NEWBERG, Ore. — The old First Street Pub has sat quiet long enough: on March 20, Clementine is set to open its doors at 611 E. 1st St., bringing a wood-fired oven, craft cocktails, live music, and a new-American menu to downtown Newberg.
The project is a partnership between building owner Doug and Lori Petersen, hospitality and music booking manager River Welsh, and the couple behind Loam Kitchen — Kim Lattig and Corey Taylor — who built the farm-and-forest-to-table restaurant and catering business after the pandemic.
Lattig and Taylor will oversee food and beverage operations at Clementine, with Welsh booking music and focusing on customer experience. The Petersens, who purchased the building in 2023, will be largely hands-off.
“Loam is going to be kind of like our first child — we take it very seriously, very structured,” Lattig said. “And then Clementine is going to be like our second child, that we’re just letting be a little more wild and loose.”
That looseness is intentional. Where Loam leans into strict sourcing standards and refined tasting menus, Clementine is being built as something closer to a neighborhood living room — accessible, unpretentious, and open to a broad cross-section of the community, including families with children before 8 p.m.
The dining room, which can accommodate more than 100 guests, will feature traditional booth seating on one side and a counter-service area with couches and easy chairs on the other, giving the space flexibility for both casual drop-ins and sit-down dinners. A pool table anchors the front of the building; a large stage fills the back corner.
“Corey and I, we love music,” Lattig said. “We’re big music venue fans. On Fridays and Saturdays, after we close to minors, we’ll have some big live bands and fun entertainment. So it’ll be kind of like a party — hang out, fun time.”
The menu — described as “new American” — is still being finalized. Taylor, who trained in Cajun-Creole cooking before moving to Oregon and has worked at restaurants including the Blue Goat in Amity and venues in Portland, is developing it collaboratively with a chef de cuisine the team is currently hiring.
“We want everyone to be excited about the menu, and to have a diversity of flavors and character on there,” Lattig said. “The collaboration will be a key part of that.”
The wood-fired oven will be central to the program, producing flatbreads and dishes like wood-fired mussels rather than pizza. Seasonal produce from local farms and proteins from local suppliers will anchor the menu.
Price points at Clementine will be more accessible than at Loam, Lattig said, which may mean sourcing from some larger distributors alongside local farms and suppliers to balance costs.
“We’re going to source really good products,” she said. “It’s core to who we are. The goal is to be really welcoming. We don’t want it to be a super expensive, bougie place.”
The bar program will feature a full craft cocktail list alongside a robust non-alcoholic selection — a hallmark of Loam’s beverage program that Lattig said reflects a desire to welcome guests who don’t drink. Local and small-production wines will be prioritized, with a focus on wineries without tasting rooms that, Lattig said, often lack the marketing budgets to compete with larger estates.
Clementine plans to open for dinner first, then expand to lunch in the following weeks, with brunch or breakfast service potentially to follow.
But perhaps the most distinctive element of the concept is what happens on Friday and Saturday nights after 8 p.m., when the space shifts toward a late-night entertainment venue with live bands and other programming.
“We’ve been doing some late nights, getting stuff done here on Fridays and Saturdays, and there are swarms of people coming down here,” Lattig said. “They’re all peeking in the windows. I think Newberg wants some late-night options.”
The name came organically. Petersen originally wanted to call the space First Street Public House, but during a late working session the team discussed how that framing could skew too masculine and fail to reflect the concept’s intended openness and inclusivity. The name Clementine surfaced when someone reached for a clementine-flavored sparkling water. The team was drawn to the word’s inherent femininity as a counterpoint to the building’s rustic, industrial interior, and to its simplicity as a single-word brand.
“It’s open-ended,” Lattig said. “I like that about it. We can define it however we want.”
Lattig, a Newberg native, and Taylor connected with the Petersens at Loam. After several dinners together, conversations turned to collaboration.
“When they approached us, Corey and I were both like … another restaurant? Really?” Lattig said. “But the more we got to know Doug and Lori, we were just like, oh my gosh, these people are such great people. They’re so community-driven.”
In the days ahead of the March 20 grand opening, passersby may notice activity at the space as the team opens to friends and family to test systems and train staff.
Clementine is still actively hiring for dinner service, with an emphasis on finding team members who are coachable and genuinely want to be there — a standard Lattig credited for Loam’s unusually low staff turnover since opening.
Lattig acknowledged the restaurant will evolve based on what customers order and what the community responds to.
“It’s all part of building a community,” she said. “We’re going to learn a lot in these first few weeks and months. So what we say today may be different by summer. We’re excited to see what this will become.”
More information will be available at visitclementine.com and on Clementine’s social media pages.
Correction March 20 at 10:20 a.m. — River Welsh was added as a business owner after originally being omitted. Newsberg regrets the error.
