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Lion & Owl owners Kirsten Hansen and Crystal Platt aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel with The Paddock. They just want to uphold its 78-year reputation as a neighborhood bar and eatery — serving unfussy, seasonal dishes they love to eat, with plenty of champagne and caviar to boot.
The Paddock is the place to go when you need to get out of the house but don’t have a particular reason to be anywhere.
Some might say it’s a third space. Co-owner and wine expert Kirsten Hansen calls it a second home.
Hansen, along with her wife and business partner, the James Beard-nominated chef Crystal Platt, re-opened The Paddock in early April, after a six-month transformation of the nearly 80-year-old institution. The south Eugene haunt now boasts seasonal dishes, an expansive drink menu and an archival wall dedicated to its own history.
Reservations are available, but walk-ins are encouraged and even preferred. It’s one of a few significant departures from Lion & Owl, the couple’s first brick-and-mortar restaurant. Over the years, that downtown Eugene eatery became a fine dining destination for anniversaries and other special occasions.
The Paddock was an opportunity for Hansen and Platt to reimagine their dream restaurant: a neighborhood hangout for all occasions — something you don’t have to plan ahead for — coupled with their passion for excellent food, drinks and service.
Hansen and Platt’s revival of The Paddock comes after seven years of operating Lion & Owl alongside their adjacent cocktail bar, Lemon & Olive. Before that, they served farm-to-table dishes from a vintage Airstream trailer.
For the couple, running a restaurant together felt obvious from the beginning.
“There was no other option for us,” Hansen said.
A south Eugene institution
By purchasing The Paddock property, Hansen and Platt gained the opportunity to preserve an iconic piece of Eugene history.
The Paddock had been shuttered since 2024, after a nearly 20-year run as a sports pub under former owner LaMonte Cherrick. The institution dates back to the late 1940s, when Bob Ross and John Hefeneider opened a small tavern and named it The Paddock, as Ross’ horses, Barney and Bourbon, were stabled behind the tavern. The Paddock moved in 1964 to its current location on East Amazon Drive.
The new design pairs the intimate, sophisticated feel of a jazz bar with the bright and lofty atmosphere of Lion & Owl.
Food is memory: It’s how Hansen recalls going to Rome as a kid — not by the Colosseum, but the carbonara. It’s why The Paddock’s walls are covered in photos of its eight-decade history. You’ll see former owners, patrons and even the famed Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine, who bartended there in the 1970s.
Strong starters
Once you enter the nondescript white building off East Amazon Drive, you’ll have plenty of places to plop: the 16-seat bar, the chef’s counter, the generous dining area (The Paddock has 118 seats inside) or the patio.
Drinks are in order: The cocktails are organized by palate, from bitter to sour to strong.
I went with the Last Word Sour ($14), puckery from lemongrass and lime, herbal from three liquors (gin, ver liqueur and chartreuse), silky with egg white foam on top. The Nostalgia cocktail ($13) is one of the few bourbon drinks I’ve enjoyed, probably because it’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in liquid form. Next time, I’ll try one of the mocktails.
Moving on to wine, an entire page is dedicated to bottles of champagne ranging from $42 to $340. Several red, white and rose bottles come from Pacific Northwest grapes. A handful of wines, including The Paddock’s own pinot noir ($17), are offered by the glass.
Coldfire and Ninkasi are on tap, but you can also order a can of Rainier. Or a Bud Light, thanks to a local who told Hansen that’s what he usually drinks.
Hansen replied, “Next time you come in, I’ll have it.” And she did.
Seasonal, simple cooking
The Paddock’s menu achieves a combination of uncomplicated, seasonal and exciting, playing to what comes from the Willamette Valley. In this season, that’s rhubarb, leeks, spring onion, peas and carrots. Even the whipped cheddar dip has green garlic.
“A lot of it is based on what we want to eat,” Hansen said.
The dishes are meant to be shared. For two people, I recommend splitting a mix of two to three starters, veg dishes and/or starchy sides alongside one main or sandwich.
A must-try starter: fried goat cheese and rhubarb chutney on toast.
The vegetable dishes are standouts. Yes, you’ll get an umami oomph from the smoked potato hashbrowns ($7), and the chicken cutlet ($25) crackles beautifully with each bite. But it’s the buckwheat salad ($15) I remember most: crunchy grains atop fresh greens, the perfectly cooked and salted fava beans, the pickled rhubarb now soft and tamed of its intense tartness.
The menu is designed for all sorts of dining experiences: Grab a burger at the bar after work. Fuel up after a 5K run in Amazon Park with beef fat fries ($9) and a mortadella sandwich ($16). Celebrate your anniversary over steak tartare ($22) and sea bass ($24), and hey, why not add caviar to your chips and dip? Why not order a bottle of champagne?
Food is celebration, after all.
A dream home
As The Paddock settles into its latest iteration, patrons will soon enjoy what Hansen calls “coming attractions”: Being open every day, offering hyperseasonal specials, two daily happy hours (post-work and late-night recess), cigar and whiskey night, a cheeky dessert menu.
Lion & Owl fans can get excited for weekend brunch specials in the near future, too. Next summer, Hansen and Platt also aim to move their Airstream to The Paddock.
This story could have ended with the future, but we’ll go back to shortly before The Paddock opened.
“Honestly, if you had been in here, you would have been like, ‘You’re not opening in three weeks,’” Hansen said. “‘There’s no way this is going to be a restaurant in three weeks.’”
Hansen and Platt got the keys to The Paddock in August 2025 and started renovating in October, a month that also marked the couple’s 10-year wedding anniversary.
It’s a massive undertaking to completely redesign a space while preserving the legacy of one of Eugene’s oldest operating restaurants. Throw in running two other businesses, and you might as well be inside a pressure cooker.
Hansen and Platt weren’t alone: Every day during the renovation process, their employees showed up. Seeing the joy on their faces was confirmation the couple was making progress, that The Paddock would, indeed, be a restaurant in a few short weeks.
“They were so excited to be here,” Hansen said, teary-eyed. “Watching people put their heart and soul into something they believe in, you know, it’s really cool.”
The Paddock is the couple’s forever home. Once they retire, they’ll turn it over to their employees, many of them the same bartenders and servers and managers and cooks who staffed Lion & Owl.
The same ones who carried Hansen and Platt to opening day of The Paddock.
If you go
The Paddock, at 3355 E. Amazon Drive, Eugene, is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Thursday through Monday. Parking is available, but the lot can fill up quickly during peak hours. Patrons have found luck parking near Provisions South as well as around Amazon Park.
