Restaurants In and Around Eureka

Eureka has a large number of restaurants. 
Some are very good, others are unique, many have rich memories of good times.

The Samoa Cookhouse actually was a cookhouse for the lumbering men who worked in the sawmills (long gone) all around the Samoa Peninsula. It now serves hearty food to the public. There is no menu, you take what you get, served family style, as much as you want, hearty comfort food. Don't go there if you are on a diet or are vegan. 79 Cookhouse Lane, Samoa, Ca (707) 442-1659 Reviews: TripAdvisor.com, Yahoo Travel To get there, get onto R St. and head toward the bay and keep going. Turn left when you can after the second island when you get to the peninsula. Ruth's notes -- Logging mills were similar to old coal mines, men slept in company buildings, ate at company cook house and shopped at company stores.  Did you know - when we were kids, the Samoa Cookhouse was a real cook house for logging men.  There was no bridge to it and it was not public, so we never went there.  It is definitely on our itenery. Did you know the bridge is the Myer Bistron bridge, named after a friend of my parents and a member of the Jewish community?

	Mike's the Hamburger King has been a local favorite for many decades. It has gone through several owners each of whom has retained the recipes and the ambiance of the original.  They are justly renowned for their garlic fries, their chili burgers, and their real milk shakes. 637 Broadway St, (707) 442-4652
The garlic fries were prepared by cooking them in the normal way.  The whole frier cage of fries was dumped directly into two brown paper bags, one inside the other.  Plenty of garlic salt was poured in, the inner bag folded closed and then the whole thing shaken.  If a burger was included, it was put on top of the inner bag of fries and the outer bag closed. We used to often head here for lunch while in high school whenever one of our group had a car.  One time, a member of my group, Leo was wearing white cordoroy trousers which were fashionable in those days.  On the way back to school, he held his bag of fries on his lap.  As you might guess, and see in the photo, the bag got rather saturated with the oil.  So did Leo's lap.  The rest of the school day, he sported a stained wet spot that looked as if he had had an accident.

Lazio's Seafood Market and Restaurant was an institution that used to be located at the foot of C Street. When we lived there, this was the finest seafood market and the restaurant, although quaint, was superb. At that time, Lazio's processed tons of sea food a day with the boats pulling right up to the dock on which the restaurant was located and the fish being processed in the attached warehouses. I used to watch the women shucking oysters, fileting fish, picking crabs while gossiping a mile a minute.  My friends and I would often buy 10 cents worth of fish and using that as bait, dropped our lines right through the holes in the dock. Soon after we left, the water front people got into a huge legal battle about who owned the waterfront.  This was fought in the courts for the better part of two decades.  When the dust settled, a compromise was reached, but the waterfront businesses had all but disappeared. Lazio's still has a restaurant at 327 2nd St. and it is still good. And the processing plant, still operating, is now named Pacific Choice Seafood at 1 Commercial St.

How does Denny's deserve to be include in this list? There were not too many places for young people to go in the late evening.  After going out on our separate dates, we fellows would often meet at Denny's for a bite. Once, a local bar brought up a stripper from San Francisco.  It caused a real scandal, it was a first for Eureka.  Although underage, a couple buddies and I thought we might be able to get in if we acted very mature. When we got there,  another guy and I were able to walk past the bouncer.  Our third member was stopped and got so nervous that he dropped his wallet which spilled all over the floor.  While he was scrmbling to pick up all the stuff, the bouncer called my other buddy and I back and carded us.  Drat! After her shift, the stripper happened to stop by Denny's and sat down in one of the booths.  We noticed and were very interested in her sitting there in a very short skirt.

A List of Restaurants in Eureka

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