Friday, May 29, 2009

Dan & Louis Oyster Bar




Dan and Louis Oyster Bar is located on SW Second and Ankeny in Portland Oregon. Nowadays its used as a landmark for locations to Voodoo Donut or the Church of Elvis.The waitresses in oversize sailor outfits always the ones who called you dear. It was always a special treat when Dad would take me their to lunch with his work associates when I was off from school for a orthodonist appointment or other similar kind of reason.

To a kid this place is like going into a make believe ship world. I remember wanting to look at all the pictures. I still do. My favorite then and now is newspaper cliping of Sebastian Cabot at the height of Mr French working over a big plate of oysters. It is appropriate because Dan & Louis is the ultimate Family Affair a direct lineage going back to 1865 when a twenty four year old sailor named Meinert Wachsmuth (Louis' father)decided to stay at Yacquina Bay Oregon after being shipwrecked there. Meinert farmed oysters and forty or so years later Louis came to Portland as first a seafood marketer who sold oyster cocktails and expanding out as the restaurant with Oyster stew with Yacquinas from the family business.

I am glad the restaurant is still there and stil in the family. It has changed quite a bit lately. The shrimp Louis is no longer made up entirely cuts of iceberg lettuce angeled at 15 degrees or so. And the menu is no longer clam shaped with rainbow trim and a picture of Louis Wachsmith on the back. But other than that the other big change came a few decades earlier when when the container for the unlimited oyster crackers were no longer the large open sandbox pail sized buckets of oyster crackers. They are still plentiful but now distributed in liter wine carafes. Regardless, generations of us have loved that perk and still do.


If this was my unsubstanitated fictional picture history of the Oyster bar, I would want to believe that this ship was the Annie Doyle and Meinart Wachsmith was on board and that it was snapped by an early Zapruder or paparazi right before it ship wrecked.

Meinart Wachsmith was from the island of Sylt. I was there once. One of my first full days after my first transatlantic flight was spent with long bus rides and ferry rides to get there. I remember lots of narrow streets with angular close curves with big rich people's houses. At one point we walked through a closed down beach resort and gift area. And I took a picture of a poster with some penguins on it.


This image of Celilo Falls fishermen was contemporaneous of a lot of the history of Dan and Louis, certainly well before my time.

posted by well-executed buffet at 10:04 PM
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