The Hill Buffet & Grill — Restaurant in Newport

I believe this was the location of the old Izzy’s pizza that I once had dinner at with some friends. It is now a private buffet, but also offers Pizza and a variety of buffet items. The selection is not too broad, these photographs show everything that was on offer when I was there for lunch, but the food quality is excellent for a buffet. The chicken in particular was tender and juicy, and they had three different kinds of seasoning options from barbecue to baked.

Parking is abundant unless it is the absolute busiest time with their own private parking lot on the top of the hill. The view of the ocean is spectacular from most of the dining room, a photo of that is included here., I simply took that from where I chose to sit for my lunch.The music selection is pleasant, and it is a family friendly atmosphere.

Particularly of interest to me was something I have not seen since the childhood buffet I used to eat at when I was younger. You can see the pricing board and at least when I was there it was $1.25 per year, so if you are a dad like me that has a bunch of small children you can have dinner and eat as much as you would like, and you can bring along a bunch of toddlers and younger children without paying through the nose. That may make this one of the best values along this part of the coast for a family with young ones. They will especially like the soft serve ice cream.

The first pizza I got would’ve received a four star review as it was a little bit hard from having sat out, but while I was here, they brought out fresh pizzas and it is the best buffet pizza I’ve had in a while. It is buffet pizza.

Another highlight for me was the pineapple, cantaloupe, and honeydew in the salad bar that was ideally ripe, fresh, and very good.

The customer service was friendly, they refill your drinks for you, and just generally more than you would normally expect from a buffet.

I highly recommend you give this restaurant a try, it is the perfect place, particularly for a family with a few small kids to have dinner after spending the day at the beach. Maybe not the place for a couple on a romantic dinner.

There is a bar area separate not covered in...

We wanted to like this, but it really is terrible.

A few pros:

Pizza wasn’t bad. It was old and gross when we came in but they quickly refreshed it and it was okay. Not great, but good by buffet standards.

Salad bar was pretty alright! The shredded carrots in the lettuce mix had some brown but otherwise an okay selection and my wife liked it. She said the ranch dressing was good, and she’s picky about that.

It seems really clean. I saw the grill guy washing his hands and all the tables were wiped and the floor looked clean.

Spectacular views! Really a great location.

The rest of it belongs on the cons list:

The grill items were thrown on and heated. Also, they were fantastically bad. Imagine ‘bad fish tacos’, and then multiple it. By ten. The ribs weren’t even heated through all the way, and were tough.

The mashed potatoes were bad. I love potatoes. I’ve never had a bad potato until now. Maybe I’ll add a star for having had this experience.

Fried chicken was… hot. That’s about where that starts and stops. It was, indeed, hot.

Green beans did not look edible. As adventurous as I am I did not try to test the theory.

My wife described the macaroni as tasting like noodles with goopy paste. She did clarify that the paste “tastes yellow”, though.

Cinnamon rolls had potential but the bottoms were rock hard. To be fair, we went at 4pm as we were STARVING, so probably not a busy time.

I implore the owners—revamp this place. Your location sets you apart. I would’ve paid more for better food, happily.

If I walk away from this without food poisoning from those fish tacos I’ll count it as a win.

Employees were nice. I hope it works...

We were in Newport on vacation and saw this restaurant on the way to the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse. From what we could tell from limited online reviews on Facebook and Google, this was a family business recently re-opened after COVID modifications. The reviews were good and we wanted to support a local business so we tried them for lunch, $11 each, and glad we did. We were pleasantly surprised by the separation of guests for COViD safety, because we were deterred from other restaurants after peeking in the windows and seeing tables seated too close to each other for our comfort. The booths here are divided by plexiglass. The tables had adequate spacing. The owners were extremely friendly and the food was fresh. The food was good, keeping in mind that it is a buffet set-up, not an off the menu restaurant. The two of us had pizza, fried chicken, bbq chicken, pork riblets, chicken tenders, homemade mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and several hot sides. There were other hot items that we did not have, but would have been happy to try. A large selection to choose from the salad and fruit bar. Desserts appear to be homemade, at least in part, cinnamon rolls, bread pudding, etc. The hosts serve everything to you cafeteria style, as opposed to a typical self-serve buffet. If we were in Newport longer, we would go back and try their dinner. We recommend you give them a try and we wish them success. I almost forgot to mention the excellent view over Agate Beach...