By David & Susan Greenberg
Your beloved aunt, for reasons you’ll never fathom, kept a goat in her basement. Her home was overrun with cats as others are with termites. She once cooked you a meal of supermarket fish pulled from the back of her refrigerator. Aswim in rank juices, she mashed in cold margarine and slowly brought it up to fry temperature. Clouds of decayed fish-steam billowed from the pan, driving her cats into a frenzy and you into paralytic shock.
By contrast, great home-style cooking is delicious and comforts. Praise be, this is what Downies Café in Bay City serves. You and your wife breakfasted there twice. Both times you ordered their cinnamon roll, just one of them large enough to feed both of you for both meals, with leftovers for the hound. Warm, fragrant with cinnamon and yeast, skimmed with white icing, it was as good as can be within the mortal coil. One of the founder’s granddaughters starts the dough at 3 AM.
Their Shrimp Eggs Benedict was made by a sure hand, eggs cooked to runny perfection. Hash browns were nicely crisped. Risk it and try their biscuit, excellent of its ilk.
Your wife’s vegetable omelet (to which she wisely added the greatest vegetable of all, bacon) had that perfect crease that can only come from someone who has folded warm laundry.
Clam fritters shaped like pancakes (made with cracker meal), were chunked with clams the size and texture of earlobes. Preternaturally youthful restaurant matriarch, Karen Downie, told us that her mother, who founded the restaurant, served her this as a child.
Your wife had ham and braised eggs. The ham was smoky, egg yolks condensed sunshine.
Service was heartful. Could it be that your server mothered difficult children? For she was notably kind and patient when it came to your dithering.
Downies Café is the opposite of a chain restaurant. It is the opposite of a big city foodie restaurant with ingredients flown in from Pluto and cooked by chefs with elaborate arm tattoos using custom Japanese knives made by an exclusive order of monks. It serves the food your mom (or dad) would cook if you were smart enough to choose your parents well. It’s the Andy Griffith Show in food.
The sort of place that wouldn’t look amiss with a hitching post in front, we highly recommend Downies Café. Go by pickup truck so you can haul home one of their cinnamon rolls. More than one won’t fit.
Bring your aunt. No cats allowed.
Downie’s Cafe is located in downtown Bay City, Oregon, just off Hwy. 101 at 9320 5th Street, Open Thursday-Monday 7 am-2 pm
You can see other reviews by The Ardent Gourmet, David & Susan Greenberg, at www.ardentgourmet.com
If you’d like to contact them with questions or to be placed on their mailing list, use authilus@teleport.com