Iconic SLO County seafood restaurant has new owner — but it’s a face customers will recognize
Soon after Cambria’s iconic Sea Chest Oyster Bar restaurant reopened after its annual three-week December snooze, there was a new owner at the helm — someone very familiar to loyal customers.
Steve Kniffen’s ownership of the popular seafood eatery, which began Jan. 1, caps his three-and-a-half decade career there, cooking, being the chef and running the place.
Kniffen says he has “inherited” the ocean-view restaurant from founders Jim and Karen Clarke, who opened it at 6216 Moonstone Beach Drive in 1975. He and they declined to give any other details about the transfer.
The Clarkes still own the property and building, and they have a residence behind the restaurant.
Former restaurant owners built dedicated fan base over decades
As Kniffen wrote in a thank you note to the Clarkes — which he shared with The Cambrian — that when they opened the restaurant’s doors “they had no plan of building an institution on the beach in Cambria.”
“They were from the food industry in southern California, so a restaurant seemed a logical attempt, but they were just really hoping to pay the bills, make a little money and give the local riffraff a fun place to eat and hang out,” he wrote. “They didn’t think it would last a lifetime.”
Kniffen said the Clarkes’ influence “has given us 47 years of successful business, creating a fan base throughout most of California and entrenched in multiple generations of families who come back year after year.”
In an early December phone interview with Kniffen, he said of the then-pending ownership change that “nothing’s really going to change, except now I’ll have the liability.”
“It was fun running restaurant without liability for 35 years,” he said. “I’ve been like Prince Charles, always just a heartbeat away from the throne … It feels like my dad and mom just gave me the family business.”
That’s not far off from what happened, though Kniffen’s actual parents, Mark and Gail Kniffen, live in Cayucos and are not involved with the restaurant. His father is a much-loved retired middle-school teacher who his son says continues to substitute teach and is “having the time of his life.”
Sea Chest serves seasonal fish, oysters, clam chowder and more
Just how popular is the Sea Chest?
There are loyal Sea Chest diners who are so devoted to their fave dinner house — which doesn’t take reservations or credit cards, by the way — that for years, they brought their own chairs to wait with their friends in the parking lot for an hour or so until their special place opened up.
That busy lineup frequently turns into an informal happy hour of sorts.
It’s easier now, with a new raised seating deck created somewhat out of pandemic desperation in the front of the parking lot. That deck acted as an outdoor dining room when the “eat outside or take out” guidelines were in full force.
Since then, it has been converted to a wind-shielded, sit-and-wait area complete with fire pit.
The Sea Chest menu is as it has always been: various varieties of fish available seasonally, oysters, clams, shrimp, mussels, escargot and classics like scampi, cioppino, seafood pastas and a rich clam chowder.
New owner promises to uphold ‘the tradition that is the Sea Chest’
Steve Kniffen started his first Sea Chest job — as a cook — soon after graduating from Coast Union High School in 1984.
He’s been on the job there ever since, moving up the ranks to chef then chef/manager, a post he’s held since 1985.
He’s still often seen behind the grill, expertly flipping the fish, knowing exactly how long each variety needs to be on the heat to be perfect.
And that visibility won’t change, either, Kniffen vowed.
The Clarkes maintain their Cambria residence, but are spending more time at their home in Sun River, Oregon. They declined to be interviewed for this article, leaving the media aspect of the ownership change to Kniffen.
Kniffen is also active in the community, heading up the Cambria Community Services District’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Commission and helping to spearhead some of the activities of the Sons of the American Legion, Post No. 432.
Kniffen and wife, Lorie Kniffen, live in Cambria.
He said Jan. 4 that she and their daughter, Reagan Kniffen, are “assisting me in my new duties.”
His former partner of 37 years at Sea Chest, Gina Taylor, retired recently, he said, “but she’ll keep doing my books until I have a complete understanding of them.”
The Kniffens’ son, Gerig Kniffen, is a musician who lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Steve Kniffen concluded his thank you note to the Clarkes (and the restaurant legend they created) with a promise that, although nobody can “prognosticate the future” with any surety, “what we are sure of is the tradition that is the Sea Chest will endure.”
“The thread of legacy, our commitment to community, will remain unchanged,” he wrote. “It is our wish as a Sea Chest family that the inspiration for the restaurant created by Jim and Karen, all those years ago, will continue to flourish in the exact same manner as always, with our customers never knowing the difference.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 12:24 PM.
