Leaning into takeout, Tacoma’s Cooks Tavern debuts a pair of pop-up restaurants

With no guaranteed timetable for full-service restaurants to resume business as usual, Cooks Tavern has morphed into a three-menu enterprise.

You can only order takeout from G&H Pig Palace, a new barbecue “restaurant” accessible only by walk-up window at 3201 N. 26th St. in Tacoma’s North End. There you also will see another new walk-up window, soon to be decorated with tiki hut reed and straw, from which the Cooks kitchen will serve a menu of Hawaiian delights under the name Popoki Nani.

The pop-up menus allow Cooks to reach more customers with more takeaway choices in a time when restaurants that remain open are skirting by with less than 40 percent, if they’re lucky, of normal sales.

It’s almost like opening a new restaurant but without the high costs of another brick-and-mortar.

“We were hoping that if we could cover labor and food costs and have a couple of nickels left over for rent and utilities, and I could keep people employed, it was worthwhile,” said Peter Levy, owner of Chow Foods, which operates Cooks and neighbor Brewers Row as well as neighborhood restaurants in Seattle. “We could only go so far with it.”

Since COVID-19 shuttered dining rooms in March, Cooks has been offering curbside pickup of a truncated menu of comfort food favorites, inspired by its seasonal themed menus. The accordion windows of the corner building facilitated the installation of walk-up windows, which many area restaurants — from Spanky Burger to Bliss Creamery and Dunagan Brewing — have added to keep customers outside and staff in.

Levy — whose Chow Foods helped popularize the rotating menu concept dating back to his first restaurant The Beeliner, opened in 1989 — consulted with his team, and together they hatched a plan.

“We have this incredible encyclopedia of our own recipes, from Charleston, South Carolina to Vietnam to Australia and Napa Valley,” he told The News Tribune in a phone call. He estimated that Chow Foods has developed 500 or 600 menus over three decades in Seattle and since 2016 in Tacoma. “We have all this material: Let’s put it to use.”

Thus was born G&H Pig Palace and Popoki Nani, which translates to “handsome cat.”

“We’ll have these two completely different concepts so people can come in for whatever mood they’re looking for,” said chef Brittany Erwin earlier this month.

Leading up to Mother’s Day, Cooks was anticipating launching the barbecue but not the Hawaiian. Since then, Levy has rejiggered the building that houses Endolyne Joe’s, another of the group’s all-day restaurants in West Seattle.

To order from either pop-up, customers can call ahead or order online, but you can also stroll up to the walk-up window. In an ideal world, Levy would add a few socially distanced tables outside to bring the takeout experience full-circle.

Each new “restaurant” has its own website and branding. The idea resembles a nascent but growing trend in the restaurant industry: ghost kitchens, in industry parlance, or delivery-only “restaurants” popularized by third-party delivery platforms including Grubhub and Uber Eats. The menus are promoted exclusively online and not advertised in storefronts. A sushi restaurant, for instance, might offer a hidden poke restaurant.

THREE RESTAURANTS IN ONE

G&H Pig Palace serves barbecue favorites, the baby back ribs and pulled pork having been tested on Cooks curbside menu. A half-rack with a Kansas City-style sauce ($24) is accompanied by a side of cabbage slaw and macaroni salad with “a Wonder Bread foundation.”

The smoked meats include pulled pork, a half-chicken glazed with a Carolina-style mustard sauce ($16.50 with sides) and brisket ($19.50 with sides) with “a tiny bucket of Texas mop,” the house liquid used to keep the beef moist while in the smoker. Sandwiches are available with a side of Tim’s chips and a pickle ($12.50).

A $50 family-style “Texas Two Step” package combines all of the meats and throws in pepperjack cornbread.

G&H also offers its meats by the pound, including hot links, with your choice of sauces. Sides stick to the classics, including cabbage slaw ($2.50 to $4.50) and Texas red chili ($5.50 to $9.50).

From the Popoki Nani window, described on its website as “The Aloha Spirit on a sidewalk in Tacoma,” dig into smoked Kalua pork ($10.50) or a griddled beef patty with Ma’ono gravy, a sweet and spicy mustard sauce ($12.50).

Plates, which include a crispy soy and ginger tofu ($11.50) plus Spam and fried eggs ($12.50), come with sticky rice and macaroni salad.

In addition to the requisite Spam Musubi, Popoki Nani features a trio of dippable bites ($6 to $12): Katsu fried chicken nuggets known as “cat paws,” coconut shrimp and Li Hing Fun Dipp — pineapple and cucumber spears sprinkled with Li Hing Mui, a popular Hawaiian seasoning made from ground plum skins pickled with licorice, salt and sugar.

The Pig Palace Relief Program — a bowl of chili with a square of cornbread and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon for $6 — nods to restaurant workers, who can also snag a complimentary meal from a pig roast outside the restaurant on June 15.

For dessert, there’s POG pie, so known for its custard fruit filling of passionfruit, orange and guava, served here with a graham cracker and macadamia nut crust.

Both pop-ups offer their own drink menus, too: craft beer and simple highballs like Jack Daniel’s lemonade at G&H, and Maui Brews and Mai Tais at Popoki Nani.

“We’re planning more of a mindset of, ‘What if we don’t get to open in the next month?’” said Erwin. “We have to keep customers coming in and trying new things.”

With three reasons to visit coming from a single kitchen, she added, Cooks can more patiently approach reopening its dining rooms, whether at half-capacity when Phase 2 begins or further into the state’s recovery plan.

“I just want to be nimble,” said Levy, who after decades in the restaurant industry was devastated to have to lay off 185 people due to the pandemic closure.

Now customers can find American, Hawaiian, barbecue and New Mexican cuisine in one block — “basically the equivalent of four restaurants under one roof.”

If one falters, another can easily — sort of — pop into place.

G&H Pig Palace

▪ 3202 N. 26th St., Tacoma, 253-327-1176, gandhpigpalace.com

▪ Open daily 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; order online, call ahead or pick-up at window

Popoki Nani

▪ 3203 N. 26th St., Tacoma, 253-327-1893, popokinani.com

▪ Open daily 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; order online, call ahead or pick-up at window

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