• Search our database of restaurants by location, cuisine and more
• Find dining recommendations from The News Tribune
• Add your own reviews and star ratings
• Find dining recommendations from The News Tribune
• Add your own reviews and star ratings
During recipe testing for SoundLife’s annual Thanksgiving food sections, I was elbow deep in a cornbread stuffing recipe while stirring roasted pumpkin soup when I had an epiphany about why people don’t want to cook on Thanksgiving: It’s a lot of work. Dine out? Not a bad idea.
Southern barbecue and the Northwest aren’t exactly synonymous.
Some restaurants open with fanfare and glitzy marketing campaigns. Others open with a whisper. A quiet opening was what chef/owner Robert Green had planned for his Green.House restaurant that opened Sept. 12 in Uptown Gig Harbor.
Readers started calling within days of The Cliff House Restaurant’s closure last December. Then followed e-mails. More phone calls, then e-mails. Never have I received such an outpouring in response to a closure.
Despite its place minutes from Tacoma, downtown Sumner still seems like a small town. Heck, even Puyallup feels like a major metropolitan center compared with this little slice of Americana.
Meet Franco Cannava. If you dine at his Olympia restaurant, Sorrento Ristorante Italiano, it’s pretty much a given. Sorrento is Cannava and vice versa.
If anyone knows how to throw a big Greek feast, it’s the parish members and volunteers at the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Tacoma. For 48 years, church volunteers have thrown a Greek festival that has introduced countless Tacomans to baklava, gyros, melomakarona, koulourakia, paximadia and countless other dishes that many find unpronounceable but utterly delicious.
The Sixth Avenue district is a neighborhood that buzzes late into the night. There’s always a show to see, a meal to savor, a game to watch, a tattoo to get, a cocktail to swill.
TASTY:
If there are two things Ben Hilberg knows about fair food, it’s grease and portability. His Puyallup Fair food booths, Totally Fried and Food on a Stick, generated food buzz last year thanks to a menu full of kitschy eats. Case in point: A fried chicken patty with Krispy Kreme doughnuts as buns. Yes, you read that correctly. Hilberg served fried chicken doughnut sandwiches at the Puyallup Fair last year. And people ate them.
August brought the arrival of two modestly priced restaurants to downtown Tacoma and the Gig Harbor waterfront. In a time of dwindling dining dollars, restaurants serving food in the $10-and-under range are a welcome addition. Here are two first bites of new restaurants serving affordable eats:
Have cart, just add dog. I’ve spotted three new mobile hot dog restaurants all on wheels in the last three months. The mobile dog restaurants range from traditional dogs (think Chicago and Coney) to silly dogs topped with pork and beans, and deep-fried bacon-wrapped gluttony.
Everyone has a favorite hole in the wall. Fans of nondescript places that are low on atmosphere and big on honest-to-goodness real-deal eats know what I’m talking about.
I didn’t want to finish this dining report. I wanted to keep visiting the hidden treasure that Chambers Bay Grill is just one more time. Also, I don’t like fighting people for tables. Or at least I don’t want to for the next week or so. Like the rest of the grounds around Chambers Bay, the Chambers Bay Grill will be closed for the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship Aug. 20-29. After that, we can duke it out for that sweet table in the left corner of the patio.
A glass of complimentary sparkling wine handed to me as I sit down for dinner. Hmm. I could get used to that. In an era when diners are looking to spend dining dollars wisely, Brix 25 is a splurge restaurant that sinks serious effort into earning those dollars.
Local chefs from some of the region’s best restaurants. Food producers. A few celebrity chefs.
When Banger Smith created the 5-pound Behemoth Burger challenge for the Ram Restaurant & Brewery, it wasn’t just about flavor or ingredients – it was about enormity.
There are some people who are into food and then there are others who are really into food. The kind who know their frisee from their fricassee. Fortunately for the rest of us some of these gastronomes are willing to fill our brains as well our bellies with their passion. Thurston County has two such food explorers who (for a fee) will lead you on tours through the local food scene.
Dining at Anthony’s Hearthfire Grill blurs the line between water and terra firma.
Sunscreen? Check.
Beer gardens, a margarita beach party, a classic car show, a blues band competition and barbecue lunches are what Ruston waterfront restaurants have planned for Freedom Fair on Tacoma’s Ruston waterfront Sunday.
I stopped in for lunch at the SideBar Bistro, a legal-themed restaurant that opened three weeks ago across from the County-City Building on Tacoma Avenue South. I was impressed with the handsome restaurant with an affordable menu. In a neighborhood with a modest offering of casual, quick-eating options, the bistro offers a level of dining needed on that block.
The scent of slow-cooked pork mingled with the heady aroma of grilled meat signals you’ve arrived at a Hawaiian restaurant. The heart of Hawaiian fare is in the meat. Huli huli chicken, barbecued beef and short ribs among the grilled selections; kalua and lau lau pork are slow-cooked offerings.
A new bar and grill called The Office is slated to open in August at 813 Pacific Ave., Tacoma.
Gig Harbor’s dining scene has been a swiftly changing landscape in recent weeks with restaurants coming and going. Sip wine bar closed suddenly May 24. But a few days before, another wine bar opened: Morso, which is the companion wine bar and eatery from the same owners of the Water to Wine shop.
OLYMPIA - A2 Cajun Cafe, a Cajun/Creole-style restaurant that opened in downtown Olympia about six months ago, has closed, according to the social-networking website Facebook.
“I love to cook,” says Shirley Amegbey with a big smile. She’s loved it since she was a girl of 7 in her native Ghana, being carried around the family kitchen by her beloved grandmother, carefully watching as pots bubbled and ingredients were chopped.
QUICK LINKS
EVENTS
BLOGS
A&E VIDEO
MOST POPULAR
- Tacoma woman gets $40,500 in animated 'Wheel of Fortune' win
- Bellarmine grad, golf-course designer Harbottle dead at 53
- No tiger spotted in Puyallup, but hunt led to fun on social media
- Suspect arrested in Tacoma Safeway stabbing
- Mariners build lead, Brandon League blows it
- 143
Man accused of hitting noisy kid at Kent theater - 41 Cyclists, drivers seek harmony on the road
- 25 Gridlock in Congress imperils projects here, Gregoire says in D.C.
- 4 JBLM soldier killed in Afghanistan
- 3 After 2-year legal battle, Chabad Jewish Center of Pierce County to open on Tacoma's West End
The News Tribune had 65,641 visitors yesterday
Local internet marketing by PaperG
South Sound Career Builder .com
VIEW ALL »
- Transportation
- DRIVERS-JOB SECURITY Start Earning what your Worth with Ashley D
Anonymous Business - Hospitality - Hotel
- The Courtyard by Marriott Tacoma Downtown is hiring Front Desk A
Anonymous Business - Transportation
- CDL-A Drivers Northwest Steel and Pipe, Inc. Is looking for driv
Anonymous Business
South Sound Cars .com
VIEW ALL »
Presented By
Tom Matson Dodge Jeep
2011 Hyundai Sonata
Silver color, 17,879 miles
$24,995.00
South Sound Rentals .com
VIEW ALL »
A beautiful place to live.
Welcome to Hawaiian Village North. Our property features lush landscaping in a quiet, peaceful environment. You will enjoy the
TribBits
- Subscribe today
- Subscribing to The News Tribune has never been easier
