Where to Eat & Drink in Baker City, Oregon

Baker City, Oregon isn’t known as a foodie town, a haven of eccentric eating or a place to eat unique, local food. Fortunately for roadtrippers and other visitors in Northeast Oregon, Baker City has surprisingly great food and plenty of good restaurants.

Baker City has a lot more to offer visitors than one might expect. Most people come for the natural beauty in the area, but you have to eat at some point! And you might as well eat good food when you can.

For a small city in a largely rural part of the United States, there are a lot of quality restaurants. Whether you’re passing through or spending a few days, this is where you should eat and drink in Baker City, Oregon:

Where to Eat in Baker City, Oregon

Restaurants in Baker City are more diverse than most small, American towns. Ranging from taco shops to classic staple foods of the American West, there is a decent variety in town. Baker City even has fine dining and artisan bakery options.

Oregon Trail Restaurant

For the real Eastern Oregon restaurant experience in Baker City, go to the Oregon Trail Restaurant. This unassuming diner in a motel parking lot is everything you want in a local, small town cafe.

The Oregon Trail Restaurant is on the edge of Downtown Baker City. Complete with elk and antelope mounts on the walls, this is authentic dining straight out of the American West.

Friendly, attentive staff are a bonus, but the food is what stands out. Traditional American diner fare – chicken fried steak, biscuits & gravy, corn beef hash – and prices that will make you double check that it’s the 21st century are the main reasons to eat here. Breakfast is delicious and the best deal in town.

Sweet Wife Baking

Want something a little fancier, perhaps on the sweet side, for breakfast? Sweet Wife Baking is a fantastic bakery in Baker City, and the menu isn’t limited to sweet eats.

Sweet Wife Baking, at first glance, seems like it would be too fancy for a town like Baker City. Stereotypes of Small Town USA aside, this little bakery a block off of Main Street fits in perfectly. 

Sweet Wife has excellent coffee that would easily pass the standards of the world’s most pretentious coffee town, Portland. In other words, the coffee is good; so if boring, probably-burned drip coffee isn’t your cup of, uh, coffee, get a quality pour here.

Breakfast is the obvious reason to go to a bakery, and Sweet Wife has several delicious breakfast options. Breakfast sandwiches, quiche, scones – it’s all great. I would drive the 5 hours back to Baker City to eat another one of those maple bacon scones.

Aside from breakfast, Sweet Wife Bakery has cookies, tasty lunch options and other baked goods. They even have fresh baked bread that varies each day. If you want quality – and, most importantly, delicious – baked goods in Baker City, Oregon, this is the place.

Lefty’s Taphouse – Pizza in Baker City

Lefty’s Taphouse is the go-to local pizza restaurant in Baker City. Beer and pizza, one of the world’s greatest culinary combinations, is the focus here.

Lefty’s (as in southpaw, or a left-handed pitcher) is a cheerfully baseball-themed restaurant. Baseball memorabilia hangs in every corner, and a large Babe Ruth mural occupies a wall between the bar and kitchen. Even the tap handles at the bar are mini baseball bats.

As far as the beer and pizza goes, Lefty’s has the best pizza in Baker City, and it’s pretty good. It’s not pretentious or innovative – it’s just good. The ‘taphouse’ portion of Lefty’s consists almost entirely of craft beers. There are a few local Northeast Oregon brews, several other Oregon craft beers, a few Washington beers and the obligatory one or two cheap American domestics.

Geiser Grand Hotel

Even way out in Baker City, Oregon, there is a fancy restaurant. The Geiser Grand Hotel is an historic hotel that is a destination in itself. It was once considered the “finest hotel between Salt Lake City and Seattle.”

This is the fanciest restaurant in Baker City. The hotel itself may be the more standout attraction, but the food is good, too. Not to disparage the hotel or the town, but this is “Baker City fine dining.” And, to be clear, I mean that as a good thing!

The restaurant at the Geiser Grand Hotel is quality food with high-quality ingredients made in the local way. It’s not pretentious and, while it is visually appealing, the food is the priority – not the plating. You can save a few bucks eating in the bar and checking out happy hour snacks.

Northeast Oregon is a land of agriculture and farming. The Grand Geiser Hotel is the place to eat when you’re craving a fancy burger, filet mignon, prime rib or lamb chops. It’s the best presentation of local food. The historic hotel will also be the go-to for any brunch-seeking foodies in Baker City.

Haines Steak House

First impressions of Haines Steak House are that it looks like a typical themed, touristy restaurant. The thing is, though, little bitty Haines, Oregon is not a tourist town. Baker City is not really a tourist town, and nearby Haines is tiny and has a lot less to attract a visitor. The only reason I ate here was that a local bartender highly recommended the place.

Haines Steak House is an adequate attraction and a good reason to drive even farther out into the middle of nowhere. 15 minutes from Baker City is the quintessential Eastern Oregon Restaurant.

This restaurant serves typical American home-cookin’ in a family-run environment. Seriously, a little old lady is the hostess and her husband still works in the kitchen. This is the kind of restaurant most people only dream of finding on their great American roadtrip through the West. But it’s the real thing!

In between relics of the Old West, reminders that you’re in farm country, animal skins/mounts and the conestoga wagon salad bar, this is Oregon dining of days past. Chunks of meat, hefty portions, heaps of potatoes, cobbler and – seriously – the best rolls on the planet. That’s what you get here – great American food that is simple, friendly, local and aplenty.

More Restaurants in Baker City, Oregon

• Inland Cafe – another great, no-frills American diner
• D&J Taco Shop – simple & straightforward; the best tacos and burritos in Baker City
• Mad Matilda’s – coffee shop and random vintage stuff, very Portland in Eastern Oregon
• The Little Bagel Shop – bagels and bagel sandwiches made right here – need I say more?
• Lone Pine Cafe – good food in a slightly prettier cafe setting than others on this list
• Latitude 45 – nice little gastropub on Main Street

Where to Drink in Baker City, Oregon

After deciding where to eat in Baker City, you’ll need to determine where to stop for a pint or a nightcap. Small towns (those without a college presence) aren’t known as destinations for unique drinking options. Baker City is an exception.

Barley Brown’s

Oregon is famous for its breweries and love of craft beer. If there is a single reason to visit Baker City, like so many other places in the state, it’s the beer. But this beer is different. One of the best breweries in Oregon, if not the best, is Barley Brown’s in Baker City.

Whenever I see a Barley Brown’s beer on tap in the Portland area, it wins. All other beers are out of consideration. Whether it’s a Pallet Jack IPA, Handtruck Pale Ale, Point Blank Red, etc – the answer is yes.

When I decided to spend a few days in Baker City, a visit to the Barley Brown’s taproom was at the top of my list. I was not disappointed. Barley Brown’s beer is in the upper echelon of Oregon beer, and the taproom, adjacent to the brewery, is perfectly located in Downtown Baker City.

Like most taprooms, they offer flights of beer for quick and easy sampling. I rarely waste my time on flights of beer. Sure, it’s an easy way to try several different brews, but good beer deserves to be tasted and enjoyed slowly. A pint of quality beer will have different tastes as you drink down and the temperature slowly reaches equilibrium.

Barley Brown’s beer is so damn good that it deserves every consideration to get the full experience. A visit to the simple taproom is not about atmosphere or decor. It’s about beer.

The benefit of drinking at a brewery, especially a small brewery, is the beer options that aren’t exported off-site. With beer this good, you definitely want to stop in for the more exclusive options. Barley Brown’s, for quality of product, is the best place to drink in Baker City.

Geiser Grand Hotel

Yep, it’s on here again. The Geiser Grand Hotel is also a great place to drink in Baker City. Imbibing at the fancy hotel is a lot different than elsewhere in town, but it’s worth it for a special treat.

The bar at the Geiser Grand Hotel is old, and, I can imagine, it would have been quite the site many, many decades ago. Today, the bar is picturesque and features several elements paying homage to its history, but the allure of having a drink at this historic, once-illustrious (though still very nice) hotel is the cocktail selection.

The bartenders at the Grand Geiser Hotel are good at their job. The cocktails, though on the expensive side, are made to perfection. The menu primarily consists of older cocktails, labeled as “mid-century modern.” Some of the concoctions are still popular, but many are rare sights on today’s bar menus.

Whether you go for something classic like a French 75 or Caipirinha, or something less obvious like a Brown Derby or a Boulevardier, the cocktails at the Grand Geiser are in a class of their own. Weather permitting – Eastern Oregon gets really cold and occasionally really hot – grab a table outside and enjoy watching Main Street life in Small Town, USA.

More Baker City, Oregon Bars

Downtown Baker City has several other drinking establishments. These vary from wine shops to blue collar local bars. Here are some of the other top refreshment options in town:

• The 41 Club – normal bar with arcade games
• Main Event Sports Bar – I think the name kinda says it all
• AJ’s Corner Brick Bar & Grill – small bar with good food in a nice, cool downtown setting
• Copper Belt Wines – local winery
• Glacier 45 – local vodka distillery

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Read the Hangry Backpacker’s Baker City Travel Guide for a thorough breakdown of visiting the Northeast Oregon town.

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Eating & Drinking in Baker City, Oregon

Small towns, especially those in more rural, remote parts of the United States, are hardly known these days as great culinary destinations. Food in Baker City is an exception, and it’s a shining example of what makes Small Town, USA so fascinating.

 

Unassuming small towns, places where life is a little slower and seems uneventful (to outside spectators), offer some of the most unique eating in the USA. To be fair, the bars and restaurants in Baker City, Oregon punch above their weight, but that’s all the more reason to take a few days and spend some time exploring and eating in Northeast Oregon. You just might like it.