By David & Susan Greenberg
With much affection, we’ve visited Cannon Beach since the 1970s. Recently, after a long gap living foreign, we returned for two nights.
We stayed at the Stephanie Inn, an old school hotel. It is without a single one of those disheartening shortcuts that have reduced so many current hotels to hostels, essentially parking spots with beds, with no food, no housekeeping on successive days, no turndown service, no help, no phone even.
Were we dogs, Stephanie Inn would have made us wriggle on our backs. In fact, though we’re human, we had to resist the temptation to do so. Why? Here is a montage of our observations to explain: Immaculate. Spare elegance. Art rich. Lovely gathering spaces. Large, beautifully furnished sleeping room. High ceiling. Top quality everything down to the doors and door hardware. Housekeeping daily. Turndown service with superb chocolates. Heated bathroom floor. Jacuzzi in bathroom. Water closet. Posh toiletries.
Our room had binoculars. Refrigerator. Gas fireplace. Top mattress and linens.
Gratis Argyle Brut blueberry mimosa on check-in (the blueberries from their farm up the road.) Gratis quality nibbles and beverages in our room, all Oregon made. Gratis chefy breakfast. Gratis chefy hors d’oeuvres and fine Oregon wine in the afternoon. Gratis nightcap in the evening. Gratis local car service in a brand new Rivian. Excellent wifi. Large deck. Staggering view. The lights of crab boats visible at night, like lanterns beckoning from the world beyond. Bell service. Spa. Oh, and they wash your car at no charge. It’s the style to which we wish to be accustomed.
Dinner in their dining room was the solid smack of a bat. Ours was a special dinner in conjunction with the Winter Waters festival which celebrates local seafoods and regenerative seafood (seaweed). We started with an amuse bouche of a Netarts Bay oyster with hot sauce. Next: best crab cakes of our lives with improbably scrumptious wakame kimchi.
Next: A pho based on dulse, kombu, and wakame seaweeds with rosy medallions of pork filet. Next: Sablefish with a dulse seaweed salad. Next: Matcha Panna Cotta with addictive sesame-nori cookies.
Every course, to this point, had an accompanying Oregon wine. Finally, as we were staggering from the onslaught, they knocked us down with takeaway swag, a memorably crunchy Dulse Seaweed Bar. They even gave us a card with its recipe, so we can continue to inflict it upon ourselves at home, as surely we will.
The next two mornings we had breakfasts in-house that would make any Embassy Suites breakfast-room hang its head. They were epicurean with poached eggs on avocado toast, bagels and lox, schools of pastries, a jubilation of berries. fresh-squeezed oj, outstanding French press coffee at our table. Just what a trencherman (or trencherwoman) needs to meet the day. Service was warm and sprightly. In fact, this was the level of service throughout all aspects of the hotel.
A complimentary wine gathering is held in their Library every day, 4 – 5:30 PM. We drank notably good Oregon wine and nibbled swank hors d’oeuvres. At one point, as we headed back to our room, we asked if they had bottled soda water we could take with us, and were sorrowfully told that they had none at that moment. Ten minutes later there was a knock at our door and two large glasses of soda water with lemon slices and a smile appeared.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Attentive to this wisdom, we scheduled a ninety-minute Neroli Blossom Recharge massage. Neroli oil is distilled from the white blossoms of orange trees. Just the scent alone is therapeutic. Combined with artful touch it unsnarled our knotted yarn completely.
One late morning we went to Sea Level Coffee & Bakery and had an excellent Danish (made with dulse seaweed a la Winter Waters) and notably delicious chai. This coffee shop-bakery had the warmth and friendliness we associate with a good chum.
A final Winter Waters meal was at Public Brewing Co. where we ate a tasty salad with slices of seared tuna edged in sesame seeds and crunchadoodles of battered deep-fried dulse. A buzzy place, we enjoyed their housemade root beer, which tasted like a long note on a bass cello, and a Benny’s Maple Oat-Stack Stout that tasted deep like the beloved offspring of a subwoofer and a maple syrup shack, best to sip.
Looking from our ample third floor deck of the Stephanie Inn there were waves, white horses with curling manes, almost as far as our eyes could see, racing to the beach and dissolving. Their murmur soothed us.
We took a walk and were surprised to see Peter Rabbit nibbling the grass, heedless of our presence. Just right for the environs, obviously he was placed there by central casting.
Later the Rivian – automotive equivalent of the hotel itself, elegantly engineered – took us downtown to stroll about.
We were comforted to see that the main drag was much like what we remember from years back: Coaster Theater, Bruce’s Candy Kitchen (with its Willy Wonka salt water taffy machine),
Mariner Market, a number of restaurants and art galleries the same. We split a toothsome pepperoni slice from Pizza a’Fetta which is just what we remembered from days of yore. Sure, new businesses have popped up or changed hands but the gist of the place – tastefully touristic, beachy, artsy, foodish, soul-positive – is the same. Cannon Beach, we’re happy to report, is true to its heritage, just upgraded in some of its particulars, set upon the sleepless ocean’s marge.
We drove home in a car that was far cleaner than when we arrived.
