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Oregon Coast Best of Awards for the Year

A run of dead sharks washing up along the Oregon coast gets the "Freakiest Natural Event" award of 2007 (photo Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium)

(Oregon Coast) – It’s the First Annual Oregon Coast Beach Connection Best of Awards from BeachConnection.net, spotlighting the most intriguing and glittering of the Oregon coast (with an occasional nod towards the most crappy).

Here, we salute the best restaurants, lodgings, coastal promoters, science organizations, and the most intriguing events of the year in nature – all in a diverse range of categories.

These categories will likely not remain static throughout the coming years, either. They probably will change with the year, depending on what transpires and what emerges over that time.

It’s an award that’s as malleable as the march of time itself.

The Bistro, Cannon Beach

Best Fine Restaurant: The Bistro, Cannon Beach. An old favorite on the coast continues its innovative stylings and consistent high quality. You could easily spend $100 for two in Portland for food of this stature, but here it’s maybe half that cost.

Best Family Restaurant: Landmark Restaurant, Yachats. Best damned Italian cuisine outside of Portland – maybe even New York.

Dessert Heaven: Village Market & Deli, Newport (would’ve been Zinger’s Homemade Ice Cream in Seaside, but they were closed for a long while). Expand your palate with masterful creations imported from around the world and California wine country. In Nye Beach, at the end of NW 3rd.

Italian food and a stellar view at the Landmark, Yachats

Best New Eatery: Yummy Wine Bar & Bistro, Seaside. Stunning tapas-style dishes and a truly interesting wine selection.

Best Ethnic Restaurant: Thai Talay, Newport. Better than any Thai place we know of in Portland.

Best Wine Spot: Yachats Wine Trader. It was really cool with the view it had (until it moved), but now that it’s attached to the fab restaurant Yachats River House, there’s something like 100 wines to choose from.

Most Magnificent Single Dish: Penne pasta with meatballs at Cannon Beach Fultano’s. Just off Hemlock, Cannon Beach.

Best Seafood: Bell Buoy of Seaside and Buoy’s Best Fish House, Seaside. A wondrous collection of seriously fresh seafood to take home and cook, or the nifty little fast food fish house next door: whatever you do, don’t miss their insane tuna melts.

Pasta to die for at Fultano's in Cannon Beach

Most Anticipated Development: A new restaurant will show up in the old Currents spot in Nehalem, run by north coast pizza guru Phil Kaufman. It will be outlandishly good, to be sure.

Best Bar: Maxwell’s, Lincoln City. A fab place to watch tourists go bonkers on booze, unfettered by the illusion that since they’re not at home they can run amok. It’s also got the coolest karaoke book on the coast – and better than any we’ve seen in Portland.

Yachats River House

Most Innovative Drinks: the bar at Yachats River House, Yachats. Some wildly colored and delicious concoctions are rather magically called into existence by wizard-like mixologists.

Best Microbrewed Beer: The dark stuff from Bill’s Tavern, Cannon Beach.

Best Coastal Bartender: Shalom at Maxwell’s, Lincoln City (who takes an unbelievable amount of crap sometimes, but remains exceptionally cheery).

Best New Lodging: Rivertide Suites in Seaside. An interesting idea for lodging on the coast: you can own one of these lovely units as a timeshare, and actually receive revenue for it being rented out as a hotel room when you’re not around. Stunning views, as well.

Seaside Aquarium is more than just a pretty place to see really cute seals: they educate the public about once a month by wiggling themselves into the news via the creatures it snags from the beaches.

Best Lodging Renovation: Beachfront Manor Hotel, Lincoln City. Somewhere near midtown Lincoln City, this kind of nasty old building was magically turned into a glittering, upscale hotel with serious style and class. It’s almost the Oregon coast’s answer to Portland’s Jupiter Hotel.

Best Old Lodging: Whistling Winds, Lincoln City. A wildly delicious display of artistic woodwork on the interior of this historical little spot on the north end of Lincoln City. Woodsy, rustic and yet sublimely upscale.

Best Public Science Education: Oregon Coast Aquarium and Hatfield do the best job in person, but Seaside Aquarium wins for the most public display of science education, by carefully getting everything they do on TV, all over print and Internet media.

Most Fascinating Science Person of the Year: Guy DiTorrice, Newport. He’s known as Oregon Fossil Guy, giving tours of central coast beaches to help people find dead things from millions of years ago. Plus, he’s constantly showing up in magazines and other media around the country. Now how cool is that?

Iron towers at Hug Point (photo Tom Horning)

Biggest Scientific Revelation of the Year: Seaside geologist Tom Horning discovered ancient stumps and weird iron formations unearthed at Hug Point last winter, when sand levels were something like six to ten feet below normal. Awe-inspiring and mind-bendingly weird stuff.

Biggest Hot Button Issue of the Year: Beach erosion and how and when to shore up cliffs with raprap, or prevent further erosion. There’s a lot happening here, and it’s kind of scary.

Weirdest News Item: Anchor Inn in Oceanside hosting strippers. This normally quaint, tiny town is kind of spooky these days, with a civil war breaking out over various issues with this inn. Oceanside needs a visit from Dr. Phil.

Brown goo on the waves at Seaside this spring (photo Tiffany Boothe, Seaside)

Most Outstanding Tourism Promotion: Lorna Davis, Tourism Development Director at the Newport Chamber, spent considerable time in England promoting the town – as well as across the country.

Coolest Environmental Event: all that brown goo on the waves at Seaside in April. It was caused by a huge amount of phytoplankton, meaning the ocean is pretty healthy. But it caused people to ask if it was pollution.

Freakiest Natural Event: That run of dead shark strandings up and down the entire coast in summer. There were three or four a month for a while. In fact, it was happening along the California coast as well.

Boy getting kissed by sea lion at Oregon Coast Aquarium, or the cartoonish ratfish found by Seaside Aquarium - which is the cutest photo to you?

Most Adorable Promotional Photo: It’s a toss up between the sea lion kissing a kid at Oregon Coast Aquarium and the whimsical fish found by Seaside Aquarium staff – a ratfish, which looks like something out of a Disney cartoon.

Emma the Ambassadorial Lab is featured in the Cannon Beach Chamber's ads

Cutest Coastal Business Pet: Emma, the ambassadorial lab at the Cannon Beach Chamber.

Best Single Event: Portland electronica group Dahlia played Wateringhole in Nehalem during the summer. One of the coolest bands in the country played some small bar here. That’s quite a feat.

Best Festival: Pirate Days at Depoe Bay. Pirates and Depoe Bay: now how cool is that?

Biggest Heart on the Coast: Ray Shackelford, Nehalem Bay Winery/Depoe Bay Winery, wins the award for philanthropist of the year. He’s been building schools in - and selling merchandise from - a village in Cambodia, among other beautiful acts of kindness.

Sad to See This Go: Treasure Café in Wheeler. One of the most astounding coastal restaurants ever just died because owner health issues.

Special Thumbs Down Award for 2007: the big storm of December, all its damage, and subsequent damaging media coverage of it.

Inn at Cannon Beach. Beautifully wooded natural setting at quiet south end of Cannon Beach. Great during winter storms with a new book by the fireplace – or when the sun is out for family fun and beach strolling. Handsome beach cottage-style architecture. Lush flowering gardens and naturalized courtyard pond. Warm, inviting guest rooms. Continental buffet breakfast. Warm Cookies. Family and Pet Friendly. Welcome gifts. Smoke-free. Complimentary Wireless Connectivity. Wine and book signing events. 800-321-6304 or 503-436-9085. Hemlock At Surfcrest, Cannon Beach, Oregon. www.atcannonbeach.com.

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