Bill Virgin: Tacoma could be home to next food craze; all it takes is right idea

Tacoma now has a restaurant devoted to Cincinnati-style chili, according to a report by The News Tribune’s Sue Kidd, who tracks the local eatery scene.

This is great. We should encourage such cross-cultural exchanges to broaden our culinary horizons. We’re a better place, and we eat better, for having Chinese, Thai, Indian and Vietnamese restaurants as common as hamburger joints, and for having establishments serving rarely seen dishes such as Russian dumplings.

In the interest of bringing the tastes of the world to all its people, we should return the favor by opening a restaurant in the Midwest that brings some uniquely Tacoman, or at least Washingtonian or Northwestern, dish to those who have not yet experienced or enjoyed it.

Which would be what exactly?

We could try a salmon-themed restaurant — not a lot of those swimming in the Ohio River, or much else you’d want to eat — and we have plenty of purveyors of smoked salmon. Still, that’s a product made in various styles all over the world, so it’s not distinctly ours.

Or we could try a candy such as Applets and Cotlets or Chukar cherries, both made by Washington companies that operate stores and online catalogs to make sales around the globe. Good products, but not Tacoman. Those folks at Brown & Haley seem to have stuck around awhile, but again that’s not quite what we’re looking for to hang a cuisine on.

Yes, we also do chocolate, but these days so does everyone else. That goes double or triple for craft-beer brewing. Washington has done well with wine, but it’s not as though there’s a lot of vineyard space locally.

How about Seattle-style coffee? The city and the beverage have become synonymous, but the problem is that someone — Starbucks — got to that idea first, and it’s really Italian-style coffee brought to this country.

Obviously this idea needs some further R&D.

But it is an idea worth thinking about, for multiple reasons. Agriculture and food processing are big businesses. Distinctive regional dishes and tastes not only contribute to those sectors in a direct financial sense, they help build a region’s brand (think Chicago-style pizza or Kansas City barbecue), raising its profile in the way sports teams or tourist attractions do. In the process they generate a bit of tourism buzz in their own fashion. You can, for example, dine at and tour a sourdough factory on San Francisco’s waterfront.

If you weren’t from there, would you know much about Cincinnati, for example, beyond the names of some sports franchises and chili? Thirty years ago you wouldn’t have known the latter, Cincinnati-style chili being limited largely to that market. Your columnist grew up in Ohio, but not in Cincinnati. He went to college with students from Cincinnati who talked endlessly about that town’s chili and who made midnight runs on Interstate 71 for a fix. It wasn’t until later that Cincinnati chili broke out as a culinary phenomenon. Now columnist and family, even though living in the Northwest, have become fans and order cans of the stuff.

One more personal digression to illustrate the point that distinctive local foods are not created equal: columnist’s hometown of Columbus is best known in culinary circles for being the corporate headquarters of White Castle and the birthplace of Wendy’s. You’re welcome.

You can build a decent business sector off regional foods. The competing Cincinnati-style chili parlors have become chains not just in the Midwest but as far south as Florida.

Another example: Coors built a national brand from near-mythic status as Colorado’s Kool-Aid; today it’s regarded as just one more generic American beer.

So it’s possible to build a regional taste or flavor into a true business, and not have it disappear into the gullet of some larger corporate entity, as happened with what might be Tacoma’s best-known food brand — Nalley’s. Another reason for thinking there’s economic potential from the local-foods segment. Regional foods flourish nicely in an entrepreneurial environment.

Somewhere in a home or restaurant kitchen someone is concocting the next food craze, one which restaurants or food businesses can capitalize on. It may be something new, or it may be a long-known but overlooked local flavor or brand getting new exposure. What a nice addition to Tacoma’s business climate and culture it would be to have some of those kitchens here. America’s tastebuds and wallets await the delicious results.

Bill Virgin is editor and publisher of Washington Manufacturing Alert and Pacific Northwest Rail News. He can be reached at bill.virgin@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published February 20, 2016 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Bill Virgin: Tacoma could be home to next food craze; all it takes is right idea."