The Cafe on Hawk Creek — Restaurant in Neskowin

Context for this review: I’ve been going to the Hawk for my entire life, and I even worked there for a while.

It used to be owned by a local couple who cared deeply for the community - though they had some of the same complaints that the new ownership is getting, it was possible to overlook this because of the contributions Frank and Genie made to the community. It was a convivial, vibrant space where you always ran into someone you knew.

The Hawk was acquired by a Portland-based restaurant group in 2021 and the quality of the entire experience has gone downhill since. Neskowin is a small town and there’s hardly any restaurant competition, but it’s a shame that the Portland restauranteurs seem to see the Hawk as a tourist cash cow and sacrifice quality of food and staff in order to make more money. This both alienates the locals and paints Neskowin in a bad light to visitors.

The prices are absolutely astronomical, and more often than not orders (both to go and in person) are late or incorrect. They’ve reduced portions and jacked prices. New management hired by the restaurant group a few months ago drove out numerous tenured members of staff who kept the boat afloat over the last few years.

The bottom line: you won’t get the service you want, you’ll shell out more money than you should, and if you’ve been here in the past, it’s not the cafe you remember.

I truly do hate to write this review, but it’s incredibly discouraging as a local to watch the downfall of this establishment. I want to support them, and I want them to succeed, but it’s getting incredibly...

June 2022 update: We returned to Hawk Creek Cafe, today and enjoyed a delicious Fish & Chips dinner. The fish was outstanding - crispy on the outside moist cod on the inside. Fries were fresh cut. We also observed many pizzas delivered to neighboring tables and they all lookedn delicious - no black burned crusts. We will return for pizza on our next visit to Neskowin. Our waiter was attentive and helpful even with a full house. He was kept busy! Thank you to the new owners.

(The following was submitted in 2021). Arrived for our pizza as a pizza was being removed from the oven. As it was taken out of the oven the lady cooking it stated she had burned this one. Put it in a box & handed it to me! I opened the box and sure enough, it was burned. The waitress had just arrived and offered to bring it to my car once the pizza was remade. I then paid but no tip (planned on handing it to the waitress once she brought it to my car). She did bring it to my car and I explained to her about my observations - after staring at me for a moment she responded that they always have us inspect them before we leave with it (she did not have me inspect this new one!). No apology. No tip. I left without inspecting - certainly this one was not burned. It was! Was it the original or a new one? It didn't seem to look as burnt on top but the bottom was very burned - black spots all over. Normally I give a pass to the first bad experience but this became egregious with a second burned pizza...

While the food is totally passable, and the atmosphere is great, the service was so bad it was actually comedic:

When we walked in there, there were 4 front of house staff, an almost empty restaurant, and not a single person acknowledged our existence for about 10 minutes. They were all zipping around and looking around, yet not paying attention to what's in front of them. Someone finally stopped and asked "if you'd been helped" and it took another 10ish minutes to seat us despite the nearly empty restaurant.

Once we sat down, we had to flag down our server for EVERYTHING. For example, we would flag her down to order drinks. Then she would walk away and not get them. We would then flag her down to go physically pour the drinks. We would flag her down to get a check, then she would walk away and we'd have to flag her down to get her to run our card. It was exhausting. The entire time, there were 3 other front of house staff doing absolutely nothing. The place was almost completely empty, yet the other servers were just sort of spacing out.

I will also knock it down a star due to the price/quality ratio. While passable, it was no better than what you'd get at Burgerville, and it was at least 3x the price.

Conclusion: The front of house is a disaster, and they don't seem to know what they're doing at all. There seems to be no management or any training for...