The Old Mill Saloon, Estacada, OR

When I go out for my birthday with friends, I generally have in mind a particular sort of restaurant that offers a good-quality meal at a reasonable price. Trying new places, as this one was, can be pretty interesting as well. As it happens, this restaurant was a suggestion from one of the friends I have been staying with, and it sits in a location that I must admit I have always overlooked as I have driven past it on my way to and from other places, so it was not a place that I had even noticed before, at least as far as I can remember. As far as the ambiance goes, it is a casual place where one enters and seats oneself, and while this is certainly convenient, it made for a somewhat chaotic dining experience in that it was not always easy to get one’s server to come and refill water or answer questions about the menu.

How was the food? As far as what the restaurant had, it was pretty good, if the menu was somewhat limited. I had the regular steak option myself, and it came with a house salad, fries, and mixed vegetables. All of those were tasty–the fries best when hot, though the restaurant seemed a bit low on the sort of salad dressing options I like in that they were out of Italian dressing and only had a small amount of oil and vinegar left, which I promptly used up the rest of. One of my friends had the chicken fried steak option, and that came with fries and mixed vegetables, although the steak came with country gravy and that is always a concern when it comes to the ingredients. The other member of my party had a chicken salad option, and he approved of that option as well. I had considered getting the chicken tortilla soup but decided against it, and none of the appetizers was at a price that was appealing to me, personally, given that the cheese sticks were nearly as expensive as my dinner option.

What was more an issue, at least to me, was not what the restaurant had but rather what it did not have. I have already alluded to the restaurant’s strange absence of the sorts of dressings that I prefer, but this also included soup options, as aside from the chicken tortilla soup there was only clam chowder, and the server at first thought the soup was a bacon potato, which would have been equally unwelcome. Most puzzling of all, the restaurant lacked any dessert options aside from a sort of caramel cake that the server seemed almost apologetic to mention and did not even try to upsell us on without us asking about it specifically. Though the vibe of the restaurant is friendly and it is clearly a popular place, it struck me that this restaurant seems to be leaving money on the table, not taking advantage of the opportunity to provide more complete meals to its patrons. In particular, the meal options available seemed particularly limited. Perhaps this is a survival of the post-covid mentality of trying to simplify menus to reduce storage costs, but sometimes it can be taken a bit far, as seems to be the case here. The Bud Light containers on the table also showed a restaurant perhaps a bit out of touch with its customer base.