Salt Pub — Restaurant in Ilwaco

Hey there fabulous peninsula folks and beyond and cheers from your friendly neighborhood peninsula foodie! What an absolutely gorgeous day we have here today to enjoy all that our little slice of heaven has to offer! With that, I decided to take my wife out to lunch at a place where the food and the atmosphere just seem to get better every time we go...down at the Ilwaco marina, the Salt Hotel & Pub Ilwaco. As they've always got a great selection of beers on tap I scooped up a pint of North Jetty Brewing Ledbetter Red Scottish Ale... one of my favorites!

For an appy we grabbed an order of their house made spinach dip, served with sourdough bread. This thing was a flavor bomb! So rich and creamy, it's filled with loads of freshly cooked spinach and cheeses. The toasty crust leaves a few little crispy bits to nibble off the edges too...yummy! Maybe next summer they'll add some Dungeness crab to it and send it even FARTHER over the edge with flavor! 🤩

My wife built her own lunch from a side salad (which was ginormous and looked absolutely fabulous) and an appetizer of the steamed mussels. The mussels were perfectly cooked in white wine, butter and aromatics and were served in a bowl of the most lively, lemon based broth.

I went out on a limb and ordered the "Dirty Reuben" sandwich. If you've seen my previous posts about Reubens then you already know the tenuous relationship I have with them...😂 Well, this isn't your grandpa's Reuben, let me assure you of that! It starts with a crumbly, yet stout dark rye bread that feels like it came out of some 500 year old brick oven. Layered on that is a house made "stout kraut", house made "dirty sauce", a blend of cheeses and the most tender corned lamb I've ever had. Oh yes, and that's all served with hand cut fries.

Now you're probably saying wait, did he just say lamb?? Yeah, I did. And it was amazing. Full stop! So tender and juicy, full of flavor, it's brined in stout beer and a concoction of seasonings that was discovered in some ancient cave on the island of Sardinia...😂 Seriously though, flavortown on display! I only finished half of that beast as it was just so stuffed full off gooey goodness. And that stout kraut! Forget about it! So good! Still crispy and soaked with all that flavor from the dark stout beer. The dirty sauce is a riff on thousand island dressing only.... like, way better. Not too much of it, and it's not too runny. Great addition to compliment the cheese blend that holds it all together on the bread! We did grab a fig crisp dessert on the way out just to have a little something sweet for later once all this food has settled!

The next time you're headed out and you want a great meal with fantastic views, head down to Ilwaco and go see the folks at The Salt! Grab a seat at the window, along the bar or even outside on the patio. Tell em the foodie sent ya! Until next time, cheers and beach appetit from your friendly neighborhood peninsula...

So I'm giving this place a 1 star. I'm really sick of these places around here thinking they can appropriate a cultures cuisine without REALLY knowing how it's supposed to taste or be like. This place and Taco shack have the absolute WORST TACOS this side of WA, especially for the price!! 3 tacos and a fruit cup. First off, you have to charge that much because mangos are pricey and you put a whole one in that cup you call salsa. It's not salsa. It's a whole mango with the tiniest bit of pico de gallo, who the ef is cooking this garbage. Have you even been a real Mexican place to have REAL TACOS??? I can tell not. Because our salsas are fat chucks of fruit that make it nothing but sweet. Not to mention, the actual Taco also had something sweet in it, probably the slaw that came on it. It's just your typical white person tacos with white person prices. Shame on you for appropriating a cuisine and not giving it justice. Typical W.P. Stick to what you know, or actually go LEARN how it's really done! Secondly, I've had many salmon dip/spreads, and they all have been well mixed and everything incorporated. Not here though! Surprise! Not really. I KNOW that there's not supposed to be big chucks of cream cheese in that dip, like it was mixed by a toddler that got tired after 1 minute of mixing. For the price, hell no. Lastly, for the price and how most of your menu come with these awful fries, They are bad 👎🏾. EVEN FRIES Are done half A55. Fresh cut but not taken thru the process of really making them nice and crispy. They cut them then fry, that's how you get oily, limp, soggy fries. Which is what you give, plus your oil needed to be changed, that didn't help you either. If you are going here for the view, just take food, sit and eat right at the dock. I live here and won't be going back. 1 star but i give you 5 thumbs...

This review is 6 months late, but I felt the need to post a rare but necessary review to forewarn others of our poor service experience at this restaurant. My wife, daughters, sister-in-law’s family and 2 grandparents stopped in for lunch after visiting the area and after finding this place on TripAdvisor with great reviews, ocean front atmosphere, photos of seafood. It all looked great, until it wasn’t. I asked the hostess if i could get a table for 10 in what was a half filled restaurant at 1:30pm at the time to be told they don’t take groups of 10. I said ok, I can understand that. How about two tables then; one for 6 and one for 4. Or if it helps, you could split us up into 3 groups. She responded with an “ugh, each table will need to order and pay for itself then!”. I said that’s no problem because we have three separate families. Then she gasped, turned and walked over to another lady for backup, and both returned to tell me they don’t take parties of 10. I really didn’t know what to say at that point cause I’ve never encountered this type of experience, even after having worked in the restaurant industry earlier in my career. So I left in awe looking at a half busy restaurant with several clean empty tables saying sit here!:) My wife, and sister-in-law then went in separately 5 minutes to reserve a couple smaller party tables, and were put on a 45 min wait list. Neither of them ever got a call saying their tables were ready. This place may have great food, but I’ll never be able to confirm that because they clearly don’t want to service hungry customers. Had they been short on staff, or unable to feed us in a timely manner, I would understand that. But this poor service experience...