A few things worth knowing about.
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. Speaking of downtown Renton, when we lived in Seattle's Central District in the early 1990's, we made a special trip pretty regularly to dine at the now long closed Gene's Ristorante. I don't know how I ever first found out about Gene's, but it was in a house built in the 1930's, and served awesome, amazing, and reasonably priced food. I think they closed around 2001, and I haven't found anybody else's antipasto since then quite as magical. To make a short story long, after it closed(Gene was tired, didn't think he wanted to be in the restaurant business any longer(HA, seventeen years later he's still in the biz, just not at Gene's), the place became Pino for a very short time, then became Vino( a cost saver: they only had to change one letter), then Vino moved further east in downtown Renton , and 212 S. 3rd St, the house that housed Gene's, has stayed empty for something like five years.
But not for a long! A sign on the building indicates a Vietnamese restaurant is opening soon, and I'm looking forward to trying it.
3. Further south, but still in Renton, I recently went to the lunch buffet at the Himalayan Cafe, 202 S. 43rd St.(near the IKEA store). It was really good, and I was impressed by the number of vegetable/vegetarian dishes available at the buffet, including a cauliflower dish, a zucchini dish, a spinach dish, a mushroom dish, a potato dish, in addition to the usual lentil and chick pea selections. The Naan bread was made fresh and brought to the table, unlike some of their competitors who just leave the naan at the buffet. While they serve Indian food, they also serve Tibetan and Nepalese food.
4. Up the road in the adjoining 98178 zip code, we recently tried the taco truck at 12911 Martin Luther King Jr Way S. on the lot with the Shell station. There are a lot of taco trucks around, but this place stands out. They're called Tortas Ahogadas Atemajac, and specialize in Tortas Ahogadas, which is a specialty from Guadalajara. It's a sandwich on a hoagie like roll called a birote( but better, because the outside is crunchy and the inside is soft). Filled with roast pork and onion, and doused in a sauce made from tomatoes and chile arbol. Quite yummy, and large. They also have all kinds of tacos there, including more unusual fillings like pork leg, barbecued beef, and tripe. I'm not about to order a tripe taco, but just the fact that they have it, and sell it, is a good sign, a mark of authenticity. Good place.
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. Speaking of downtown Renton, when we lived in Seattle's Central District in the early 1990's, we made a special trip pretty regularly to dine at the now long closed Gene's Ristorante. I don't know how I ever first found out about Gene's, but it was in a house built in the 1930's, and served awesome, amazing, and reasonably priced food. I think they closed around 2001, and I haven't found anybody else's antipasto since then quite as magical. To make a short story long, after it closed(Gene was tired, didn't think he wanted to be in the restaurant business any longer(HA, seventeen years later he's still in the biz, just not at Gene's), the place became Pino for a very short time, then became Vino( a cost saver: they only had to change one letter), then Vino moved further east in downtown Renton , and 212 S. 3rd St, the house that housed Gene's, has stayed empty for something like five years.
But not for a long! A sign on the building indicates a Vietnamese restaurant is opening soon, and I'm looking forward to trying it.
3. Further south, but still in Renton, I recently went to the lunch buffet at the Himalayan Cafe, 202 S. 43rd St.(near the IKEA store). It was really good, and I was impressed by the number of vegetable/vegetarian dishes available at the buffet, including a cauliflower dish, a zucchini dish, a spinach dish, a mushroom dish, a potato dish, in addition to the usual lentil and chick pea selections. The Naan bread was made fresh and brought to the table, unlike some of their competitors who just leave the naan at the buffet. While they serve Indian food, they also serve Tibetan and Nepalese food.
4. Up the road in the adjoining 98178 zip code, we recently tried the taco truck at 12911 Martin Luther King Jr Way S. on the lot with the Shell station. There are a lot of taco trucks around, but this place stands out. They're called Tortas Ahogadas Atemajac, and specialize in Tortas Ahogadas, which is a specialty from Guadalajara. It's a sandwich on a hoagie like roll called a birote( but better, because the outside is crunchy and the inside is soft). Filled with roast pork and onion, and doused in a sauce made from tomatoes and chile arbol. Quite yummy, and large. They also have all kinds of tacos there, including more unusual fillings like pork leg, barbecued beef, and tripe. I'm not about to order a tripe taco, but just the fact that they have it, and sell it, is a good sign, a mark of authenticity. Good place.
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