CINDY AND RICHARD DIETEL took over ownership at Yacolt’s only tavern on Dec. 1. They want to keep a lot of what made the Red Fir a popular watering hole for more than 50 years, but hope to upgrade and enhance the restaurant’s interior and menus.
FORMERLY KNOWN as the Red Fir Inn, the Dietels' new bar and grill is now called BackRoads Food & Spirits. The tavern is located at 303 N. Amboy Ave., in downtown Yacolt.
There’s nothing easy about taking over a restaurant. Especially when your background is in landscaping and manufacturing production.
But for Cindy and Richard Dietel, the new owners of the Red Fir Inn in downtown Yacolt, taking over a local institution was something they’d wanted to do for years.
“We’d been looking at it for about four years,” says Cindy, a former landscaper and long-time Yacolt area resident. “When the former owner first put it up for sale a couple years ago, we wanted to buy it then.”
Still, the couple bided their time and continued to work in their respective careers, with Cindy doing landscaping and Richard commuting to Portland for his manufacturing production management job.
Eventually, though, the prospect of owning one of Yacolt’s only watering holes won out. Cindy applied for a job at the Red Fir Inn and, for nearly eight months, learned as much as she could from the Red Fir’s former owner, Dave Ayers.
“I did it all,” Cindy says. “Bartending, cooking and serving. Finally, we said, ‘This is a great place. We have to do this.’”
In October, the couple called Ayers’ realtor and negotiated a deal. By Dec. 1, the business was theirs. The newly renamed bar and restaurant is now called BackRoads Food & Spirits.
“We wanted to name it BackRoads because there are no main roads into Yacolt,” Richard says. “It’s only back roads.”
Even the “Spirits” part of the name has meaning: The town’s name, Yacolt, comes from a Klickitat word meaning “a haunted place.” There are various legends explaining why this region is haunted, but the most popular tale attributes the name to an old Native American legend that says a group of children collecting berries near present-day Yacolt were stolen by evil spirits and never seen again.
Cindy says she’d love to write the town’s ghost story into a book and then keep the book out for patrons to add their own spooky ghost stories.
“But that’s in the future,” Richard says, smiling at his wife of 27 years.
First, the couple has to settle into their new roles as the BackRoads’ proprietors.
“It’s only been three weeks. And we’re very tired,” Cindy says. “But we’re having a good time.”
Because the Red Fir Inn had a loyal following, the couple didn’t want to change too much, at least not right away. They kept long-time employees Ernest, Shari and Sandy, but also added their daughter, Jessica, to the staff.
“People were used to (the employees),” Richard says. “And a lot of people worried that we’d get rid of them when we bought the place.”
Likewise, the couple kept a lot of the Red Fir’s menu intact, but added a breakfast menu and would like to add a few more items for health-conscious customers.
“We’d like to upgrade everything,” Richard says. “The menu, the interior. We don’t want to completely change things, just upgrade them.”
For example, the couple has added three big-screen televisions so customers can watch their favorite sports programs; they’ve replaced the white bread with cinnamon bread for the daily French toast; they’ve improved the restaurant’s pizza crust recipe; and they’ve made the pool tables free for customers during the daytime hours, until 4 p.m.
“We just want to make things fresher, better,” Cindy says. “I’d like to see more healthy foods on the menu, maybe get away from so many fried foods.”
In the months leading up to their purchase, the Dietels talked to friends and neighbors, as well as Red Fir regulars about what they’d like to see at the restaurant/bar. For residents in the Yacolt/Amboy area, the Red Fir was one of two taverns in the remote region, and had been in business for more than 50 years. People wanted to have a place to gather, to meet up for dinner and a drink and to celebrate without having to drive for half an hour. And the Dietels were happy to oblige.
“We saw a need for a place where people could be social,” Richard says. “A place where the younger generation could go and stay closer to home.”
The BackRoads Food & Spirits restaurant is now open every day at 7 a.m. for breakfast and the couple added a happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. with deeply discounted bar and menu items. There is a weekly Ladies Night on Thursday nights, a popular Taco Night on Wednesdays, and DJ Common100 (Christopher Carroll) spinning tunes on Friday nights from 9 p.m. to midnight. The restaurant is hosting a Christmas dinner on the afternoon of Dec. 25 and a New Year’s Eve bash on Dec. 31. And the Dietels have reached out to other local businesses, like the Moulton Falls Winery, to exchange ideas, direct customers to each other’s place of business and bolster the Yacolt economy.
“We want to be a part of the community and to support other local businesses,” Richard says.
The new BackRoads Food & Spirits is located in the same location as the former Red Fir Inn, at 303 N. Amboy Ave., in Yacolt. The restaurant serves food from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. daily, including a breakfast menu available from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and is open to families until 9 p.m. and customers 21 years and older until 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Happy Hour is from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., daily.
For more information, or to view the restaurant’s menu items and prices, visit the BackRoads’ Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Backroadsfoodandspirits.
