We were very impressed by the great mobilization of Seaside, Oregon's Internet Defense Forces after our very first post about that town. Since then, we've had the pleasure to re-visit the place on several occasions, to eat at Herb's, and to exchange e-mails with residents. As a result, we have fallen deeper in love with both its charming small-town Americana as well as its gaudy tourism-pandering excesses. Seaside is the gold-standard and deliciously eponymous archetype of seaside towns, 'nuff sed.

Still, though, it is good to re-visit assumptions every now and again and take in new information. With that in mind, we had the chance to visit Lincoln City the other weekend. We don't necessarily feel confident passing judgment on it just yet and we'd like to go back to see it at different times. However, we will preliminarily issue the provocation: "Lincoln City, we slept in Seaside, we've come to know Seaside, Seaside has become a friend of ours.[1] Lincoln City, you are no Seaside." (prolonged shouts and applause)

--That was really uncalled for, Seattlest. (shouts and applause)

Having said that, though, we did entirely enjoy our stroll down Lincoln City's main drag. More importantly, though, we loved its beaches. If we were rating based on beaches alone, we'd certainly give the edge to Lincoln City. But we're not single issue voters and, thus, another important aspect of northern Oregonian coastal towns to consider when comparing is the quality of their venerable institutions. As the scientists among us will tell us, we need to keep a few things constant when making these comparisons. In our case, then, we will use the Pig'N Pancake.

Over the past year, we've crossed off all four coastalPig'N Pancake locations. Quite serendipitously, we checked out Lincoln City's PnP, erroneously thinking we'd been to all of them. To our rude surprise, we found that there was another one in Portland. We intend to visit it at some point but, for the moment, we are excluding it from PnP Canon because it inconveniently falls outside our narrowly-defined worldview. Also: must you attempt to weasel your way into every discourse, Portlandia?? </fistshaking>

Lincoln City's PnP is the newest, cleanest, and possibly largest. Unfortunately, it is also the most soulless. Say what you like about the saccharine aesthetics of the Cannon Beach location, Donny, but at least it's an ethos. We're confident that with time, Lincoln City's PnP will become lived in and homey just like all the others. Until such a time when it becomes greasier and more divey, we'll feel a little out of place there.

Let us go on record, then, as saying that the original location in Seaside is still the finest PnP when it comes to character & ambiance. Since Mother's Day has recently passed, since we've used the Mom metric to describe them before, and since it is never a bad idea to take your mother out to dinner, allow us to amend our original Pig'N Pancake assessment. Additionally, we have ranked them in order of overall quality:

1. Seaside. Your mother smokes cigars and thwaps the back of your head when you are insolent. Take her here... or else. We love its dense accretion of diner tables bordering the cheesy knick-knacks in the gift shop. It is on the eminently walkable main drag and is always packed with impertinent teenagers and insufferable tourists. It has those really cool windows that start vertical and curve horizontally at the top, creating a solarium-like area. We've stumped the architecture professors: anyone know what they are called?

2. Astoria. Your mother is a burly stevedore, she impregnates her wool sweater with whale oil to weatherize it, and she deftly operates a chainsaw. She talks like a lib'ral, even bordering on the hippie-trippie, but she also possesses an impressive cache of firearms and miscellaneous armaments. Feed her here. Arguably the most wonderfully "greasy spoon" of the Pigs'N Pancake. It, too, is nicely walkable after you've stumbled out of bed too late for breakfast at your BnB up the hill and need to replenish after a busy afternoon of antique shopping.

3. Cannon Beach. Your mother has been shopping at Coldwater Creek and is starting to crochet door knob and toaster cozies for your apartment. You don't have the heart to tell her that the damned things make opening the door impossible, so take her to dinner here and break the news gently. No divey-ness here; even the food grease is on its best behavior in the warm, barn-like structure filled with Americana tchotchke. Its webpage begins, "serenity at the beach." Serenity... warmth... comfort... mmm yes... like the sweet sweet embrace of Death.

4. Lincoln City. Your mother is Slavic and effortlessly writes pages of melodramatic, existential poetry. She routinely stares into the barren void, which she has since befriended and named, and gleans multiplicitous truth and rich meaning. This location is that void; it hasn't been around long enough to acquire character, although at two years of age it should have something. Perhaps it is too morose to find itself.

Now that we think about it, perhaps we need to re-rank these...

In any case, one thing that can be said categorically about all Pig'N Pancakes is that the greasy food is exactly right: unpretentious, filling, and satisfying without setting your wallet back. They have all the staples, yet, being coastal have unexpected diner fare like Dungeness crab. We've lived in both the land of chowDAH as well as chowder and have come to appreciate its many manifestations. We enjoyed PnP's chowder; it tended toward the potato-dominant side with a grainier, starchier texture. Amazingly, their culinary physicists have somehow managed to enlarge the starch atoms for added flavor. And feast your hungry eyes on this delicious dish:

Your eyeballs saw that right, Jackson. Those are indeed piles of Oregon bay shrimp on an English muffin, all topped with melted cheese. Take that, Capt. George Vancouver's salt-water hardened arteries!

So if you happen to find yourself in Astoria, say, you should run down to the PnP for breakfast. Or you can drive down to Seaside and make it a brunch. If, though, you find yourself in Lincoln City, we suggest looking into the town's other local places—unless you are not a slave to ambiance, like we are.

Footnotes