Southern and Central Oregon offer superb public angling that is often within a reasonable (albeit long) drive for many Northern Californians. If you follow U. S. Highway 97 north and east off Interstate 5 out of Weed, California, it will take you to Chiloquin at the head of Klamath Lake. The road runs farther north from there toward Bend, Oregon, and into Washington, often in a boring straight line past millions of lodgepole pines. A Chiloquin trailer was home of the famous, innovative fly tyer Polly Rosborough, and the town is memorialized forever in Buy the Chief a Cadillac, a hilarious and simultaneously tragic novel set on the Klamath Indian Reservation in the early 1960s. It centers on events surrounding the U.S. government’s grab of rich Klamath Reservation timberlands for 10 cents on the dollar. If you have made a pilgrimage to this area, whether for angling, waterfowling, or visiting Crater Lake, you will find the obscure book fascinating.
This highway runs east of the Cascades, passing through wide-spot-in-theroad small-truck-stop towns and leads to a number of enticing lakes and streams. However, “enticing” is not an adjective that can be used in connection with most restaurant food along the route. Go farther north to the Sunriver and Bend areas in Oregon, and you will find nice accommodations and restaurants, including fine dining, but along the way, it’s catch as catch can.
Valhalla for moving-water addicts is to be found in the Klamath River itself out of Yreka, California, and in Oregon, the Wood and Williamson Rivers that run into Agency Lake, the Sprague River, Spring Creek, and farther north, Fall River, the Deschutes, Crooked River, and the fabled Metolius at Camp Sherman.
All can be reached within a day or less from Central California.
Stillwater venues include Klamath and Agency Lakes, known for huge rainbow trout. Diamond Lake, north of Crater Lake, may be on a mismanagement down cycle, but has produced fabulous angling at times. Fishing there is cyclical. The highs can be very good, with massive Callibaetis hatches and sight fishing in June and again in the fall. Twelve years ago, it was at a low point. In a driving rainstorm and huge Tricorythodes hatch, I landed a five-pound rainbow, the only fish of the day. It bled profusely, hooked through the gills on a size 6 black Woolly Bugger. We took it in to Diamond Lake Lodge. They were so amazed at a five-pound trout that the lodge chef put on a procession with the poached fish and accoutrements on a platter to celebrate. The chef and kitchen staff donned white jackets and hats and circled our tables while beating on pots and pans. I had brought a good Oregon pinot, they added several more bottles from their wine storage, and we all shared and whooped it up. They also comped us for the dinner. We’ve since had decent meals there, and aside from the poached trout, it’s a good place to order a steak or a burger.
Beyond Diamond Lake, Miller Lake, with its brown trout, lies 14 miles west of Chemult, and then there’s the famous Century Drive lake aggregation out of La Pine and Bend. The hundred-mile loop includes Hosmer, Big and Little Lava Lakes ( John Wayne’s favorites), and Crane Prairie. A bit farther south lie Wickiup Reservoir and Davis Lake, with its northern largemouth bass fishery. East and Paulina Lakes, both in ancient calderas, are about half an hour away toward the rising sun — all places to put on your bucket list.
A fishing partner and I chose the first week in October in 2015 to make this journey. The weather east of the Cascades can be quite nice, and Oregonians become obsessed with the opening of deer season, leaving end-of-season anglers lots of uncrowded room at a time when fall angling can be superb. We realized our first night in La Pine how important the right-of-passage first deer is in these small, homogenous communities, where everybody knows everybody else. In a Mexican restaurant that we visited, an extended family was celebrating their young son’s first kill. For a moment, I thought of a quinceañera, a young woman’s coming-of-age celebration, that my wife and I had the privilege to observe in a Mérida, Yucatan, restaurant.
We would stay on this trip with friend Randy Jarvis in Chiloquin, dining in at his lodge retreat, taking breakfast locally, then eating at local restaurants after fishing and bunking in inexpensive motels the rest of the way to La Pine, Oregon, the southern gateway to the Century Drive lakes.
I started making this journey in the early 1970s. For years, in those small towns, finding a decent place to eat was a challenge, particularly after fishing late, and little has changed. On this trip, we made a quick U turn and walked out of one restaurant in La Pine, were disgusted with a meal in Chemult, but settled in at several Mexican restaurants up and down U.S. 97 that proved to serve basic, good-quality food. In La Pine, we ate three nights in a row at Los Tres Caballos. The meals at this family-run restaurant were high quality and well prepared, the décor was pleasant and clean, the owners very nice, and anyway we had few choices after fishing late. I love good carnitas and asked about theirs. Our waitress said that the recipe came from their family village in Mexico. I went for it and was surprised in that it was made with beef, not pork . . . a first. I’ve studied at David Sterling’s Los Dos Cooking School in Mérida, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula, and there my wife and I learned how varied and special regional Mexican cuisine can be. The carnitas at Los Tres Caballos had a squashlike vegetable mixed in with sauced beef slices. It was delicious and wafted spicy scents of cumin and Mexican oregano.
In Chiloquin, we prepared dinner meals at Randy’s place, after cocktails sitting on the porch and watching rising fish in the last minutes of sunlight. We ate breakfast out, on the way to fishing, and also had an evening meal at El Rodeo, a local Mexican restaurant, that again was quite good, family run and “interesting” because of its blue cinderblock walls and colorful murals. The murals are not the work of Diego Rivera, but much like those seen in Mexican villages all over.
You can tell a lot by the quality of the chips, salsa, and tortillas in such restaurants, and I suspect somebody’s mother was in the back making them at El Rodeo. I raved over the best carnitas since Mexico. I hear that one of the secrets for good carnitas is the use of Dr. Pepper in the braising liquid, but few cooks know how to get the char, caramelization, and tenderness in the pork that we experienced at El Rodeo. We returned for a great breakfast when another establishment closed its doors overnight. We have found that Mexican restaurants of one type or another often offer the best quality food in small, off-the-beaten-path towns and priced very reasonably.
That was the case a year ago May in Los Molinos, California. Your publisher and I were on the road to Manton, southwest of Mount Lassen, and Bailey Creek Lodge. We gambled and tried a run-down-looking taco food truck that I had passed a few times during prior trips. There aren’t a lot of choices, good or otherwise, in this part of the Sacramento Valley. Despite the truck’s appearance we had a tasty lunch of low-calorie carne asada tacos, avoiding the fast-food joints, and were on the road toward our final destination in short order.
A group of us missed a flight in Phoenix last year on the way to fish for largemouth bass in Mexico. Guys at the car rental booth told us of a Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of town that was patronized by discerning locals. They were correct. We got lots of smiles and excellent food of a quality largely unobtainable where I live. There were a few gringos in this hard-to-find, popular restaurant, but not many.
A friend and I were lucky again this March, returning from the Colorado River at Westmoreland, north of El Centro, whose name reminded me of the infamous commander of our troops in Vietnam. We took a chance, followed some agricultural-looking guys in, and found good quality Mexican food in a gas station market that had a kitchen with four bar stools at a counter. Smiles again greeted us, and their six-dollar chorizo omelet with a generous mound of steaming hash browns and orange slices took about three minutes to prepare. It hit the spot after the long morning’s drive from the Picacho State Recreation Area over washboard roads. I had two salsas and four hot sauces from which to choose. I chose black coffee rather than a breakfast Modelo Especial, since I was driving the next two-hour leg. My traveling partner’s meal was on the counter as he finished fueling our truck.
As I write, I just talked with noted fly tyer Phil Fisher in Sunriver, Oregon. He said the very good Peruvian Hola! Restaurant in Sunriver is still thriving. They serve Peruvian and nouveau Mexican dishes in a fine-dining setting right on the Deschutes River. Sometimes you can see rising fish. We’ve had a number of satisfying meals there and like the fact that the menu isn’t same-old, sameold resort food. Another favorite spot of Phil’s is the Sunriver Brewing Company. I might just head that way again.
Carne Asada
Carne asada is a classic Mexican preparation that features tasty beef, grilled to a crusty, caramelized texture and sliced thinly for tacos or served straight up without the almost mandatory tortilla. I like it in camp and the backyard because you use thin cuts of beef that marinate and cook quickly. In the classic preparation, thin slivers of crusty beef are garnished with radish slices, cilantro sprigs and a pico de gallo salsa. Avocado slices can be added to the folded tortilla or served on the side. It’s a different type of taco in that the beef flavors are pure, and you don’t need a bunch of accompanying ingredients, which is great for simplicity in camp. Anything other than medium rare with caramelized crust and pink in the middle is heresy. Drizzle some fresh lime juice onto your creation for the finishing touch.
For carne asada beef, I use flank steak, flat iron steak (prime, if you can get it), more expensive skirt steak, or half-inch to three-quarter-inch slices from a prime grade tri-tip, and I always wipe off and blot dry the residual marinade before throwing it on a hot grill. That’s to help develop the caramelized crust. All are thin, relatively even-thickness cuts that marinate and cook quickly. Don’t over marinate — only two to four hours — because the acidic citrus components will make the meat mushy. At home, I used a vacuum marinator or wrap the meat tightly in plastic wrap, which will hold the marinating liquid close and accelerate the process, again an efficient procedure in camp. Amp up the citrus marinade with some achiote powder from a foil-wrapped cube found in Mexican markets. It is common in the Yucatan. I bought a brick-sized block in a Mérida market, but had it confiscated by customs in Dallas. It was wrapped in plastic, but must have set off the cute beagle sniffer dogs. Grilling the beef on a medium-high gas burner or charcoal barbeque takes 10 to 14 minutes total time, depending on the thickness of the cut. If your meat thermometer reads in a thin cut, pull the meat at 118 to 120 degrees. When it’s done, let it rest under foil or an aluminum pie plate for 10 minutes and use a razor-sharp knife to thinly slice it diagonally across the grain, for added tenderness. Often, I make pico de gallo salsa in advance to allow the flavors to marry, eliminating prep time around the campfire or barbecue. I admit to sometimes buying my pico de gallo from a nearby Mexican market and butcher shop and copying their simple recipe when I make my own. Follow the Mexican flag rule: red, white and green, meaning tomatoes, diced white or yellow onions, slices of green onions, diced peppers, and cilantro. I favor passilla or poblano peppers and one seeded jalapeno. Grill your tortillas on a plancha or skillet, directly on stove burners, or on a grill over coals.
There are many variations for the marinade. As I have implied, I favor ones using citrus, having picked this up in the Yucatan. Orange juice, lime juice, and white vinegar mimic the flavor of the slightly bitter naranja agria found in the Yucatan and used there in many preparations, but it’s hard to get here.
Carne Asada Marinade
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
Handful of chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper
Juice from 2 limes
Juice from one orange
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Achiote powder to taste, if desired
If You Go…
El Rodeo, Highway 97, Chiloquin Oregon, (541) 783-0994
Los Tres Caballos, Highway 97, La Pine, Oregon, (541) 536-1006
Hola!, 17430 Deschutes Road, Sun river Oregon, (541)-593-8880, http://www.holabend.com
Sunriver Brewing Company, Building 4, 57100 Beaver Drive, Sun river, Oregon, (541)593-3007, http://www.sunriverbrewingcom pany.com/locations/sunriver-pub
As always in resort areas, call restaurants to verify that they are open or still in business.
—Trent Robert Pridemore
Foraging in Truckee: Casa Baeza
As Truckee grows in popularity as a destination for well-off visitors from affluent urban areas, its restaurants become increasingly expensive. One of the finer of our fine-dining establishments is now charging $19 for its cheeseburger, and although it is a very good cheeseburger, a burger dinner for two with drinks, tax, and tip is going to set one back, oh, eighty bucks. That’s a lot of trout flies and tippet spools.
Assuming you’re a visiting angler of moderate means and lack access to a kitchen, your options for inexpensive dining in Truckee are fast food, diners, or ethnic restaurants, with the latter typically the most reasonable in cost vis-a-vis quantity and quality. The Mexican restaurants in town are the subject of fierce debate among local aficionados of that cuisine. One of our fishing guides is a big fan of La Bamba. My barber prefers El Toro Bravo. A number of friends choose Tacos Jalisco as their first choice. For The Artist and me, our preference is Casa Baeza.
When I moved to Truckee in 1999, it took me a few years to even consider walking through the door of the Casa, because I had early on become a partisan of Tacos Jalisco, which I viewed (and still view) as the best place in town for authentic regional Mexican cookery. In contrast, Casa Baeza, like La Bamba and El Toro Bravo, uses ingredients and preparations that have been standardized in this country for decades. Someone once described this style to me as “Tex-Mex.” I don’t know whether that’s actually true, but the point is that the dishes at Casa Baeza are common and satisfying, with spice levels acceptable to most palates.
Nothing on the menu of Casa Baeza has disappointed me, and my favorite dish, the number 40 (sautéed tilapia fillets), could easily be served with no embarrassment at any of the fine-dining restaurants in town. In addition to two fillets, the 40 comes with red rice, a small salad, pico de gallo, guacamole, and two tortillas. Given that The Artist and I would already have been taking advantage of the gratis chips and salsa that Casa Baeza provides on each table, I usually end up with enough left over to make for a filling breakfast or lunch the next day. Not bad for $14.75.
Add in two cervezas and The Artist’s choice of Nachos Baeza (which likewise is enough for two meals), and the total tab for both of us, including tax and tip, ends up slightly south of $40. This is one of the best deals in town, which locals know. We’ll frequently run into friends and old-timers at the bar or in one of the dining rooms. And the lack of pretension at Casa Baeza, in a once blue-collar / skibum town that’s becoming danged highfalutin, is absolutely refreshing.
Casa Baeza is at 10010 Bridge Street, across from the downtown Post Office and just a short stroll from the historic Commercial Row on Donner Pass Road. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. Reservations are not accepted. If there’s a crowd, you’ll need to put your name on a list and wait. Usually we’re seated before we finish our first beers.
— Richard Anderson
