An Acclaimed California Chef Heads Home to Bend to Open a ‘Modern Cowboy’ Restaurant (2024)

Chef and restaurateur Brian Malarkey, known for working in a slate of popular Southern California restaurants, headed back to his hometown of Bend, Oregon for his latest restaurant, Hawkeye & Huckleberry Lounge. Open since June 16, the restaurant plays on the archetype of the “modern cowboy,” serving steak, pizza, burgers, and more against the backdrop of wood-fired ovens and charred cedar-clad walls.

Opening a restaurant in Bend was never in the plans for Malarkey, who operates restaurants including San Diego’s Animae and Herb & Wood. “Everyone kept asking, ‘Oh are you ever gonna open something in Bend?” Malarkey says. “And I was like, ‘No, you guys go to bed at like, 7 o’clock at night.’” But in the years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, he started to note an influx of people, and restaurants, moving out of Portland and into Bend. Talking to local owners, Malarkey found out that the restaurants in town were booked up every night, and still couldn’t fit everyone in. Seeing an opportunity to work on something in a new market, he took a trip to Bend to start looking at buildings.

At first, Malarkey was looking at historical buildings in downtown Bend, but nothing fit the bill for what he envisioned until his real estate agent sent him a listing for a restaurant off the tree-lined Century Drive. Upon arrival, he found a multi-use space that offered virtual golf, an indoor mini-golf course, and “dismal” service, but it had good bones. Feeling the itch to work on something new, Malarkey bought the building with his brother James and the former owners, keeping them on as a minority partner.

An Acclaimed California Chef Heads Home to Bend to Open a ‘Modern Cowboy’ Restaurant (1)

Malarkey turned to local Bend design firm Tricorn Black to transform the interior into something that reflected its surroundings in central Oregon. Led by Heylen Thienes, the team added canvas tents to the interior and a globe light over the bar that mimics the moon to give the restaurant the feeling of glamping. Malarkey also decided to preserve the stage from the former restaurant, re-outfitting it in branches and verdure to integrate it into the new environment. He plans to project recordings of live concerts on a screen positioned on the stage nightly, and invite in live performers a few times a month.

The chef sourced and refurbished vintage guitars to hang on the wall of the restaurant along with a selection of cowboy hats — guests are invited to grab a guitar and a hat while dining on-site. “I’m like, this is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says. “And it’s hilarious, and your cowboy hat is on backward.”

Malarkey worked with longtime collaborator chef Tony Torres to build a menu that reflects the terroir of Bend. He’s sourcing some of the beef from his own family farm just a few miles away, and working with producers throughout Central Oregon to fill the gaps. Committing to using the entire cow changed the entire ethos of the menu, with Malarkey having to devise a way to use the less desirable cuts in addition to classic steaks like rib-eyes and New York Strips. But he made it work with dishes like steak fried steak made with a round pounded thin and then fried, and a $10 happy hour burger that uses some of the overwhelming amounts of ground beef he now has access to. Using his own cattle also significantly lowered the price points of dishes on the menu, making it more accessible to the local community. Malarkey projects that once the entire operation is up and running, 60 percent of the beef used in the restaurant will come from his own farm.

An Acclaimed California Chef Heads Home to Bend to Open a ‘Modern Cowboy’ Restaurant (2)

In addition to beef, Hawkeye & Huckleberry Lounge also serves dishes like an Oregon bay shrimp co*cktail that’s been transformed into a shrimp toast with horseradish sauce, Columbia River salmon, and a whole roasted pig that’s available for order two days in advance. Pizzas with wild mushrooms and truffle and barbecue chicken and celery are also available, plus desserts that include a cast iron upside-down pineapple cake, an Oregon berries pie, and a s’mores kit that can be roasted over the live fire outside.

For drinks, the menu offers a wide variety of wine and beer sourced from Oregon and beyond, as well as co*cktails and mocktails: the I’m Your Huckleberry is made with gin, huckleberry, lemon, basil, and egg whites, while Tumalo Honey features bourbon, pink peppercorn, sage honey, and lemon.

The opening didn’t come without some anxiety, says Malarkey, that he would be seen as a big-city kid coming back to open a restaurant. “It really felt like more pressure than I’d ever felt before,” he says. Realizing that his and his mom’s friends back home had high expectations, he knew he had to deliver. But the concern didn’t manifest into reality — Malarkey says that the response so far has been incredible; he’s even had to cap reservations for the next two weeks. “The community is electric,” Malarkey says. He’s seen all types of guests come in over the last week, like cowboys from Redmond, climbers from Terrebonne, and marijuana farmers from Sisters.

“It’s just such a variety of people there, and my staff has embraced it,” Malarkey says. “They’re all wearing cowboy hats. They’re having the time of their life.”

Looking forward, Malarkey hopes for a long life for Hawkeye & Huckleberry Lounge. “I don’t want a five-year restaurant,” he says. “I don’t want a 10-year restaurant. I want a restaurant that is there in 30 years like this place is an institution.”