Anyone who’s driven through the tiny Northeast Oregon town of Lostine, found just 16 miles outside Joseph, has probably seen the big black letters painted over a bright red background on a century-old building: M. CROW & CO.

And while an adjacent sign appears to sum up what’s inside – sporting goods, groceries, dry goods ­– it in fact tells you practically nothing about the place. For instance, who would ever guess that M. Crow has an outpost in the middle of New York City?

Pull over and you can start to unravel the mystery of what this place really is.

M. CROW EVERYTHING

“First I’d say it’s a community hub for this place, for the county,” general manager Michael Junkins said. “Outside of that, it’s a general store, brewery, restaurant, pizzeria. We make denim, we make beer, we make wine now. We do ceramics.”

That’s not to mention the radio station, the live music, the boat races, the clothing, the art and the fact that M. Crow is something of a national brand, with a boutique store in SoHo and jeans worn by rodeo stars.

“Basically, we do many, many things,” Junkins said.

At its heart, M. Crow is a 100-year-old general store serving rural Wallowa County, selling groceries and supplies to locals. It’s also become something of a local watering hole since M. Crow has stepped into the brewing game, and after food service began in 2019, it became one of only two restaurants in town.

Stop by in the summer to find locals and tourists eating M. Crow-made pizza, drinking M. Crow-brewed beer and M. Crow-fermented wine, sitting on M. Crow-crafted barstools, listening to M. Crow radio. Some might even be wearing M. Crow denim.

Just about everything in M. Crow is handmade by M. Crow – the food, the furniture, the clothing, the art – in house or in the Philadelphia studio of owner Tyler Hays, who was born in the area and comes back every summer. That’s because outside of the general store, M. Crow the brand represents a greater ethos, an ideal of handcrafted design that reaches far from rural Oregon.

That’s how M. Crow got to Manhattan.

LOSTINE TO SOHO

The M. Crow General Store was founded in 1907, and continuously operated for more than a century by generations of the Crow family in Lostine. In 2013, facing closure, the family sold the store to Hays, a Wallowa County local who had since moved to New York, where he had spun his art and design skills into an upscale furniture brand, BDDW, based in New York.

Hays, who did not respond to interview requests, has not only kept the store running, but also turned M. Crow into a luxury brand of handmade goods.

In 2016, Hays established an M. Crow & Company storefront in Manhattan, a boutique “filled with lust-worthy, whimsical wares you probably never knew you needed,” according to a New York Times write-up. Hays’ handcrafted creations sold there range from ceramics to clothing and other curios, the store adorned by his own furniture and paintings. Prices skew high, with $68 mugs, $438 jeans and a $600 toy saw set, though it’s not unusual for the SoHo neighborhood: M. Crow’s neighbors include bespoke kitchen crafter LANSERRING, Paris-based fashion house Maison Margiela Crosby, and Hays’ own BDDW.

Back in Lostine, things look a little different.

Here, M. Crow looks across the street at an antique store and is a block away from the Lostine Tavern, home of Z’s BBQ, which is beloved among locals. Blue Banana, a drive-through coffee shop, is the only other business in town. Most people drive right through Lostine on their way to Joseph, a tourist hub at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains, though Junkins said more and more are stopping by M. Crow on their way.

“More people are finding us for sure,” Junkins said. “I think M. Crow, we are becoming more of a tourist destination, but still the majority of our business is from our local community.”

‘MASSIVE DREAMS’

The old general store has not lost its rustic charm, even with Hays’ fingerprints on virtually every inch of the place. The furniture is all handcrafted, Junkins said, down to the leather in the booths and the bronze footholds on the barstools. In the kitchen, the marble countertops were all cut by Hays, who also created each of the little tiles on the kitchen floor, firing clay that had been gathered in Lostine and shipped to his studio in Philadelphia.

The kitchen, which serves up pizza, burgers and salads, is now helmed by Ross Effinger, the Portland-trained chef who ran popular but short-lived pizza place The Gold Room in Joseph. There is also a pickled egg menu with roughly a dozen options, an ongoing experiment that explores both taste and aesthetics, the eggs served in ceramic M. Crow egg holders.

Effinger, who came on as chef in February, said he had always admired what M. Crow was doing, and is now excited to become a part of it.

“I’ve always just been impressed with all they’ve been pulling off,” Effinger said. “It can seem random when you first walk in, but obviously all of that’s intentional and well-curated and thoughtful.”

Restaurants these days can feel too cookie cutter, Effinger said, but M. Crow brings an element of surprise that can feel exciting. That, combined with a concerted effort to support the local community, is what drew the chef to the general store after he moved back to northeast Oregon in January.

Food has helped burnish M. Crow’s reputation as a local gathering place, Junkins said, but it truly came as an afterthought, an accompaniment to M. Crow beer – the store’s real pride and joy.

In true M. Crow fashion, the brewing operation goes all-in on the local, handcrafted philosophy, with barley grown by northeast Oregon farmers that is malted onsite in a machine of Hays’ own creation, brewed in a woodfire system set up behind the store. This summer, the store had seven M. Crow offerings on tap, mostly darker beers, but Junkins said the goal is to keep expanding.

“There’s massive dreams for the future,” he said.

That sentiment might best sum up what’s going on behind the scenes at M. Crow. In the front of house, it’s simply a gathering place for anyone who needs a bite to eat, a cold drink, a few groceries or some simple tools. Behind the counter, there’s always something going on, some dream in the process of coming to fruition.

Those dreams serve Hays’ imagination, but they also serve the community that raised him, his rural Oregon hometown that he can never seem to leave behind.

Lostine and New York City have very few things in common, but M. Crow strives to be a place where those with disparate life experiences can still find common ground – or at least a place to eat pizza and drink beer together.

“We want to have it where people from all walks of life come in here, they feel good in the space, they get world class service, but they get a little piece of Wallowa County as well,” Junkins said. “We put a lot of time and energy into this space, and we want people to feel that.”

--Jamie Hale covers travel and the outdoors and co-hosts the Peak Northwest podcast. Reach him at 503-294-4077, jhale@oregonian.com or @HaleJamesB.

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