The Salmonberry, Wheeler, Oregon
To a city slicker like myself, Wheeler, Oregon is a slower segment of Highway 101 between Nehalem and Rockaway Beach. Blink while driving and you may wonder whether you passed through it already. If you're into vintage and antiques, it's where Wheeler Station presides: at least two floors containing a cozy labyrinth of relics, curiosities, and knickknacks. If you're not, it's where you nap in the car across the street from the antique mall while your better half happily disappears into the stalls for an indeterminate amount of time.
Then there's The Salmonberry.
A year ago we drove out to this stretch of the Oregon coast for our anniversary. We stayed at the wifi-free "Treetop Chalet" up the road in Manzanita and wandered the maze of Wheeler Station in the hour before closing. The restaurant across Highway 101 caught our eye, as did the packed parking lot. Looks good. Perhaps too good for my lack of patience. We proceeded onto Rockaway Beach for fried fish and clams. It was fine.
This year Nancy descended into the Station once more while I exercised my spousal privilege to a brief snooze, waking long enough to perform the obligatory Google Maps reconnaissance. The beet salad and wood-fired shishito peppers caught my eye. The pizzas looked fantastic on the screen, though perhaps not the default choice for me these days given my recent blood pressure and cholesterol readings from the doctor. Nothing of the "your head may implode at any moment" variety. More like receiving some fresh telemetry and starting gradual infrastructure policy changes.
Most importantly: ample space in the parking lot.
At first glance, The Salmonberry appears to be one of those small Oregon Coast establishments that seem assembled from local ingredients and accumulated personality. Wood-fired pizza. Beer. Oysters. The requisite undercooked seafood warning... misattributed to Iggy Pop. Rhymes with "coastal quirky." The wait staff seating a family of four before us then advising that we'll get served faster at the bar. On par with the post-pandemic customer-to-worker ratio. We claim a perch atop two high chairs at the bar, then our eyes adjust.
A Dead Moon skateboard on one of the pillars. Two Dead Moon books on the shelf among the liquor bottles, a chalkboard with cardinal directions sto hope, booze, wine, and art. A wall lined with framed show flyers, Poison Idea headlining them all, and a carefully crude oil painting of The New York Dolls' first album cover. "Someone here is the veteran of a thousand punk rock shows," I observe, pillaging a line from Blue Oyster Cult. Nancy mentions seeing a post on her Instagram feed from someone who's more associated with indiepop and/or experimental music being over the moon to see Toody Cole play. Which then has us replaying a conversation in a Helsinki bookstore a couple of years ago, one of the owners telling us Fred Cole stories after we noticed his Dead Moon hoodie.
Meanwhile, we discover the downside of seasonal, locally sourced dining: the beets and shishito peppers are old news. Still, the purple broccolini sounds fantastic, and so does the nettle-and-sunchokes pizza. We place our order with the waitress who's also concocting two black Manhattans, a margarita, and an old fashioned, all from memory. "So, who's the hardcore fan here," I ask. "The owner. That's all his stuff. It's pretty cool," she replies before departing to deliver the drink order. I later overhear that she just started working there three weeks ago. There's also a "help wanted" flyer out front. I wonder about the logistics of staffing around here, where business is literally seasonal, and places stay open just enough to keep going, like bivalves cycling with the tides.
The food takes its time to arrive, which is expected. We take turns wandering out to the patio to view the bay and to document the "No smoking on deck; fish trying to quit" signs. We count at least seven copies of Ken Kesey's 'Sometimes a Great Notion' on the shelf. Four more old fashioneds depart the bar. Then the broccolini lands, Romano and breadcrumbs spilling over like exhaust plumes. Between the fire-charring and the Aleppo honey, this is how vegetables should be prepared if you want folks to get their greens. Or not. I'm sure there are "healthier" ways. There always are. But as another chalkboard at the bar commands, "Be here now," and here is delicious.
The nettle and sunchoke pizza? Glorious. It's a "white pie"; no tomatoes were harmed in the making of this meal. The crust arrives light but satisfyingly doughy, the cheese balancing the greenery, while the dried sunchokes function as concentrated little bursts of saltiness. Calling it a more virtuous alternative to a pepperoni pizza feels a bit disingenuous. I'm still partaking of sodium, fats, cholesterol, carbs, and the other contributors behind the amber lights now flickering on my metabolic dashboard. Then again, I'm also on vacation. The dashboard exists to provide information, not absolution. Besides, we're each leaving a slice to take back with us.
Most of the time, a pizza is just a pie. It’s tempting to frame this meal as a chance encounter with post-hardcore archaeology in a quiet nook on the Pacific Coast, which is true enough, as far as it goes. Later I’ll do a bit of Googling and find interviews about how the owners of The Salmonberry are doing what they’re doing, how they weathered the pandemic, and not a word about punk rock. The two leftover slices will become breakfast the following morning, minus the sunchokes, before we head south to Yachats for the day. We’ll return home a day after that to spring Delia from doggy camp, and I’ll have my typically long-winded and digressive conversation with machines about noise rock, infrastructure, and pizza. And I'll write this account out by hand.