Jake’s Famous Crawfish

 

Dining out is not the special event it once was. Many people eat out daily, typically somewhere comfortable, and familiar. Once people dressed up to go for dinner, now it is routine and is completely acceptable in some quarters to wear baseball caps, or old t-shirts, while dining out. Restaurants come and go in a throwaway society. When there is an opportunity to eat at an old restaurant, one that has been around for a long time, it is worth the time, effort, and money to try it.

Jake’s was opened in 1892 and has quite the reputation. The crawfish in the name emanates from the original business: there were pools in the basement of the building where the freshwater shellfish could be raised and shipped around the country. I was told by my server, who had been working at Jake’s for 23 years, that during prohibition the brewery across the street would drop kegs down one of the many tunnels that were beneath the city, and it would naturally roll to the restaurant where it could be served in the backroom speakeasy. Furthermore, drunken and rowdy sailors could be pressed into service, sometime recovering from their hangovers to find that they were on the veritable “slow boat to China.”

Inside the restaurant today, the wooden décor is distinctive and, with the mural-sized classic paintings, creates an ambiance that is rarely found today. Pieces of memorabilia, all nicely framed to match the feel of the restaurant, tastefully grace the walls. Above my small booth for two people was a framed matchbook cover from the restaurant, circa 1930, that was donated by a patron who had been dining at the restaurant all her life. Across the room was a nice display of antique china oyster plates, no doubt valuable, were situated above a table of six.

I visited the restaurant, sans reservation, on a Thursday evening. I was hoping they would be able to accommodate a lone person without assigning me to the bar, which they did. The clientele was convivial. People were emerging with more confidence as the second anniversary of the pandemic declaration neared. The mask mandate in Oregon was to be lifted in the following week, and people were anxious to return to some form of normalcy, whatever that might look like. My dinner was classic and straightforward: as a drink, I ordered a Capella Porter from Ecliptic Brewing, a local business, Jake’s House Salad, with a light oil and vinegar dressing with glazed walnuts and bleu cheese crumbles, and for the main course étouffée with crawfish, chicken, and shrimp. Of course, it was to expectation, and the service was exquisite.

Jake's famous étouffée