Sitting atop the small coastal community of Manzanita, resides a restaurant dishing up locally-sourced Tillamook Coast cuisine: Big Wave Café.
Within the last few years on the Tillamook Coast, there has been a drive to connect area farmers to food service. Locally sourced vegetables and fruits, artisan cheese and dairy products, sustainable meats, and more recently the addition of sustainable commercial fishing practices have put the Tillamook Coast on the foodie map.
The Big Wave Café tapped into this concept to provide their customers with some of the freshest ingredients around.
“Our philosophy here is to keep as much money within the surrounding community as possible,” said Jordan Underhill, whose family owns the Big Wave Café. “Everything we make here is not made in advance, we use fresh ingredients and make our dishes directly to order.”
A spacious dining room that has been redesigned in recent years to help make the Big Wave Café an alluring option for locals and seasonals alike.
The Big Wave Café has been around for a while, situated right along US Highway 101 at the end of Manzanita’s main tourist drag on Laneda Avenue.
Featuring an impressive list of partnering farms, fisheries and producers the Big Wave Café includes cooks with products from: Bennet Family Farms’ milk, Jacobsen Salts, Nehalem Valley Meats, Garibaldi Cannery, The Community Supported Fishery, Tillamook Creamery, Gambee Farms, Netarts Bay Oysters, and The Blue Heron French Cheese Company.
This isn’t the family’s first foray into the culinary world. Jordan’s parents, David and Jennifer Cleary, also own and operate the Local Grill and Scoop in Cannon Beach, and Jordan’s siblings work in both restaurants. And her husband is the chef at Big Wave.
“The experience here in Manzanita has been amazing and we continue to see growth as we move forward,” Jordan said. “We’re lucky to be here.”
In addition to being a cornerstone of local restaurants in the North Tillamook Coast area, Jordan said one of their primary goals is to give a percentage of what they bring in back into the community of Manzanita.
According to Jordan, they routinely donate back to organizations like the Pine Grove Community Center, the Rinehart Clinic, North County Food Bank, Brickyard Farms and the Community Supported Fishery in Garibaldi.
The Big Wave Café has also recently made news in becoming an official partner with the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program.
Located at 822 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita; open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.
