14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Cannon Beach’s Harding Trading Co. nears perfection
Review and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
HARDING TRADING CO.
Rating:
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
277 Beaver St., Cannon Beach,
Ore., 97110
503-739-5777
Hours: Thursday to Monday
4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Price: $$$ – Expect to pay for
premium ingredients
Service: An intimate,
extended-family affair
Vegetarian / Vegan Options:
Offering both vegetarian and
vegan entrées
Drinks: Wine, beer, shrub
U
nder the curatorial eye of Jane
Harding, perfecting interior
design takes about two years.
That’s how long it took for Hard-
ing and her husband, Victor, to so-
lidify the warm and worn cabin-like
look and feel of Sleepy Monk, the
Cannon Beach coffee roaster they
founded decades back (and have
since sold).
And that’s how long, Harding
says, it took for her to fully realize
Harding Trading Co., which for its
first two years was a coffee shop
that included vintage housewares,
a place where almost everything
— from the furniture to the light fix-
tures, to the collection of ornamental
tins and baskets lining the rafters
and filling the book cases — is for
sale.
In April, after those two years of
subtle refinement (and a substantial,
back-of-house, kitchen-building
renovation), Harding Trading Co.
shifted from coffee shop to restau-
rant. Harding says the move was
planned from the start, that she and
Victor always envisioned a night-
time destination.
As coffee shop, and now even
more so as restaurant, Harding
Trading Co. is a transportive space,
something like a rustic, European
kitchen or farmhouse, where bottles
of French port wine appear every
bit as at home as they would in
the motherland. While not quite
cramped or overly busy, it is both
packed and compact. It’s also
bustling with staff, seemingly one
server for every two customers.
What results is engaging, in-
spired and home-y — about as close
as you’ll get on the North Coast to
feeling as though you’re attending
a dinner party rather than merely
eating at a restaurant.
Such is the effect of this extend-
ed-family affair.
To helm the kitchen, the Hard-
Line-caught halibut with Yukon Gold potatoes, mushrooms, peas, tarragon
and a sugar snap pea sauce
ings partnered with Kelly and Nate
Beckland, a couple who first met in
culinary school and, before moving
to Cannon Beach years ago, ran a
restaurant in Bellingham, Washing-
ton. The Hardings and Kelly work
the front of house; Nate’s the chef.
The menu fits the setting, both
inside and out: French-inspired with
Northwest inflection. It is envi-
sioned as seasonal, but may well be
constantly iterating: Over the first
few months, items have been wel-
comed (a colorful, creative chicken
dish that appeared to be much more
exciting than what you’re picturing)
and have been bid ‘adieu’ (to my
personal dismay, the lamb shank).
On one of my trips, I jotted down
a general note, writ large: “excel-
lent ingredients well prepared.” It
bore striking similarity to a mission
statement uttered by Harding to the
Cannon Beach Gazette: “Simple
food done well.” Indeed, here you’ll
find premium ingredients. You will
also be charged accordingly.
The Line Caught Halibut ($29)
was a lovely, clean, sizable, flaky
hunk of fish. Lightly seared and
surrounded by green pool of a sugar
Steak au poivre with potato gratin
and a brandy cream sauce
snap pea puree, it was an exquisite
reflection of the North Coast itself,
where the sea meets the shore. The
melding reminded me of a similar
dish I had at the bygone Street 14,
though that version went in much
more vividly on terroir, greens and
roots of our sandy soil, whereas
Harding Trading Co.’s puree was
sweeter and smoother, sharpened
only by the faintest heat of red
pepper. With potatoes, whole peas,
mushrooms and tarragon, it was the
kind of lean but enticing high-oc-
tane entrée after which you leave
the restaurant feeling lighter on your
feet, stronger and healthier than
KEY TO STAR RATING SYSTEM
Poor
Below average
Worth returning
Very good
Excellent, best in region
when you came in.
The house-made potato-ricot-
ta Summer Gnocchi ($24), with
heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella
and basil, coated in extra virgin
olive oil, was essentially comfort-
ing. As my companion said of the
pillow-y pasta, “It is as it should be:
You just lay into it.” It’s also a love-
ly option for vegetarians. Harding
also offers a vegan entrée — at the
moment, Cabbage Rolls ($19.)
On that evening, we shared a
starter: a French baguette with Brie,
fig jam, arugula and a kick of Dijon
($10), another dish that hews closely
to the “fine ingredients simply
prepared” ethos. The bread and the
cheese are some of the few things
Harding Trading Co. don’t make
in house. (And while I only saw it,
the cheese plate looked fabulously,
unabashedly funky in the best way.
And as far as that goes, no matter
what you’re having at Harding it’s
almost impossible not to covet what
everyone else is; the food and the
platings succeed absolutely in ignit-
ing anticipation and desire.)
Besides a seafood bisque special,
nothing from the starters menu is
cooked. You’ll instead find salads,
gravlaks, pâté and so on. It also
may be unwieldy for small parties
or single diners, and adds a layer of
pricing ($14 to $16 for salads and a
regrettable $6 for bread and house-
made butter) that, to many, will be
prohibitive.
Besides a neat wine list, I would
be remiss not to mention the Shrubs
($5): house-made, vinegar-based,
fermented, bubbly, nonalcoholic,
fruit and herb infused drinks that
are something like a less-funky
kombucha. After a few sips and a
quick primer on the process, I was
dreaming of brewing my own.
I was surprised by the heft of
the Steak au Poivre ($30) that was
placed before me, propped up at
angle on a cube of potato gratin. The
diners beside me were taken aback
by the potatoes: beneath a brittle
top, layers sliced almost paper-thin,
between which a smooth, goo-
ey, creamy cheese emerged. The
peppery steak itself, an Angus strip
loin, was perfectly medium rare,
well-seasoned, with a fine sear and
lovely, even center.
Though not quite pray-to-the-
maker-after-every-bite transcendent,
certainly this was an elevated, and
hearty, meat and potatoes. The same
goes for the rest of the menu. If
short on innovative synthesis or a
distinctive signature, the ingredi-
ents, preparation and presentation
at Harding Trading Co. are unim-
peachable and damn-near phenom-
enal.
But knowing how Jane Harding
likes to tinker, and how achieving
her vision of perfection takes time
— two years, as it were — there’s
no reason to believe they won’t
arrive at the pinnacle. But, hell,
just out of the gate they’re awfully
close already. It may not take much
longer. CW