After a brief, new appreciation of Liberty, the wheels seem to have come back off again ... at least food-wise. We went in the other night for dinner and beers to our detriment.
The draft beer selection was, as always, good. (We continue to excuse Liberty's flirtation with the over-promoted, under-qualitied Stone Brewing monolith out of San Diego. We've seen much better and bigger operations fall to Stone's marketing slickness.)
The problem arose when our food arrived. We planned to share a "Here Chicky-Chicky" (chicken, bacon, red onion, garlic, and tomato) medium size pizza for $20 with visions of leftovers for breakfast, and the Garlic Mac & Cheese with bacon and jalapeños for $8.
Walt's Pourhouse does an almost identical pizza called "Chicken Carbonara," but with Alfredo sauce. It is always good, and sometimes truly great.
But Liberty's version came out with a Marinara sauce, which just didn't work. But that wasn't its biggest problem. The cook must have two or three times forgotten if s/he had added the garlic. The last handful must have gone on raw just before it was sent out to us.
As usual at Liberty, it took quite a while to get to this point. And by the time our food came out, we were famished. Having worked in kitchens, neither of us are inclined to send food back either. We know what a delicate genius can do to "enhance" food they think was wrongly sent back. So we did our best to scrape off the hundreds of tiny pieces of machine-grated garlic before gagging down a few pieces. As for a breakfast of pizza leftovers? Hopeless.
The mac and cheese was okay. But when we had it here before, it had been toasted under a broiler before serving, which added just the right amount of crunchiness. This batch just came out gooey.
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Having now lived in our job-driven adopted hometown of North Bend for going on two years now, we've tried to be very patient with the local eateries. But it's gotten to the point where we only regularly eat at three places: Walt's, Tokyo Bistro, and BPJ's Thai Gourmet.
We also eat at the great Stockpot, or Yeong's Place for burgers occasionally. But we're not usually ready to eat by 2pm when Stockpot closes, and we like a nice beer with our burger. But Yeong's is all soda pop and milkshakes.
Everyplace else in town has disappointed us too many times to give them yet another crack at our credit cards. But when, like last night (a Saturday) after a packed showing of "The Revenant," we hit both Walt's and Tokyo Bistro to find both overflowing with people. So while Thai wasn't our first choice, we ended up at the always-empty BPJ's Thai Gourmet.
It's really too bad. Coos Bay and North Bend have for the past several years been falling all over themselves to welcome in a Canadian developer to build the Jordan Cove Energy Project -- a mammoth Liquefied Natural Gas export plant on our beautiful bay, and to condemn a right-of-way across the lands of hundreds of Oregonians for a pipeline to bring fracked gas to this environmental catastrophe on the bay. All this on the pretext of creating a handful of jobs (although we know more than a few local pockets will be well-lined in the process).
Ironically, if these same city "leaders" paid half as much attention to encouraging the establishment of higher-quality food and lodging operations here, it could create many more jobs, and it could help draw many more visitors to the area to share our beautiful setting. How? Help with marketing. Help with investment tax breaks (the same kind they're handing out so generously to Jordan Cove). Help with beautification of tourist areas and supporting infrastructure (maybe an unbroken bike-only and walking path circling the entire bay from Eastside to Charleston?).
But no. As things stand now, we rarely go out anymore to eat after work or on weekends while we're here at home. We won't waste our money anymore on the crap, and we get bored going to the same few places over and over. So we save dining out for business trips to The Big City, or for vacation trips.
What a wasted opportunity. read more