My family was eating dinner at Seaside Brewery recently with my mother, who was visiting from out of town. We were all tired from a long weekend of catching up and ducking sporadic spells of rain. At some point, I noticed we were no longer speaking. The food had arrived at the table and everyone’s attention was focused intently on the barbecue before them.

This wasn’t an isolated incident either. We’d done the very same thing with a different meal at the picnic tables outside the Osprey Café last summer. Every single person I bring into Dough Dough Bakery can literally not believe the quality and inventiveness of that food and space. Maggie’s stops me in my tracks along the Prom remembering a lunch I had there once. I won’t even get into the passionate arguments about the best seafood in town.

There used to be a saying around here about Seaside: More Than A Day At The Beach. Yeah, I think that “more” might be the opportunity to indulge in three great meals per day while here. These days we say It’s Easy To Seaside and that works, too. It’s certainly easy to find a memorable meal.

It’s not just me noticing, either. Travel Oregon incorporated a Seaside food scene story into the landing page for the new advertising campaign featuring a refresh of their wildly-popular Studio Ghibli style videos. The article “5 Tasty Innovations in Seaside” is nestled just above a fancy James Beard quote and just below state-wide itineraries featuring Oregon farms, cheese, and wines on their culinary page for the campaign.

The story itself touches on smoked barbecue, rotating surprise menus, pretzel baguettes, all-natural homemade ice cream, and delicious vegetarian bowls … all available right now in Seaside. We’ve still another month to go, but already the feature has racked up more than 4,000 readers who averaged 3 minutes each on the story. On Facebook, Travel Oregon’s post on the article got 378 likes, 48 loves, 77 comments, and 92 shares.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming Northwest Food Traveler publication from Northwest Travel & Life Magazine. Seaside will again be featured this year in a two-page spread, along with a make-at-home recipe for you aspiring chefs and bakers. Looks like the Times Theatre & Public House will step into the limelight a bit on this one.

And since we’re on the subject of food, when did Seaside become the capital of a Thai food renaissance on the North Coast? Yellow Curry Cozy Thai, Thai Me Up, and now Mighty Thai, oh my!

Big Chair takes tiny vacation

Later this month the big Adirondack chair out in front of the Visitors Bureau will be taking a quick trip down the road to Line-X of Clatsop County to be touched up and treated. While the chair has become an icon of sorts along the highway in Seaside, the winter weather combined with the daily wear of shoes and sneakers hasn’t been too kind to the wood. We’re looking forward to getting the big chair — which was constructed by high school students as a class project in 2017 — back to its original glory.

Mountain bike trails

If you’re a Columbo type, you may have noticed we’ve temporarily removed several biking trails from SeasideOR.com in the last couple weeks. Why’d we do that, you say? Great question. I’m glad you asked.

The trails in question overlapped with routes under heavy use by construction crews this summer for the new middle school and high school in the hills overlooking Seaside (and outside the tsunami zone, more importantly). While construction is ongoing, we highly recommend those wishing to mountain bike explore the amazing trails currently under development at Klootchy Creek through the North Coast Trail Alliance.

The Klootchy Creek trails officially open on July 20 — mark your calendars — but we have it on good authority that there are plenty of logging roads out there to ride, too, as well as three miles of single track in various stages of readiness.

Be safe and have fun.

Got a tourism-related comment or question? I’d love to hear from you. Write me at jheineman@cityofseaside.us.