Monthly Archives: September 2011

Rusty Truck Brewing at Roadhouse 101, located at 4649 Highway 101 in Lincoln City; photo courtesy Rusty Truck Brewing

LINCOLN CITY, Ore – In 2005 when Salem attorney Brian Whitehead bought the old Kodiak Bar and Grill, he was looking for something fun to do with his family that would also be good for the people in Lincoln City. He immediately renamed the bar Roadhouse 101, added good food, live blues and classic rock & roll and five years later started adding a state-of-the-arts craft brewery.

Whitehead comes from a long line of bar owners.  His grandfather operated a bar in northern Wisconsin and his grandmother grew up in a speakeasy during prohibition and made bathtub gin. Whitehead chose a more conservative path for Rusty Truck Brewing. He waited to expand until the time was right and then hired experienced brewmaster Ron Hulka to help him plan and lay it out. Rusty Truck  Brewing  held its grand opening July 8 and 9, 2011.

The project also gave the talented brewmaster, who moved to Oregon after seeing a photo of the Three Sisters mountains in Central Oregon, a chance to begin living his dream.

Some of the Rusty Truck Brewing craft beers (double click to enlarge photo) available on tap at Roadhouse 101; photo courtesy of Rusty Truck Brewing.

“I was finishing my Liberal Arts Degree (in French and English) near Chicago, and when I saw that photo of those mountains, I knew I had to relocate,” Hulka said of his move west. “I ended up in Eugene where I was introduced to the wonderful Cascade Brewers Society folks and 12 years later I moved to Lincoln City. I could see the potential for a brewery here at the Roadhouse long before Brian was ready, but it has been worth the wait.”

Hulka, a self-described beer nerd who can’t separate himself from his beer making, said his love of beer makes him very particular about the ingredients he uses. He buys only from Northwest suppliers – some as close as Silverton and Hood River. His inspiration for recipes comes to him while walking his dog on the beach. Names for the finished brews like – Fender Bender Amber Ale, Back Seat Wheat, and Procrastination Stout – come from a committee of friends and employees from Roadhouse 101.

“Ron brews a clean, tidy, simple brew and for the first time our beer sales beat liquor sales,” said Mark  Huber, sales & distribution manager for Rusty Truck Brewing. “We place our beer in kegs in bars up and down the Oregon Coast.  You can find it at the Bay Haven in Newport, Fort Hill Tavern, the Old Oregon and Hebo Inn. Bars and restaurants featuring our beer in Salem include Orupa, Duffys Tavern and Jake’s Bar and Grill. I look forward to increased sales – our  beer sells itself.”

Ron Hulka, brewmaster for Rusty Truck Brewing in Lincoln City, Oregon; photo by Jan Jackson.

To Hulka, the joy is in creating the recipes, brewing the beer and caring for the beautiful stainless steel equipment.

“Awards are one thing, but I just want people to like my beer,” Hulka said. “I had a brewing teacher that said your beer is only as good as the last batch you make which is why the challenge never gets old for me. A mentor said, if you can turn a passion into a career, it’s as good as you can get and he was right.”

More information on Roadhouse 101 and Rusty Truck Brewing, call 541-921-3671 or visit http://www.roadhouse101.com/

Jan Jackson ©2011 – See Jan Jackson’s Bio

Going to Lincoln City? Checkout For Travelers

Chef Lee Gray aka The Wild Gourmet; photo by Jan Jackson

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. – After Chef Lee Gray was given the opportunity to manage the Wine 101 wine shop last November (2010), he asked for two weeks to think about it, got into his pickup and headed out on a regular run into the Coast Range to gather wild mushrooms.
As it started to snow, ideas of what he could do with Wine 101 suddenly began to flow.  When he returned to town, he accepted the offer.

Today, Wine 101is the place to taste and buy the best local wines, dine on fresh baked bread, appetizers, salads and gourmet dinners, discover local art and listen to and/or participate in live jazz, blues or folk music. Just a bit south of D River Wayside on the east side of Highway 101, it is the place to be Thursdays through Sundays year round.

Gourmet chef, artist and musician, Lee Gray stands by one of his sculptures on display at Wine 101 in Lincoln City; photo by Jan Jackson

Though Chef Gray ‘s grandmother started teaching him to cook at the age of 5, his cooking experience really began when he was 9 and started cooking in his parents restaurant.

“My folks owned a little restaurant near Sutter Creek, California, but since neither of them could cook very well, I could see that if they were going to make it they were going to need help, “ Chef Gray said.  “I would go to the restaurant and make the special before I went home to do my school work. My first big money making venture came about the same time.

“We were walking along the wooden planks in Sutter Creek, when I saw an advertisement for frog legs in the window of a fancy laced-curtained French restaurant. I knew how to catch frogs, so I went around to the back door and asked how much they paid and how many they needed. They paid a dollar a piece and they needed a gross. I said OK, and was shocked when I went home and looked up the fact that a gross was 144. As I caught them, I put them in the freezer and when I got enough I hitchhiked them the four miles back to Sutter Creek. I made $300 to $400 that summer – a lot of money for a 9-year-old kid. Soon after that we moved to Texas.”

Not long after his move to Texas, the still young Gray read a newspaper story about a mother and daughter who survived an airplane crash but starved to death because even though there was food all around them they didn’t know what they could and couldn’t eat. The story stayed in the young boys mind. He returned to California for college, stayed on and worked in the Beverly Hills restaurants and then followed his haunts about the importance of knowing how to live off the land.

“It was the winter of 1982 that I packed up my books, came to Oregon and moved into a cave to prove that you could easily live off the land,” Chef Gray said. “In 1988, I started the Wild Gourmet Catering Company. I still harvest sea weed, mushrooms, wild greens, crawdads, crabs and mussels to serve in the restaurant and for special catering occasions.”

Singer songwriter Lee Gray hosts fellow musicians four days a week at Wine 101; photo by Jan Jackson

Mornings find Chef Gray up early enjoying a cup of coffee and watching his ducks and chickens roaming around his garden wiping out his lettuces. After that, he sometimes paints, sculpts or practices the saxophone he finally learned to play at 36.

“I always wanted to play the sax but since I was the biggest kid in band, I always got stuck playing the tuba,” said Gray, who also performs regularly with bands both along the coast and in the Portland area. “One of the things that I love about Wine Shop 101 is that four days a week I can prepare everything from appetizers to full blown dinners, promote local artists work including my own, tend the wine bar and sing, play piano, guitar and sax in the music corner along with other musicians who are after the same experience. It’s a great place for me to be in Lincoln City.”

More information is available about Wine 101 and The Wild Gourmet by calling Wine 101 at 541-996-3010 or visit http://wildgourmet.org/

Jan Jackson ©2011 - Jan Jackson’s Bio

Boogie N' Bing

Boogie N’ Bing

A writer/rancher’s daybook

Looking into a rancher’s daybook, is like reading a diary that includes things like the arrival of migrating robins, a sign of the first wildflower in spring or the number of piglets a sow bore on a given type of feed.

When you look into writer, rancher and storyteller Bing Bingham and his stock dog Boogie’s daybook, the entries are packed with stories.

Bing tells about his pack rat sniffin’ Boogie (his obsession with them makes him a hit with his neighbors) and recounts his own sometimes crazy experiences in his continually shifting environment as a rancher, firefighter and near master of everything that comes up in Central Oregon’s high dessert country.

Find stories photos and more at http://bingbingham.com/blog/   

and don’t forget to read his Coffee Shop Moments at http://countrytraveleronline.com/category/stories/coffee/

There was a collective sigh of relief from Joie’s neighbors when her pig sold at the county fair’s 4H auction.

This pig looked no different from dozens of others at the fair. This one, however, had an identity crisis—she thought she was a cow.

Pigs are smart and Blaze was no exception. She’d stay one step ahead of Joie in figuring ways to get out of her pen. Then she’d head for the fields to be with the cattle.

This wasn’t a big deal around Joie’s household. There are plenty of fields and lots of cattle for a lonely pig to find a buddy. However, the neighbors were worried about Blaze being hit with a car when she crossed the road into the next pasture.

It wasn’t like Joie and her folks hadn’t tried to keep the pig in her pen. At one point, they brought in three people on horseback, two on ATV’s and a couple more on foot to help with their range pig round-up.

No luck.

Meanwhile, their neighbors would tiptoe up and down the road, heads swiveling, watching for Joie’s little rogue. Finally, it was getting close to fair time and Joie knew she had to corral her identity-challenged pig.

Joie took about a week and gently coaxed the pig from the field into her new escape-proof pen. Blaze, however, missed her cattle so badly that she refused to eat for three days.

Joie spent hours calming Blaze and enticing her with goodies. Blaze paced stubborn circles around the pen and staring at the wall in the direction of her cow-buddies.

Finally, the time came to load Blaze for the county fair.

The family backed the stock trailer up to the pen and stood by, ready to help if things got out of hand. Joie spoke gently to the pig. Completely out of character, Blaze sauntered over to the trailer and hopped in. The resounding crash of the slamming stock trailer door echoed off the rimrock.

After the former wandering pig was safely ensconced at the fairgrounds, it was time for the showmanship competition.

During the judging, Blaze trotted around the show ring looking for a friendly cow and Joie concentrated on staying alongside her lonesome pig. Joie kept her eyes locked on the judge and aimed both barrels of her smile at him. Meanwhile, she prayed the judge wouldn’t ask her to stop the pig from scooting between the other contestants.

He didn’t.

To Joie’s surprise, she won the Master Showmanship ribbon.

As the dust settled on the county fairgrounds, Joie bade goodbye to her mixed-up pig. She collected her check and her neighbors relaxed on their drive home.

As Joie drove away from the fairgrounds, she made plans for next year’s fair pig. She decided —in fairness to her neighbors—to contact them and make the necessary apologies. Part of that would include a promise to get a pig that knew it was a pig and spend more time in training and less chasing.

Smiling to herself, she decided part of the training would include teaching the new pig to look both ways before crossing the road—just in case it got out of the pen.

To this day, no one knows if Joie’s new pig ever needed his road crossing skills.

Bing Bingham is a writer, rancher and storyteller. Sometimes he’s smarter than a pig, sometimes not. If you’re interested in more stories, check http://bingbingham.com/blog/