CITY GUIDES | OREGON
Inside Salem’s Quietly Excellent Food Scene
The 12 best Salem restaurants reveal there’s something special happening in the Willamette Valley.
By Mei Chen | Aug. 20, 2026
The Cozy Taberna
AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.
For years, work has sent me to Salem on and off, usually with business at the Capitol and enough time afterward to find dinner. Those trips have slowly built a list: the Thai food truck grilling pork over binchotan charcoal, the downtown restaurant serving French cooking with Willamette Valley produce, the Latin-owned brewery making beer for tacos filled with barbacoa and pork belly. Oregon’s capital may have been the reason I kept returning, but its restaurants gave me something to look forward to once the work was done. Here then are the 12 best restaurants right now in Salem.
Amadeus
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Amadeus has been around for more than three decades, a considerable achievement for a restaurant whose menu refuses to settle on a single continent. Artichoke-and-black-truffle dip shares space with elote focaccia, tenderloin medallions, and shrimp-and-bacon risotto. Somehow, it all holds together. The family-owned restaurant has moved over the years and taken old favorites along with it, giving Salem diners the increasingly uncommon pleasure of ordering a dish they remember from long ago and finding it much as they left it.
Best for: Dinner when nobody can agree on a cuisine
Big Blue Thai BBQ
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Smoke drifts from the back of Big Blue Thai BBQ, where Kanyanat Puthdee and Ray Johnson grill pork and Thai sausage over Japanese binchotan charcoal. The food truck has only a few picnic tables, some specially built to sit level on the sloping parking lot, but that is enough. Add sticky jasmine rice, green papaya salad, and one of the curries, perhaps the green one with sweet longans. Before Thai barbecue became one of Portland’s favorite mashups, Big Blue was already cooking it an hour south.
Best for: Charcoal-grilled pork and Thai curry
Clink!
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Chef Brittni Armenta has worked at Kann in Portland and the Cozy Taberna a few blocks away, and Clink! feels like the restaurant where those experiences meet. Her French-American menu includes oysters with cabernet sauvignon mignonette and cucumber granita, duck à l’orange, and a tart layered with figs, brie, prosciutto, and roasted garlic. Clink! also offers a five-course tasting experience, a rarity in Salem, giving Armenta’s kitchen control of dinner and everyone else permission to stop debating what to order.
Best for: Letting the chef plan dinner
The Cozy Taberna
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Finding the Cozy Taberna requires walking down Electric Alley, where the entrance opens into a busy dining room wrapped around an open kitchen. Seats at the counter provide the best view as chefs move between pans of grilled prawns, salt cod fritters, and patatas bravas. The menu begins in Spain and wanders when it finds something interesting elsewhere. Once a month, four-course winemaker dinners bring bottles from around the Willamette Valley and give the kitchen a chance to stretch beyond its usual collection of shared plates.
Best for: Watching dinner come together from the chef’s counter
DaVinci Ristorante
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DaVinci is the Salem restaurant for white tablecloths, a long wine list, and dinner that requires an actual reservation. The menu leans Italian without showing much concern for borders. Pappardelle arrives with prawns, scallops, San Marzano tomatoes, and Parmesan cream, while the wood-fired oven turns out gorgonzola escargot and seasonal flatbreads. There might also be halibut with mushroom ragù or duck with frites and Bordeaux cherry sauce. It is all served in a downtown dining room where nobody seems to be rushing toward the check.
Best for: Dressing up and ordering another bottle
La Lucciola
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At Fork Forty food hall, a brick oven flickers behind the counter at La Lucciola. Pizzas emerge with puffy, chewy rims, scorched bubbles, and enough structure to survive the walk back to a communal table. The four-cheese pie carries a welcome bit of funk, while the margherita keeps things to tomato, basil, and cheese. Because everyone orders separately at Fork Forty, you can choose pizza while your companions defect to bao or shawarma, then reconvene without anyone having to pretend they wanted the same thing.
Best for: Wood-fired pizza with indecisive friends
Manna Japanese Comfort Food
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Manna Japanese Comfort Food began as a food truck and still feels like a small operation, right down to the anime playing on the television and the toys arranged near the kitchen. The menu covers chicken karaage, poke, tonkatsu, Japanese curry udon, and sushi wraps stuffed to the dimensions of a small burrito. A combination bento gathers karaage, gyoza, a California roll, salad, and rice into one box. Look for seasonal fish specials before ordering; yellowtail nigiri and hamachi rolls appear when the kitchen gets the right fish.
Best for: Sushi, karaage, and a quiet weeknight meal
Noble Wave
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Noble Wave was opened by three Louisiana transplants who apparently missed both home cooking and the understanding that fried chicken can go nearly anywhere. It appears on the Hot Bird sandwich with slaw and pickles, between sliced beignets, and beside waffles with maple butter at brunch. There are also shrimp po’boys, chicken-and-sausage gumbo, and charbroiled oysters on certain nights. Order a frozen hurricane, and downtown Salem begins to feel a little closer to the Gulf, at least until you step back into the Oregon rain.
Best for: Fried chicken and a frozen hurricane
Precious Pizza
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Alejandro Preciado began Precious Pizza as a pandemic pop-up, baking Grandma-style pan pizzas on sheet trays because he did not own a pizza stone. The square pies remain part of the story, but the expanded Court Street restaurant now turns out round pizzas as well, along with bar slices and seasonal specials. The Papi layers pepperoni, pineapple, jalapeños, and house-made hot honey, a combination created in honor of Preciado’s father. Grab whichever shape has just emerged from the oven; pizza geometry matters less when the edges are still crisp.
Best for: Creative pizzas by the slice or whole pie
Rudy’s Greenside Steakhouse
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Rudy’s disappeared from downtown after a messy ending, then returned under new ownership at Creekside Golf Club. The new setting places the dining room above the fairways, where sunsets replace the old view of Chemeketa Street. The menu remains committed to hand-cut steaks, seafood, cocktails, and portions that assume nobody arrived looking for moderation. It is the place for birthdays, anniversaries, and visiting relatives who want a steakhouse to behave like one. There is also a large parking lot, an amenity downtown restaurants tend to underestimate.
Best for: A large steak after a long round of golf
Word of Mouth
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Word of Mouth Neighborhood Bistro occupies an old house where weekend mornings begin with a waiting list and end with somebody carrying leftovers to the car. Cinnamon-roll pancakes cover most of the plate, biscuits disappear beneath gravy, and vanilla crème brûlée French toast makes no serious effort to distinguish breakfast from dessert. Omelets, hashes, benedicts, and a breakfast burrito with marinated beef handle the savory side. Check in, leave your phone number, and take a walk around the neighborhood. Watching other people eat will not make your table ready sooner.
Best for: Breakfast followed by a smaller-than-planned lunch
Xicha Brewing Company
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At Xicha, the beer and food were designed to sit at the same table. The Latin-owned brewery fills hand-pressed tortillas with barbacoa, pork belly, battered cod, or chicken in a sweet pepper cream sauce. There are empanadas, taquitos, guava-barbecue wings, and a chimichanga stuffed with meat, gallo pinto, black beans, and Monterey Jack. The guava golden ale makes a natural companion, though the guava-raspberry sour has its own sharp appeal. Beer may be in the name, but the kitchen is not there simply to keep people thirsty.
Best for: Latin American cooking with beer brewed on-site
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