The Dog and Pony(351 Park Ave N, Renton) is no more. The place has been sold, it's closed for some remodeling, and rumor has it will be opening up under the name The Hop Garden,  in about a month. The Dog and Pony had a long run, about eighteen years.  Restaurants tend to not have very long lives. I think I read that after five years, 80% of the restaurants have either gone out of business, sold, or failed.  And the Dog and Pony hung in there for eighteen, appearing on the TV show Restaurant Impossible three years ago. The place was popular, the food was good( and affordable), they took their beer seriously, and they had some very nice employees over the years. I liked the place, and the large back patio was a great place to hang out with the dog and drink a beer.  I hope it works out for everybody, and I'll be sure to try to try it when it reopens. Dubstep Taproom will be opening up within the next few months at 2nd and Main in downtown Renton. I like beer, so of course I

Al Hamdani Bakery in Kent, Renton's neighbor to the south, is amazingly good. It's an Iraqi bakery. Some of the things they bake will be familiar to many, like baklava, but some of the others will be only familiar to those who frequent Middle Eastern bakeries, or to Iraqis themselves. First, the bread, the pointy ended ovalish picture on the right: it's called Samoon, and it's Iraqi pita, but puffier, and absolutely perfect for filling( as shown on the left.) It can hold a lot of stuff. Then, the pastries. On the top left is Znoud Al Sit, which is filled with sweetened clotted cream and a rosewater syrup, and topped with ground pistachio. Top right are the cigar shaped Bourma, bottom left is baklava, and bottom right is Kataifi.  They have many, many other things to try. If you're losing to much weight, go to Al Hamdani. Their stuff is pretty irresistible. I don't find myself in that part of Kent very often, but there's a nearby pet food store, and

The latest DK Market find!  I like falafel. When it's crunchy on the outside, but soft and savory inside, with a good tahini sauce, veggies, on a good pita, it's one of the great things out there. So delicious! The problem is..it's time consuming to make good ones. Yeah, you can use canned chickpeas, or use a falafel mix, or use chickpea flour, and it'll get done quickly,  but it's just not going to be a great product. Either too grainy or too bitter. You have to cook the chickpeas , and it's best to soak them first. So it's a meal you have to plan for, not spontaneously decide to make.  And then, wandering the aisles of the DK Market in Renton , which is always such a treat to shop in,  I saw frozen, precooked falafel balls imported from Detroit, made by Barakah Kebab. A dozen falafel balls per package.  I had to buy them, of course, in the name of research. I reheated them by quickly pan frying them in hot oil for a couple of minutes. Schmeared som

 While I am pretty obsessed with food, I don't especially enjoy food shopping. Except at one store in particular, the DK Market in Renton. I just get joy out of exploring all the weird things they sell, from all over the world. Some of which are insanely delicious.   And it attracts a very diverse crowd of shoppers, which I also like a lot.  I didn't buy the pork blood.  The store is just awesome, a big warehouse full of all kinds of international treats, and low prices. I'm also singing the praises of Four Generals Brewing in downtown Renton.  Once again they took home some gold medals at the Washington Brewers awards, and they've only been around a couple of years. They now have food trucks on Fridays and Saturdays, and today, Wednesday. Today it's a wood fired pizza truck. And if there is a better combination in this world than beer and pizza, I don't know what it is. It ain't peanut butter and jelly, Honey.

Before I delve into what's new and noteworthy in the Renton area, restaurant wise, I thought I should officially announce that I'm in my pupusa phase. They're delicious. Renton has a couple of places to get pupusas. One is at the Latin market across from McLendon's hardware, and the other is at the City Cafe at 3700 NE 4th St, a couple of blocks past Renton Technical College. The picture of the pupusa menu and the pupusas are from City Cafe. Among other fillings, they have spinach and cheese, jalapeno and cheese, and Loroco( a Central American herb) and cheese. Totally yummy. I've been to the excellent pupuseria in White Center, and there are two in Burien, so I have to check them out. But new and noteworthy in the Renton area? Quan Ngon, 212 S. 3rd St, Renton, recently opened in the location where Gene's Ristorante was for many years, inside of an old house. I was a huge fan of Gene's, and ate there fairly regularly. The place looks the same on the

A few weeks ago, I went with my son and grandkids to the Sunday Mexican buffet at La Hacienda Santa Fe(811 S. 3rd St,) in downtown Renton. I'd gone there more regularly when it was simply called La Hacienda, and it's something of a downtown Renton institution, having been a Mexican restaurant for over thirty years. It was the original location of the Torero's chain. It was La Hacienda for 20+ years, then Javier sold it ,and it became La Hacienda Santa Fe, it became more expensive and not as good. Then Javier took it back, and then resold it again. So we went for the buffet, and it was pretty good, and not too expensive. I mentioned to my son that a couple of the employees appeared to be Indian(Mumbai, not Navajo), but he dismissed it, saying that some people from Mexico and some people from India look alike. Then another week goes by, and I'm walking on S 3rd St, downtown Renton's main drag, and see a sign for a new weekday Indian lunch buffet at the Aasthaa Indian

A few weeks ago, I read a recipe for eggplant parmesan that called for Passata, something I'd never heard of before. It was from a British website, which claimed that passata, or strained tomatoes sold in a glass jar, was better tasting than canned tomatoes. I figured that it was just something that wasn't sold on this side of the pond. I was wrong. A few days ago, I was wandering the aisles in the wonderful DK Market(7th and Lind in Renton), and there it was!  The DK has all kinds of unusual imported goods, or foods catering to immigrant communities. It's so much fun to shop there. Anyway, not far from the Filipino tuna cans and the Polish chocolate, was the Passata, from Italy. So of course I had to try it. And then in the dairy section in the front of the store? "Chicago" cheese, with writing in Arabic. So of course I had to try it. Anyway, two successes! I used the Passata on my Trenton tomato pie, which is a New Jersey cousin of pizza. Unlike pizza, whe

Befitting an old coal town, and a factory town, Renton is blessed with a lot of places to go out for a beer.  I have been to a few, especially those places that also serve at least pretty good food. If I just want a beer, I'll usually go to the most excellent Four Generals brewery, but if I also want a meal, I have a big choice. There are places that strive to serve food that's a cut above typical pub food, like The Whistle Stop Ale House( the Verona burger is a thing of beauty) or The Brick, both places that also feature a variety of microbrewed beers.  The Red House is more of a classy restaurant that also has a wide selection of great beer.  There are places that serve top notch pub food, and have a limited selection of microbrewed beer available( like the Williams Avenue Pub, with great wings, Philly cheese steak, and ribs),there are Vietnamese dive bars with Vietnamese chicken wings and clams( The Burnett) and then there are those places with numbers in their names. I'

When I was a kid, I hated sweets. My mother would offer me a piece of candy, and I would ask if I could have a few slices of cucumber instead. People don't believe me when I tell them this, but it's true. And, maybe coincidentally, I've only had three cavities my entire life( and I'm old!) But, alack and alas, over the decades , unfortunately, I've developed a taste for sweets. I still don't like candy, or cake, or macarons, or anything with icing or frosting on it. But cookies, pie, cinnamon rolls, baklava,strudel,  tarts, etc, bring it on! Except nowadays, for health reasons, I'm mostly supposed to avoid sweets, which I mostly do. Anyway, to make a short story long, we were on our way back from walking the dog in Seward Park, and saw the Beach Bakery, at 7820 Rainier Ave S.Seattle  206-721-2225. I'd heard good things about it, but I was skeptical, because some people who like sweets like any kind of puffy white flour/white sugar sweet thing, and the

                                      A few things worth knowing about 1. Livability.com recently came out with their "Top 100 Best Places to Live in the US" for small to medium cities( which they define as having between 20 to 350 thousand population.)  Fourteen of the top one hundred were in California. Five were in Washington State, including Renton. Olympia was rated number four, Bellevue number six, and Renton number fifty one. I happen to live within the Renton city limits, and I like the place. But one of the top one hundred in the US?  It's a friendly place, and the downtown area has a gritty charm, and feels like a small town. It's got deep working class roots, was a coal mining town, and has a big airplane factory. It is a place that people from nearby Seattle used to make fun of, for being full of uneducated yokels. It's also much more ethnically diverse that increasingly rich and white Seattle. But..in the top one hundred? What were they smoking? 2