A charming Centralia day trip with our film and food critics

Dinner at a Movie — in which Seattle Times film critic Moira Macdonald and food critic Bethany Jean Clement team up to seek out cinemas with on-site food (and drink!) offerings, then enjoy evaluating them together — started in and around the city in 2017. We ate our first salads in the dark at Mountlake Terrace’s Cinebarre; we taste-tested the movie-theater lobster roll at Redmond’s posh iPic; we enjoyed the myriad charms of Central District indie favorite Central Cinema. 

Quite quickly, we went from collegial colleagues to fast friends. Eventually, we thought: “ROAD TRIP!” (probably from watching too many buddy films). We branched out, day-tripping to Tacoma, Port Townsend and more. When we noticed that the historic McMenamins Olympic Club (with a theater, dining and two bars!) was right by the railroad tracks in not-too-far-away Centralia … well, a new D.A.A.M. adventure with a different mode of transit beckoned. (Spoiler alert: We are about to use the word “charming” a lot.) 

The Journey

Bethany Jean Clement: Moira and I are in agreement, it is safe to say, that every journey should be taken by train. It is SO civilized compared with driving — including the very beginning of a trip by rail in Seattle, which is at glorious King Street Station, which is like the most beautifully frosted cake (with, somehow, the frosting on the inside). We met there, marveled and departed with the utmost joy!

Moira Macdonald: And while the Amtrak Cascades is no Orient Express (and will somebody please send us on a trip via the latter, so we can verify this theory), the less-than-two-hour ride to Centralia is delightful despite its lack of posh armchairs and tapestried walls. 

Bethany: The seats, even in coach, are perfectly comfortable, and the scenery is a luxury. So many trees! Viewed through the window of a moving locomotive while chatting with a dear friend, the trees, the green fields with red barns, slow-moving rivers and even the warehouses and parking lots and such are a tonic. And glimpses of snow-topped Mount Rainier, looking improbably close and gorgeous!

Moira: It’s ridiculous how that mountain, on a clear May day, looks like some Hollywood special effects team put it there. 

Bethany: Total backdrop. They say it’s real! Maybe an investigation is in order — is there a movie theater on Mount Rainier?

Moira: Well, we are not Dinner and a Mountain for a reason. I lack sufficient outdoor gear. Anyway! The train delivered us in a more-or-less timely fashion (there was a rather lengthy stop at one point, for reasons mysterious, which was fine, as we had serious gossiping to do) at the absolutely charming Centralia train station, which has been there for well over a century.

Bethany: Indeed, Union Depot, as it is adorably called, dates to 1912 and looks a bit like a miniature version of Seattle’s beauty. Unlike bustling King Street Station, though, it was quiet, as was the old-timey main street of Centralia. We took a healthful stroll and noted the presence of approximately 101 antique shops for future perusal, several tattoo parlors should one require new ink, a pleasant kitchen-oriented gift shop called Fruffles, and a welcoming used bookstore called Book, Bone & Stone (painted on the door: “The book was better”). And, you know, a gun shop.

Moira: SO MANY antique shops, one of which had something billed as a “One of a Kind Artistic Rendition of H.G. Wells’ ‘Time Machine’” in its front window. This was not something I had on my shopping list — and it would in fact have been difficult to fit in the overhead rack for the train ride home, as it was the size of a pony — but I appreciated the effort. 

Bethany: What we really, truly appreciated was pretty much every aspect of McMenamins Olympic Club, starting with our lovely lunch …

The Food

Bethany: We ensconced ourselves in a booth in the charming area between the charming bar and the charming pool hall — the building here dates from 1908, and that McMenamins signature vintagey thing just fits like a glove, feeling legitimately classic rather than like set dressing. Antique ceiling fans with wooden paddles spun picturesquely from the high ceiling, while two well-worn, sturdy wood rocking chairs awaited two regulars by an ornate, ancient wood-burning stove. Moira and I obediently played the parts of two non-regulars visiting from the big city, drinking in the atmosphere.

Moira: Though McMenamins bought and renovated the hotel in the 1990s, surely adding much of the décor, everything looks happily like it’s been here forever, from the extra-vintage, too-pretty-to-use cash register at the bar to the well-worn benches of our booth, where many contented diners have sat and listened to the clink of pool cues in the next room. 

Bethany: A glass of rosé (Umbrella Jimmy — McMenamins’ label, as was much here — $11.50) was in order! And it was a warm afternoon, so: salads. The salads at the Olympic Club, Moira noted, are that enormous kind that you can eat and eat and eat and still barely ever get to the lettuce. My Mad Hatter chef version ($18.75) was basically a gigantic deconstructed sandwich, and it fulfilled its role with aplomb — the precisely right vehicle to ferry a large quantity of old-school blue cheese dressing into your being.

Moira: My tasty Pub Green salad ($13.75, with crispy chicken added for $5.75 more) was larger than that time machine. I swear it was regenerating itself on my plate, never getting smaller no matter how long I munched. But it was exactly what was wanted. After lunch, down the hall we went to …  

The Movie

Bethany: Moira, is this movie theater the cutest one yet?! Except maybe tied with the Starlight Room from our possibly equally wonderful day trip to Port Townsend?! No train there, but there was the ferry …

Moira: I think so! The Olympic Club Theater (a space that was, long ago, a men’s clothing establishment and then a billiards hall) is certainly the only one we have visited that comes with a special sound effect of train whistles, which adds a lovely melancholy note to any movie. Screenings are free if you are staying at the hotel and only $7 each if you’re not, and the theater has a nice big screen, an original tin ceiling, delightful art (some of it picturing real-life former habitués of the hotel, including a notorious train robber known as the “Gentleman Bandit”) and comfy couches. (What it does not have, alas, is state-of-the-art air conditioning — this might not be the place for the hottest days of summer, but it wasn’t uncomfortable on a warm May day.) 

Bethany: We did reject our first velvet love seat, princesses-like, as too soft. The second one was just right, as was the popcorn and the continuation of our beverage service, ordered at the adjoining New Tourist Bar. My Hamlet’s Punch ($14), with whiskey, dry vermouth, pineapple and lime, tasted both tropically refreshing and possessed of a warm stormy depth; Moira enjoyed a glass of White Rabbit pinot gris ($11.50).

Moira: Oh, you want to know what movie we saw? Like it matters? We would have watched anything in these surroundings! Anyway, it was the action-comedy-romance “The Fall Guy,” which is a movie that I will say better befits a very crowded room (we were two of maybe eight people in the theater). But it was fun to note that Ryan Gosling can look cool even when on fire (he plays a stuntman in the film), and that Emily Blunt would be delightful to do karaoke with. 

Bethany: As one might anticipate, there are SO MANY STUNTS in this movie — wall-to-wall explosions and shooting and crashes of various vehicles and elaborate fighting and etc., which the booming sound system handled LOUDLY. It felt rather antithetical to the surroundings — a classic Western, or film noir, or really any kind of a love story would be so fitting here — and I must say, without a cocktail and a velvet love seat, I would have found it all quite exhausting. But there was the dog co-star who only responded to commands in French. And as Moira so aptly points out, on such a magnificent day trip as this, any movie is a good movie just because life is so sweet! 

The Drinks

Moira: After the 4 p.m. movie, we had a little time before our train, so we parked ourselves on two stools in front of the VERY pretty bar, which is all stained-glass lamps and dark wood and backlit bottles, and had a front-row seat to a very busy bartender whose skill at drink-mixing was a movie in itself.

Bethany: This entirely marvelous saloon is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Tiffany-style lampshades are bedecked with red tulips, and not one but two antique cash registers watch over the proceedings, and the rich woodwork is mahogany, and the bartender’s level of busyness directly on the heels of the film kept making me think stunts were about to break out. Instead, he made Moira a perfect lemon drop ($10) and me a perfect Maker’s Manhattan ($15.25), which was, well, perfect.

Moira: The one disappointment of our day! I would have enjoyed some stunts! Ah well. That lemon drop was a stunt in itself: made with lots of swirling and pouring and whooshing about, yet somehow simultaneously effortless. Just the thing to send us off to the station, mere steps away, where we sat on a quiet bench and marveled at the evening light. (Should anyone be wondering about our timetable, we took the 12:10 p.m. train to Centralia, arriving at around 2 p.m., and the 7:29 p.m. train home, which got us back to King Street Station by 9:30 p.m. Check Amtrak schedules online and plan your own adventure!) 

The Overall Experience

Bethany: Moira timed our trip exactly right for our return train to be a sort of sunset cruise, and as the days get longer this summer, there’ll be evening light all the way home. I loved this day trip so much that I’d absolutely go again and maybe even spend the night — rooms at the hotel upstairs are exceptionally reasonable (at this writing, starting at $64 — though, caveat, all with shared bathrooms).

Moira: It was a magical trip; such a short journey, and yet we seemed to have traveled so far — as if that time machine catapulted us to another era, but one with cocktails and Ryan Gosling in it, and a train whistle seemingly playing our song. 

Bethany: You’re so right, Moira — it felt exactly like time travel by rail (setting aside all the contemporary cinematic explosions). I was ready to return by the time we got back!