Yankton Store & Restaurant

The food is great and portions filling! We love it as a breakfast spot and on occasion go for dinner, which is just as good. The staff is nice and attentive. The atmosphere is relaxed so casual attire is perfect. You can get your own coffee or the waitress can get it if you like to be pampered. Many of the locals gather to share there day over a good meal and beer. The restaurant is located in the back of a small convenience store. One night at dinner our table wanted wine so we walked over to the grocery side, grabbed a bottle of wine and added it to the tab. I love how casual and comfortable this location is.

Great selection of burgers, sandwiches, and salads. Also fish and chips, chili dogs, chicken strips etc. We had burger at today. Mine was regular but my husband had the elk burger and we both loved them. As good as I hoped they would be based on other reviews here. It is a store setting but didn’t really feel like it if you sit toward the back or outside. We sat out on the patio and it was lovely.

Foods good think restaurant diner food out of a mini mart kitchen… good for what it is

I’ve only eaten there twice and both times were recently, first experience was fish and chips, and a deer meat hillbilly style burger. I was definitely happy with both. Second experience was buffalo meat burger with fries, absolutely delicious as well. Can’t find a better choice meat burger then the yankton store. I had great service by the girls working there both times and would recommend to anyone.

By driving by this place you would think nothing other than a small Mom & Pop convenience/​liquor store. Hidden inside this gem is a restaurant. My friend who is a local took us there as guinea pigs to see how it ranked. The portions were large and the food was great. Our waitress came by a couple times but if yours doesn’t and you want a soda pop refill, the fountain drinks come from the convenience store soda fountain. I don’t recall the exact prices but I don’t remember it being expensive especially for the amount of food that was on my plate. Beware! The hotcakes are rather large at about +10″ across and were pretty thick as well. If you are getting bacon I highly recommend the peppered version & it is the same price as the regular. If the weather is nice there is a back porch to dine at with a nice view of a small grassy valley. If you are in the area I would recommend dropping by.
We did not purchase or walk around the store to check out the selection or prices but they seemed to have the typical Beer/​Soda Pop/​Tea/​Juice fridges as well as snacks & candy.

My BF and I just moved to St. Helens and decided to grab a burger at Yankton Store. Great decision. Juicy burger and crispy fries. I had a mushroom cheeseburger and my honey had a ham and swiss burger. Service was awesome and very friendly. We will definitely be back!

What happened to super yummy and super clean, last 3 visits were so disappointing we haven’t gone back. Still super friendly staff. The food is standard fare, but quality has gone down. (Edit — last two visits mushrooms were not fresh and so slimey we couldnt even eat them) Don’t miss out on the deep fried mushrooms, best we have had that I can remember.
Super casual, but less than 10 minutes from Hwy 30 in st helens, and you don’t have to be a local to be treated like one. Shame on me I can’t remember her name, but the server was a fun, efficient, tell it like it is gal.
Breakfast ALL day, its just what this area needs in a town that is overrun with Chinese restaurants. Last visit chicken fried steak was awful, no flavor, meat hard. Hash browns were literally sour! I hate to write this, yankton is so cute and has so much potential but I can’t say the following sentence. .
We will be back and you should too. No pretense, just good solid food in an old fashioned (it’s really like that, not decorated to seem that way) setting. We can’t wait for summer to enjoy the deck.

I like the fact that there is a restaurant up in this area, but I don’t like the feeling that my arteries are clogging up every time I eat here! Locals LOVE the hillbilly burger, but I’ve heard the same thing, it’s so greasy and they know it’s unhealthy! I usually get breakfast, but there is a overuse of butter… the first few bites are usually good, then that artery clogging feeling starts to set in! Also, the pies are really hit and miss… I think it depends who’s cooking! Maybe some new recipes?
I agree with a previous review, I want to give this place a 5 star rating and I want to see a local business, especially one like this that’s «out of the way», to thrive. Hoping that the owners will read these reviews and try to make some adjustments… the food can lean more to the healthy side, but still taste good! And a little more effort and revamping never hurts! UPDATE Feb 2013: Went again the other day and the food was SOOOO much better! There was a new cook (well, I’d never seen her there before) and the food was super tasty and not drenched in butter! Quite enjoyable! Yay! Again, we really want this place to thrive and we just love it’s location! Let’s hope this change in the food is a continuing trend! :)

o boy– here we go… I want SO MUCH to love this place. First visit was awesome (weekday) — I actually thought there was a cook with fine dining experience– tasty, and well presented. Granted, it was only breakfast, but it was near perfect. My hat went off to the woman in the kitchen.
Brought my wife there for a weeknight dinner– fish and chips was great, and that hillbilly burger was great, too.
Brought the in-​laws there for dinner on saturday night– bad chickenfried steak dinner (sorry canned corn, weird textured meat) — nobody was impressed, but they ate the food (tho now my food advice is not listened to)– there were seven of us and the 2 tables of 2 and 3 that arrived and ordered after us got their food before us (a sign that the cook has issues multi tasking?)…
Long story short, we gave them ANOTHER chance (did I tell you I REALLY want to like this place?) for saturday breakfast. LAST STRAW. The plate of food I got was something so bad that I dont see how they could serve it. Burnt scrambled eggs with grease all over, bacon burnt beyond recognition, and a pancake covered with greasy spatula marks…
I think part of the problem is the guy who cooks on weekends VS whomever cooks during weekdays. Also guilty is the woman who actually thought someone would eat this crap, and served it to me with a smile.
I hope they read this and take it to heart– I would love for it to be my local go-​to spot.
On a better note– THE PIE IS REALLY GOOD!

Four stars for a hill billy diner? Absolutely. If you’re in St. Helens, is it worth the 10 minute drive up Pittsburgh Road to eat here? Absolutely.
We like this place because of the friendly service, food that is great (not perfect), but everything is homemade from scratch. The quality of the items will surprise you from this hill billy diner off the beaten path. We had the prime rib. It came with an au jus sauce made from the prime’s drippings, not salty, and so tasty that I couldn’t stop.
You wind four miles south of the highway. You see an old fashioned red building on the side of the road over looking a green meadow with trees. The wood poles holding up the front porch are reminiscent of a time you would be tying your horse up there. You step inside the small store and take in the quarter of the store that is devoted to snack items. Next you see the dry-​erase board with the daily specials to your upper left, next is the old fashion message board with news and announcements. The signs are both above the cashier station so you’ll probably need to give a weak hello and smile to the cashier. If its a no nonsense lady wearing an apron and a smile, its probably Mel, the boss lady and owner.
Next take in the long alley of drink coolers, then head back and grab a table. The waitress will bring the photocopied menu and soak in the gems like $ 5 extra for buffalo in your burger (and $ 7 extra for an elk burger). Then there’s the ‘hill billy baked potato’ for $ 8. «Eight bucks for a baked potato???» you say to yourself, then a regular explains to you that its smothered with sour cream and butter and fills a nine inch plate. 2 people could split this baked potato for dinner.
The special was a $ 17 prime rib, it comes with green beans, dinner roll and the aforementioned 7 inch baked potato, and two mild appetites could easily split it.
Order some deep fried mushrooms as an appetizer; they are hand battered in a house beer batter and its a substantial basket. Enough for four people to split as an appetizer.
The fish and chips are frozen ‘tavern cod’ (same as McMenamins) but they were fried just right. The seasoning on the fries was excellent and the tartar sauce was house made with heavy relish and was delicious.
For the side dinner salads the ranch and blue cheese were also house made. And well made at that. Usually 2 – 3 of their salad dressings are house made, they are excellent and worth asking for.
On my first stop they had fried oysters on special and they were excellent. They were the best oysters I’ve had, but they are not a regular menu item.
You probably missed them coming in, but next to the cashier is a white cooler with 3 – 4 home made pies. The chocolate crème pie and peach cobbler were both excellent.
This place doesn’t pretend to be anything other than the hill billy diner it is, but that means real home made food made fresh, with friendly service, and the locals are glad to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here probably something close to everyday. If I was going to cook prime rib for my family, this would be the same ingredients and quality that I would serve them.
Back to that four star rating. Let’s say that a Shari’s or Denny’s is your average 3-​star diner serving the best bags of salt that Sysco drops off the back of their truck. Considering this is a diner in St. Helens, this is definitely 4-​stars, not just because the closest Shari’s is 30 miles away in Portland, but they get a whole lot of little details right. The store is clean, bright, well organized, friendly, and the food quality and preparation is absolutely four stars. In the St. Helens area this is probably one of the top three restaurants (the others being the Klondike in downtown and the former Village Inn restaurant on the highway). The Yankton store would be my first choice in St. Helens just because it is casual place for friends. If I had out of town family visiting, I would take them to the Klondike. If I had a couple Portland foodies with me, I would probably give them the choice of the Village Inn vs. Yankton Store.

The boysenberry pie is scrumptious. A small town old fashioned store where the pie is home-​made in a real pie pan not the cheap tin disposable pan. You can buy by the slice or take the whole pan home (leaving a small refundable deposit for the pan). Delicious