History
Mo's first opened on the Newport bay front in 1946 as "Freddie & Mo's"—a 24 hour restaurant that served the local loggers and fisherman such fare as spaghetti and steaks. Niemi's business partner Freddie Kent became ill a few years later and Niemi bought out her partner's shares of the restaurant. In the following years Mo's served more and more seafood, the clam chowder recipe evolved over time as the cooks would vie with each other to produce a better version.
Over time Mo's would become a favorite, not just of locals, but of tourists and celebrities as well. Mo's second husband, retired fisherman Kaino "Dutch" Niemi along with friends often gathered at a table contributing to the "family" atmosphere of the restaurant.
Great-granddaughter of Mo, Gabrielle McEntee-Wilson recalls in an interview "Granny Mo" saying (in regards to Mo's popularity) "The hippies discovered Mo's" during the 'sixties." According to McEntee-Wilson "It (Mo's) wasn't a concept—it grew on its own and changed over time."
Henry Fonda, Paul Newman and other cast members of the film Sometimes a Great Notion (based on a novel by Ken Kesey about a dysfunctional family of Oregon coast loggers) ate there during location filming. Mo appears in one scene of the film as an extra. The scene was filmed in Newport's Bayhaven Inn, (renamed the The Snag in the film). Mo and her father once owned the Inn in the early 1940s.
Oregon Governor Tom McCall and Senator Mark Hatfield and other Oregon politicians ate there as well. In 1973 Audrey McCall, wife of the Governor, arranged for the spouses of the Governors attending the Western Governors' Conference to have lunch at Mo's on the waterfront.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy and his wife Ethel also visited the restaurant while he was campaigning for the Democratic Party 1968 Oregon primary election on May 24, 1968.
The original Newport Mo's has an unusual front wall for a restaurant. One day a customer accidentally left her car in forward gear instead of reverse while leaving and crashed through the front wall. Mo consoled the woman, saying, "Well, we'll just put in a garage door so we can open it and you can drive in anytime if that's what you want to do". On warm sunny days the door is opened transforming Mo's into a sidewalk cafe. The door itself, pictured at right, remains basically unchanged since its installation and features a picture on its interior showing a woman driving her car through the door, an alarmed look on her face.
Read more about this topic: Mo's Restaurants
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)