Dan & Louis Oyster Bar - Portland, OR

Posted By Michael Stern on November 1, 2007 4:38 PM

Warm milk, melted butter, and lots of briny-sweet oysters: This is Dan & Louis’ oyster stew, the best dish in the house, and one of the stellar seafood specialties of the Northwest. According to the menu, it was invented by Louis Wachsmuth long ago on a cold, winter day. Its oysters are modest-size Yaquinas from the restaurant’s own beds. On the half shell, they are gentle-tempered; in stew, their oceanic aplomb creates a fabulous non-cloying richness that makes this infinitely edible. While it is possible to get the stew with a double dose of oysters, we prefer having a half-dozen or a dozen on the half shell, then having the stew with its normal number.

And if we’re really hungry, we’ll follow that with a plate of pan-fried oysters. These Yaquinas fry up beautifully with a toasty golden crust. They are sent to the table with ramekins of tartar sauce and 1000 Island dressing, as well as a pile of lettuce shreds heaped with small shrimp and a length of chewy sourdough bread.

Beyond oysters, Dan & Louis sells Dungeness crab, Shrimp Louis, halibut fish & chips, even a hamburger for diehard meat-eaters who accidentally find themselves in this thoroughly nautical eat-place. Among the non-oysters items, we are especially fond of the dowdy “creamed crab” on toast, a dish that one might expect to have been served in a department store lunch room 75 years ago.

The interior of Dan & Louis is mesmerizing, its handsome sailing-ship wood walls bedecked floor to ceiling with an inexhaustible accumulation of nautical memorabilia and historical pictures, notes, and maps that tell of Portland since Louis started serving food here.

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Oyster Stew

Crab Louis

Fried Oysters

Oyster Cocktail

Crab Cakes

Seafood Stew

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Posted By Norman L Clanney on October 4, 2011 1:43 AM

My son and I went for dinner and it was a most tasty experience. I had a cup of the smoked salmon chowder and it would knock your socks off. I went light as I was still full from an earlier meal. My son went after the broiled cod fish dinner, which was excellent. I highly recommend this establishment if you're ever in Portland.

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Posted By Deborah Pastor on March 21, 2006 8:05 PM

If you want oysters and you want them fresh, tasty and affordable - then come on down to Dan & Louis Oyster Bar. I have been going to Jake's for some time for my Portland seafood fix but decided to check out Dan & Louis after reading the Roadfood review. Jake's is a very nice restaurant, somewhat fancy, usually crowded, with great seafood. Dan & Louis is different - the emphasis is all on the oyster. The decor is nautical and it is relaxed and homey - a perfect place for families or for a couple like us who wanted to sit around for a couple of hours, talking, eating oysters and drinking beer.

It wasn't crowded (we were there on a weeknight), and we felt very comfortable sitting at our table ordering round after round of raw oysters and downing some of Portland's finest ales. The local Netarts oysters we had actually tasted fresher and brinier than the ones we had at Netarts! We also tried the oyster chowder - which is the true chowder, without flour or cornstarch, just milk, potatoes, butter... and lots and lots of oysters. We had planned to try other dishes, but this hit the spot.

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