The customer gushed to Ryan Duley about the gumbo, a compliment any chef, and restaurant owner, would relish.

But when it comes to compliments about gumbo, geography matters.

It matters a lot.

And this particular diner at Duley’s new Baker City restaurant and cocktail bar, The Cabyn, hailed from Louisiana, where gumbo is no mere stew and where to suggest such a gastronomic slight might well provoke a disagreement.

Bayou State residents are so serious about gumbo that they got the government involved.

In 2004 the legislature designated the savory concoction as Louisiana’s official state cuisine.

And so when the customer, after his bowl was empty, told Duley that the gumbo, which is one of The Cabyn’s signature dishes, “was one of the best he had eaten,” Duley was ecstatic even if he had to share the superlative.

“I’ll take it,” Duley, 46, said with a chuckle as he and his wife, Jenn Rominger, 45, The Cabyn’s head bartender, sat in a booth in the historic Main Street building.

Duley noted that another diner, however, didn’t equivocate about the quality of the gumbo, proclaiming it the “best” he had tried.

And this guy, though not from Louisiana, came from neighboring Texas and, based on his enthusiasm for The Cabyn’s version, knew his gumbo.

These two conversations on Aug. 31, just a week after Duley and Rominger welcomed their first customers to The Cabyn, was a highlight of the debut of an idea the couple, who have been together since 2005 and married since 2015, had plotted for more than a decade.

An idea they talked about while traveling the world to sample a smorgasbord of exotic flavors.

An idea they cultivated by collecting recipes and by discussing the kind of establishment they would enjoy patronizing.

“We would scribble notes on magazine pages we ripped out,” Rominger said.

The concept came into clarity.

The couple would share their love of food as well as spirits — he’s the whiskey aficionado, she’s the tequila expert.

(Rominger calls tequila “that magical spirit.”)

But their dream wasn’t cheap.

“We had to save money,” Duley said. “We wanted to do it right, to have a great atmosphere.”

Then Duley was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2021.

After he endured radiation treatments and chemotherapy that fall, the couple, with a new appreciation for the limits of time, decided they were ready.

“He was super gung ho,” Rominger said of her husband.

Settling on Baker City
The couple’s route to Baker City started with beer sales and a birthday tradition.

Both have rural backgrounds.

Duley grew up in Tillamook, Rominger in Buhl, Idaho, near Twin Falls.

They met in Boise while both were working as bartenders.

Duley earned degrees in marketing and business management from Boise State University. The couple moved to Bend in 2006.

“We’re outdoor enthusiasts — snowboarding, we love snow,” Duley said.

He helped start Sunriver Brewing, based in the resort community about 15 miles south of Bend. Among his many duties with the company was overseeing sales, a task that required him to travel across the Northwest, trying to entice taverns and restaurants to add Sunriver Brewing taps.

“Baker City was my favorite spot that I did sales in the Northwest,” Duley said. “The people are so nice. All of Eastern Oregon the people are so nice — Pendleton, La Grande.”

Duley and Rominger also visited Baker City for leisure as well as business.

Their affinity for the city made it the base camp for the annual January “cabin trip” they made with 20 or so friends to celebrate Duley’s birthday, which is in January. The group always stays in a home near the base of the Elkhorns west of town.

That gathering, and the cabin, also explains the restaurant’s name.

The unorthodox spelling reflects the “y” in Duley’s first name. The friend who plans the annual trip started referring to the “cabyn” in group emails, and Duley and Rominger liked it.

The word “cabin” invokes the casual, inviting atmosphere they sought to create with their restaurant.

Duley was perhaps destined to own an eatery — his parents own pizzerias in Tillamook and in Banks.

The couple considered opening a cocktail bar with a limited food menu in either Bend or La Pine, about 30 miles south of Bend. Friends encouraged them, saying their venture would surely succeed in the rapidly growing Central Oregon region.

Duley was also intrigued by distilling — he was one week into a distilling course when it was canceled at the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.

That same year he went on a backcountry trip into the Wallowa Mountains.

The couple, after discussing their options, finally realized that they needed to choose the place they preferred, not where their friends thought they should open a business.

“We started thinking about where do we want to retire, to spend the rest of our lives,” Rominger said.

They considered Halfway, charmed by its beautiful setting at the foot of the Wallowas.

But ultimately they decided Baker City, with its larger customer base, was ideal.

Finding a building
Rominger and Duley learned in 2023 that the building at 1825 Main St., on the west side of the street between Court and Valley avenues in the downtown historic district, was available for lease.

They knew the structure.

They had eaten at the Lone Pine Cafe, the most recent business there. The cafe closed during the pandemic and the building had been vacant since.

Just two days after negotiating a lease, Duley and Rominger were offered a chance to buy the Basche Building, constructed in 1888 and the original site of the P. Basche hardware store.

They signed the papers in early October 2023.

The couple weren’t daunted by the task ahead.

Well, perhaps a little bit daunted.

“There was a lot of patchwork in the electrical, plumbing, multiple layers of flooring,” Rominger said.

Over the next several months the couple made many trips between Bend and Baker City, devoting their weekends to renovating the building.

Duley continued to work for Sunriver Brewing.

Fortunately, Rominger said, they have “lots of good friends who are handy” and who helped.

Duley installed a tile floor and a ceiling that’s made of plastic but looks like classic pressed tin.

The south wall retains the original bare brick.

The bar dominates the north wall.

The back bar is made of fir. The bar top and the multiple shelves, which combined hold more than 150 bottles of spirits, were hewn from juniper by a friend who lives in Terrebonne, near Redmond.

Decor includes a chandelier of hand-blown glass, sculptures made of horseshoes, paintings of snowmobiles and skiing and off-road motorcycle riding, passions of Duley’s.

There are two mounted whitetail bucks, both taken by Duley’s dad in Wallowa County, and a pair of criss-crossed metal scythes that belonged to his grandfather.

Rominger said the couple’s concept of a cabin theme is “a place where people get together to eat, drink and make memories, to have a good time.”

Eclectic flavors
The Cabyn’s menu reflects Duley and Rominger’s rural backgrounds as well as their globe-spanning travel.

One of Rominger’s favorites is lasagna.

But the dish features not beef or pork, but elk meat.

“We love wild game,” she said. “We both grew up in hunting families.”

Gumbo, as mentioned, is something of an obsession for Duley.

Another favorite is bao buns, a Chinese dish with steamed dough folded over a filling — pork bellies, in The Cabyn’s version.

The couple has traveled extensively in southeast Asia, including trips to Thailand and Cambodia. In the latter country they went on what Rominger called a “peppercorn tour,” where they became entranced with the flavors of the country’s pepper. They use it in meals as well as cocktails.

The basic concept with the menu, Duley said, is to offer “items we just love or always wanted to play with.”

Duley, for instance, makes his own kimchi, a traditional Korean side dish made of fermented cabbage.

As for libations, The Cabyn’s list extends for many pages, with long columns devoted to their two favorite tipples, whiskey and tequila. They have about 120 bottles of each.

The full bar also includes a selection of vodkas and gins, as well as wine and beer.

Duley and Rominger have a deep interest in cocktails. They attended a conference in New Orleans that included classes on topics as specific as olives and glassware.

Shelves behind the bar glisten with multiple types of the latter, including particular glasses for lager beer (they induce a healthy head of foam, the better to release the brew’s aroma, Duley said), authentic Mexican margarita glasses, and barrel-shaped, thick mugs that are designed specifically for a pilsner beer.

The couple emphasize that although they are fascinated by spirits and cocktails, they’re not snobs.

“We do enjoy some of the finer spirits, but we’re not going to be snooty about it,” Rominger said.

The beer list, for instance, although it includes a variety of craft brews, also features Rainier on tap, as well as Hamm’s, Coors and Coors Light in cans.

(Duley said his dad, who has worked in logging and construction, is a Hamm’s man.)

The beer list will always include at least one tap from Sunriver Brewing and from Barley Brown’s in Baker City, Duley said. The couple have been friends for years with Tyler Brown, Barley Brown’s owner.

The two breweries also collaborated on an IPA called Cabyn Commute, to commemorate the couple’s many trips from Bend to Baker City while they were renovating the building.

A dream fulfilled
The Cabyn’s official first day was Aug. 24.

(The date — 8/24/24 — is significant. 8 is Rominger’s favorite number, and 24 is Duley’s.)

The restaurant is open Thursday through Sunday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Rominger said they are committed to staying open, and serving meals, until 10 p.m.

“We want to be reliable and consistent,” she said.

The couple said The Cabyn was “the right amount of busy” during the first two weeks.

Although Duley said his plan was to focus on meeting customers and overseeing the kitchen, the two cooks they hired both have had unexpected family issues and weren’t available.

As a result, he has served as full-time chef, while Rominger runs the bar.

“He hasn’t even had a chance to pour a single drink,” she said with a smile.

Five of the 12 employees are teenagers who are learning the restaurant business rapidly.

The couple said they are still adjusting to the reality that the concept they talked about for so many years, the subject of those notes scribbled on scraps of paper, has come to fruition.

“It’s like a dream — surreal,” Duley said. “We’ve been thinking about this for so long.”

“I keep saying, we’re really doing it,” Rominger said.