There are a few places in Portland that lean on history, but Dan & Louis Oyster Bar is the real thing. It has sat at 208 SW Ankeny Street in Old Town since 1907, when Louis C. Wachsmuth opened it as City Oyster Co. Over the years it went by Oregon Oyster and Louis' Oyster Bar before landing on the name it carries now, and five generations of the Wachsmuth family have kept it going. Fodor's calls it a Portland landmark, and that is about the right way to describe it.
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The menu is built around oysters, from Yaquina Bay and beyond, served raw or in the oyster stew that has been on the table for more than a century. Oysters Rockefeller run $13, a prawn cocktail is $15, seafood gumbo is $24, and prawn sauté is $26, with steamed clams, steamed mussels and the Louie Salad rounding things out. On Mondays, the Oyster Monday all-day happy hour brings oysters to $12 a half dozen and $24 a dozen. Outside the front door, oysters are shucked by hand, and inside the dining room seats about a hundred people.
The rooms themselves tell the family story. The main dining room, with its ship-like interior, was built in 1937. In 1940, the Reserve dining room was added, centered around a ship-shaped kitchen called the Star of Oregon. In 2017, the fourth generation renamed the Reserve the Galley, added windows, and replaced the Star of Oregon with a larger kitchen and seating where you can watch the cooks work. The name change came from a tragedy: in February 1938, Louis' second son, Dan, died at 27 from complications of the flu, and the bar was renamed Dan and Louis Oyster Bar in his memory. Louis himself died in 1957 or 1958, and his sons Louis A. and Chester continued the business before passing it to their own sons, Louis J. and Doug, in 1977. Doug bought out his brother's share in 1991 and handed the place to his son Keoni and daughter-in-law Michelle in 2013. As of 2022, it remains in the family.
Part of the draw is the decor. The walls are lined with hundreds of collectible plates, mementos and nautical memorabilia, and the collection includes pieces of the battleship USS Oregon preserved before it was scrapped. The wheel from the steamer S.S. Brother Jonathan, which wrecked off Crescent City, California, in July 1865, sits in the front lobby. The exterior was clad in copper salvaged from Berbati's Pan Restaurant, a famous nightclub of the era.
The family has also long championed the native Olympia oyster. In September 1941, Louis spent $100,000 to restore the Yaquina oyster beds, depositing 65 carloads of cleaned shells into the water to rebuild the habitat, and by then he was shipping Yaquina Bay oysters to the Waldorf Astoria in New York and the Denver Athletic Club. That commitment continues in a different form: starting November 1, the restaurant will give free chowder to anyone who has lost their SNAP benefits.
Hours run 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM Monday through Thursday, 11:00 AM to 2:00 AM Friday and Saturday, and 12:00 PM to 9:00 PM on Sunday. It is a place that has outlasted almost everything around it, and it is still doing exactly what it set out to do in 1907.
