberville (KMUD, I think) was quite interesting. One morning they had a duo who could have inspired the Saturday Night Live skit about really, really, boring public radio hosts (they had a long conversation about whether there was frost that morning). The station also had something that I think was called "civil liberties alerts" in which someone would call the station telling them that a drug enforcement vehicle had been seen on such and such a road, heading in such and such a direction at such and such a time. And the station broadcast that info.

Sonoma was fine too, but we mostly cooked with friends. We attempted to go wine tasting the friday after thanksgiving, but the crowds got to us so we went home and drank wine instead.

Thanks again to those with suggestions. I'm sorry I didn't get to try them all.

[tsquare]

We also stayed at the Benbow Inn in Garberville and had dinner there one night. The hotel is nice and so are the amenities (free tea and scones at 3:00PM, happy hour tidbits at 5:00PM in the bar, and a decanter of sherry in the room). But the food in the restaurant was basically fancy but uninspired hotel food that is overpriced.

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Glad your trip was a success - I can't believe this place is still there - though I would be sad to hear it wasn't. I stayed there some 30+ years ago and thought it was so special. As I recall, our rooms were on the low side, near the river, and had a dorm like or servants quarters feel to them, but we were so happy to stay there anyway.

[stevea]

Glad your trip was a success - I can't believe this place is still there - though I would be sad to hear it wasn't. I stayed there some 30+ years ago and thought it was so special. As I recall, our rooms were on the low side, near the river, and had a dorm like or servants quarters feel to them, but we were so happy to stay there anyway.

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That's the part of the hotel we stayed in too. I'm sure the rooms have been renovated since you've been there. It's now very lush and old fashioned feeling, with four-poster beds and wood credenzas. But there's a lot of emphasis on the past and mention of all the movie stars who stayed there (which seemed to have ended about the time of Clark Gable )

The video library was also a kick. There are several pages of VCR tapes that you could check out, but I didn't see any made after 1990. We watched one that had trailers of movies coming to theaters in 1989. However, there were plenty of classics from the 40's to watch, which is a plus in my book.