The front room at 519 Laneda seats about twenty. The back room adds sixteen. On a rainy Monday in March, both were full by lunch and full again at dinner, which is roughly the whole story of how Manzanita's 2026 food scene is shaping up.
If you drove past the old Neah-Kah-Nie Bistro parcel any time in the last three years, you already know the longer version. What is worth paying attention to now is not that a Portland brewery finally opened here. It is that almost every notable food change in the Nehalem Bay area this year has come in a footprint smaller than what its operators originally wanted, and the town seems to be quietly voting for the compressed version.
The 519 Laneda soft opening, and what it replaces
Steeplejack Burgers & Beer opened its doors quietly on March 9, into the 1,584-square-foot building that housed Neah-Kah-Nie Bistro until it closed in 2025. Co-owners Dustin Harder and Brody Day have been circling Manzanita for years. Harder owns a house in town. Day, in the local paper's phrasing, calls himself part of the community because he is here so often.
The menu is narrow on purpose: scratch burgers, a chicken sandwich, salads, ice cream sandwiches, house cocktails, and the beers Steeplejack is known for from its Portland pubs and its Hillsboro production facility. Head brewer Anna Buxton built a signature lager seasoned with sea salt for the opening and named it Manzanita Lager. Wednesdays run an all-day "Hometown Hookup" at 15% off, which is the kind of detail that tells you who the restaurant expects to see on a Wednesday in February.
"We're locals. We're there all the time. We love the charm of Manzanita." — Brody Day, Steeplejack Brewing, to Discover Our Coast
The back room, currently a game room, doubles as a small gallery. North Coast photographer Kim Rose Adams has several large pieces on the walls, alongside her work at Manzanita News & Espresso, Offshore Grill's coffee house, Pelican & Piper, and Cloud & Leaf. If you have been here a while, you already know most of those rooms. The overlap is the point.
The parking math that shrank the plan
Here is the part most summer visitors will miss. Steeplejack originally bought a much larger parcel at 220 Laneda and got planning approval back in 2022 for a two-building project: a taphouse and restaurant on one side, an arcade with three hotel rooms above it on the other, ice cream and pinball in the mix. That version cleared the Manzanita Planning Commission across two 2022 meetings. It never got built.
Development cost climbed. Nearby construction added friction. And the city's parking requirement, which forced additional on-site spaces the owners could not economically deliver, was the final piece. Day told The Oregonian the parking condition "torpedoed" the earlier project. Steeplejack still owns the 220 Laneda land. It just built its actual pub half a block away, in a room a quarter the size of what was drawn in 2022.
The interesting thing is not the setback. It is what the setback filtered out. The version that opened has no lodging component, no arcade tower, no ice cream counter with a toppings bar, no second-story bar. What is left is a burger room with a patio and a working kitchen. Residents who spent 2022 writing letters about the size of the original design got, in the end, the small-scale version they were asking for. And on opening weekend it was full in the rain.
If you are keeping a mental map of Laneda's dining stock, that means the strip now carries Steeplejack in the Bistro's old spot, Big Wave Cafe still at the 101 corner under Chef Brian Williams, Offshore Grill and Coffee House at 154 Laneda with Jake and Michelle, San Dune Pub three blocks from the beach, MacGregor's Whiskey Bar Tuesday through Sunday, Marzano's still running its takeout window after the dining room shut, and A Mighty Thai on the outskirts co-owned by Joel Bernard of Sleepy Monk in Cannon Beach and Chef Joe Khongkhar Bongkhamsao. The Winery at Manzanita and Wild round out the daytime rhythm. None of that has changed. What has changed is that the newest arrival is also the smallest.
Wheeler is where the next opening is happening
If Laneda is capped by parking geometry, the food energy is spilling south into Wheeler. Two openings there are worth putting on your calendar.
Hunky Dory Market and Deli is going into 687 Nehalem Blvd. Owner Alaya Wyndham lives in Wheeler with her family and has described the concept as Pacific Northwest meets Italian deli, with a late-spring target reported in the local Manzanita Connections newsletter in March. Single Fin, the food truck replacing Rice & Shine, was shooting for an April 1 open under Charles, formerly the chef at The Salmonberry, with a menu centered on PNW seafood, ceviche, fish sandos, and coconut curry fish soups, including gluten-free and dairy-free options.
Both projects are, again, deliberately small. A deli. A food truck. This is what growth in the Nehalem Bay food scene looks like in 2026: not new destination restaurants, but a lattice of small operators taking rooms that had been dark or underused.
The Friday rhythm that already worked
Nothing about Steeplejack changes the summer weekly cadence that regulars already know. The Manzanita Farmers Market runs Fridays from mid-May through late September at Underhill Plaza, 635 Manzanita Ave, in the field behind City Hall. All products are grown or made within 100 miles, with most vendors coming out of Tillamook and Clatsop counties.
| Weekly and seasonal anchors | When | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Manzanita Farmers Market | Fridays, 4–7 pm, May 15 – Sept 25 | Underhill Plaza, 635 Manzanita Ave |
| Manzanita Mudd Dogs (Mudd Nick Foundation) | Weekends, spring through summer | 58 Laneda Ave |
| Muttzanita, benefiting Animal Haven by the Sea | Sept 12, 10 am – 1 pm | Downtown Manzanita |
| Hoffman Center for the Arts gallery and workshops | Ongoing | 594 Laneda Ave |
| NCRD Aquatics Center | 7 days a week, year-round | Nehalem |
If you have out-of-town family in July, the Friday market plus a walk to Steeplejack's patio for a Manzanita Lager is the new short version of the town tour. If you have never been to Muttzanita, September 12 is the date, and the silent auction pulls donations from most of the businesses named above.
Where the room actually is on a Wednesday in July
A note for locals reading this in high season. The town's dining seats have not meaningfully grown. Steeplejack added roughly 36 indoor seats plus a front patio, in a building that previously served roughly the same. What has grown is the number of hours the strip is open and staffed. Steeplejack runs seven days a week, opening at 11:30 am and closing at 8 pm most nights and 9 pm on Friday and Saturday. That matters because Marzano's dining room is still closed, A Mighty Thai runs Tuesday to Sunday from 4 to 9 pm, and Big Wave sits closed Wednesday and Thursday.
The practical read:
- Wednesday lunch, when Big Wave and Marzano's dining are dark, Steeplejack now covers a hole that used to send people to Nehalem or Wheeler.
- Late-night, San Dune Pub still holds the room, with the kitchen open until 10 pm Friday and Saturday and 9 pm the rest of the week, followed by a late-night menu until last call.
- Sundays, Offshore Grill runs 7 am to 8 pm, one of the few full-day options.
- Off-season Tuesdays, MacGregor's Whiskey Bar is one of a handful of rooms with lights on.
None of this shows up on a portal or a "best restaurants" list. It is the sort of thing you learn by living here.
One small thing to notice
The North Coast Whiskey Festival, curated by Chip MacGregor of the eponymous whiskey bar, keeps drawing distillers from around Oregon into town for a single evening that has, in recent years, sold out. It is worth flagging for anyone who has moved to Manzanita in the last twelve months. The event is a decent proxy for how much of the town's cultural life is still hand-built by residents rather than programmed by an agency. Chip owned the bar. He now curates the festival. The two Steeplejack owners bought houses here before they bought the building. Alaya Wyndham lives four minutes from her future deli. Charles was cooking at Salmonberry before he was cooking out of a truck in Wheeler.
The 2026 food scene is smaller than the 2022 renderings promised. That looks, from here, like a feature.
If you are thinking about what a home along Laneda, off Manzanita Avenue, or up toward Neahkahnie means in a summer like this one, Cindy Hawkins Colley has been watching the Nehalem Bay market for close to three decades. Let's Connect.
