Astoria Riverfront Trolley car running along the tracks near the waterfront
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An Astoria couple built the food cart bar they kept finding everywhere but home

ByJoel Koskinen

The Astoria Riverfront Trolley, which is housed in the depot across from the Train Station. Photo: Steve Morgan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Danielle and David Wallace spent years visiting food cart bars around Central Oregon before they decided Astoria needed one. They waited until they had the right building. Now the Train Station Bar & Food Cart Court is open on Industry Street, near Pier 2, and the couple has built it to be the opposite of a sports bar.

“They have these everywhere, and we love the vibe,” Danielle Wallace told The Astorian. “We go over there a lot and we intentionally wanted to do this. But we wanted to wait for the right space.”

A family project

The Wallaces own the building. Suites in the back are rented to several small firms, including David’s electrical contracting business. The front became the bar.

David and one of the couple’s sons did most of the build-out over about a year, mixing in pieces picked up on the family’s travels. Danielle calls it “David’s masterpiece.” The live-edge bar was made by a friend who officiated their wedding, and the names of the Wallaces’ grandchildren are painted on the rock wall at its base.

The couple have six children. That shaped what they wanted the place to be. Danielle, a longtime bartender, wanted somewhere families could spend time together whether or not anyone was drinking. The menu includes sodas and a range of non-alcoholic options, and she said she’s “huge into mocktails.” There are games for kids and adults.

And there are no TVs. “My vision isn’t to compete with anybody, that’s why I don’t want TVs, I don’t want the sports vibe,” she said. “I wanted it totally different. I love the kids, the dogs, I just want the family to enjoy time together.”

Outdoors, inside

The decor leans rustic. “We’re country people, we’re very rustic, we hunt, we love the boat, we love drives, we love the woods,” Danielle said. They wanted a big open room, and they got one.

The name has two sources. The old depot across the street houses the Astoria Riverfront Trolley, the restored streetcar that runs along the waterfront. The other is a darker joke: “the train station” is a reference from Yellowstone, the couple’s favorite TV show, where it’s the place inconvenient people get taken and don’t come back from.

Music and food

The room is built around a corner stage. The Train Station opened Sept. 11 with a set from the Dave Nudo Band, a country-rock group out of Idaho, and David’s birthday party in October was headlined by the Redmond band Countrified. The plan calls for regular live music plus line dancing, dance classes, comedy, karaoke, bingo and movie nights.

Food comes from two carts parked on site: Mix Panchos, serving Mexican food, and Grizzly Tuna, serving fish and chips. Customers order from the carts and eat inside at the bar or the tables.

Off the beaten path

Industry Street isn’t on most visitors’ route through town, and the Wallaces say plenty of customers find the place by accident. One first-timer told The Astorian he spotted it on a bike ride with his kids and had to stop to see what was going on. A regular at the bar on his third visit said he liked the variety of food and that it was “something new here.”

Food cart pods with a shared bar have become common in Bend, Redmond and Portland over the past decade, but they’re rarer on the coast, where winter weather and seasonal foot traffic make outdoor-only setups a hard sell. Putting the carts next to an indoor room with a stage is one answer to that.

The Train Station is open daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., closing at 9 p.m. on Sundays. The Wallaces say winter hours may change as the season settles in.

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