Diane's a good sport. In my obsession to try restaurants I think might be good, we've gone to places where we were ignored. We've gone to places where many minutes later, we see them bringing frozen fried fish from Safeway to make our meal. We've gone to popular places that served terrible food, and we've gone to empty places that served delightful food. But until last night, we've never gone to a place where a shouting match erupted between customers and the owner, where the customers called 911 requesting police because they claimed to feel threatened. I'm talking about the Silk Road Cafe, an Afghani restaurant in Kent, at 23609 104th Avenue SE. The place is tiny, with seating for sixteen, and a small menu, with seven entrees, three sandwiches, a couple of sides, and a couple of home made desserts. It's a one man show, with the owner doing the cooking,  waiting on tables, cashiering , and washing dishes, so if you're expecting fast food, go ...

Comings: 1.  Tomorrow, December 29th,  the Vude event space on S. Lake Union will be hosting a family holiday meal featuring the 98178's own Brad Inserra. Brad is the former chef/owner of the Swingside Cafe in Fremont, and just about everything he cooks is amazingly good. At this point, it is almost sold out. The ticket price includes food, alcohol, gratuity, tax and live music. https://vudedinnerbradinserra.brownpapertickets.com/ 2. A teriyaki place is opening in Skyway, where the Afriq bar/hookah bar was on Renton Avenue. While restaurants may be opening up all over the Seattle area, Skyway, sadly, has been left out, with many places gone but not replaced. So this is good news. Especially with Nevzat Cankaya relocating his coffee stand across the street from it's current location, and with it he will open up a sit down coffee shop and serve Turkish food, scheduled to open sometime this summer. 3. Asadero Sinaloa, the only Mexican steakhouse in the state, will be reloc...

A few weeks ago I happened to drive by a pizza place near the Renton Ikea store, and out of curiosity, looked them up on the internet. The place is called Pizza Addict, 1250 SW 43rd St. ,Renton. Well, Golly Gee they get good reviews! 4.5 out of 5 on Yelp, the only pizza place in Renton rated that highly. Lots of gushing about how great they are. So I had to try it. If I don't like a place, I'll generally not blog about it.  But I'm genuinely baffled about all the good reviews. Where these reviews written by the owner's family? Were they written by people who know nothing about pizza? I'll try to be fair here, as charitable as possible. I like almost all pizza, even pretty bad pizza, so none got left over. And the Caprese salad was good. They have two different types of crust: wood fired, and flash fried.  We tried the wood fired crust,  ordering the Classic veggie.  I found it disappointing, mediocre. Diane said she would rather be eating a Domino's pizza( ...

The bad news first: El Bule, at 3rd and Park in Renton is out of business, and the place is for lease. Renton could use a Greek restaurant, just saying. El Bule wasn't open for all that long. It started out as aspiring to do fancyish, gourmet Mexican food. and it was really good.  But not too popular. Then they ditched the gourmet menu, and replaced it with tacos and burritos. They were still good, but there was nothing to distinguish themselves in a town with no shortage of tacos and burritos. Between the Renton Hipster blog, and this one, I've talked about various restaurants since 2006. A lot of those restaurants are now gone. It's nothing I can explain. I've seen people standing in line, so they could spend a lot of money at a terrible restaurant, and I've been in many really, really good restaurants that just needed customers. On that note, the good news is that Brewers East/Amante is having a grand opening tomorrow and Thursday, and they're putting out f...

The DK Market in Renton, at 720 Lind Ave SW is an amazing place. Fancy? No. It's a rather dingy, disorganized warehouse. Sure, you can go there simply to buy cheap produce( and the eggplants there today were beautiful and huge), but it's also full of imported goods, a separate Chinese herb store, a separate Indian restaurant, and a separate Russian deli/bakery. The variety of people who shop there is as interesting as the variety of products they carry.  People from everywhere, buying everything. The picture of the food on the plate is from the good and inexpensive Spice King restaurant inside the warehouse space. It's Fish Karahi, saag paneer(spinach/cheese), and Bhindi Masala(okra). Yum! What else did I photograph? Why, garlic hair conditioner, from the United Arab Emirates, and sunflower seeds( I think) from Russia. They've got a lot of Polish chocolate. I resisted buying it this time. They must have ten different kinds of tahini, and a hundred different kinds...

                                                2017 Annual Tomato Review Every year I plant a lot of tomatoes that I start from seed. and always get a lot of tomatoes as a result. Even when the Seattle area gets rainy summers and people are complaining about the poor season for tomatoes, I get tomatoes. I'm not giving myself credit here, I'm not an especially good gardener. It's just that I select varieties that don't need a long season to turn red, and the backyard garden seems to be transplanted from another part of the country. It rains next to the house, but it's sunny in the garden, it's weird, like a patch of Arizona stuck there or something. Anyway, I experiment and usually try a couple of new varieties every year, but usually keep growing what I know will grow well. So, from left, these are the varieties grown this year: Sun Chocola(cherry tomato), Nov...

                    Nevzat Espresso relocation/expansion looking promising Skyway- Nevzat Cankaya's bid to open up a coffee shop and Turkish breakfast hangout in Skyway is looking like more of a likelihood. The King County Council's Transportation, Economy, and Environment committee unanimously approved an amendment to the Special District Overlay zoning for Skyway, and the full council will vote on it next month. Nevzat, who owns a coffee drive up/walk up hut directly across the street, bought the building with the hopes of providing the neighborhood with something that many residents have wanted for years, a sit down coffee shop. Many neighborhoods in and around Seattle have coffee shops practically next door to each other, but not Skyway. When he bought the building in June of 2016, he approached Councilmember Larry Gossett for his help, so that a minor variance could be permitted, allowing this to happen. Councilmember Gossett wa...

When it comes to pizza, I'm an arch conservative. Quite the opposite of my politics, where, if I moved any further to the left, I'd fall off the edge. And also quite different from my tastes in other foods, where I'm curious to try new foods all the time. But pizza? I like what I like. And if I'm spending money, I'd never order a pizza that had a thick crust. Or something other than tomato sauce as a base. Or had pineapple and Canadian bacon as toppings. If it's your money, and you put a slice of a Canadian bacon and pineapple thick crusted pizza in front of me, I'll eat it, of course. I'm a glutton. I'll eat the whole thing and then complain about it. That's my style. But I like what I like. And I'm an east coast pizza snob, even after thirty nine years of living in Seattle. The perfect crust is thin, but not super thin. It can't be too inundated with toppings or cheese. And the sauce has to be tomato. So we were eating a couple o...

Paranormal Pie recently opened in Rainier Beach, at 9435 Rainier Ave S., 206-721-7777) where Giorgina's Pizza recently existed, a couple of doors north of Maya's Mexican Restaurant. Someone on the Rainier Beach/Skyway Facebook page recently stated that they went there, the prices were reasonable, and that they also have hummus. I figured " What kind of places have Hummus?" and figured it had to be Middle Eastern or Middle Eastern influenced. I like pizza, a lot. I also like Middle Eastern food, a lot. So what did I have to lose? The menu has quite a few Middle Eastern(Lebanese, to be specific) selections, so this time I chose to skip pizza. The south end of Seattle, and Renton now have a number of good pizza places, ranging from Tutta Bella in Columbia City, to Bar Del Corso on Beacon Hill, to Pulcinella on the Rainier Beach/Lakeridge border, to Via Tribunali in Georgetown, to Flying Squirrel near Seward park, to Smoking Monkey in downtown Renton.  ...

Just a few things to report: 1. Papa John's Pizza has announced that everytime the Seattle Mariners score five or more runs in a game, regular menu prices are 50% off the next day, if you order online. There are a few problems with this: One- the pizza sucks. I suppose if you're hungry and broke and don't care much about taste, good deal! Two- The total number of runs the Mariners have scored in the last four games combined? Four.  It's not a deal you'll likely be able to take advantage of too often. Three- When the Affordable Care act went into effect, Papa Johns turned  many of their employees into part timers, so they wouldn't have to cover their benefits. At the same time, they raised prices fifty cents per pizza to cover the benefit costs, and at the same time ran a promotion giving away millions of pizza. The CEO of Papa Johns, John Schatter, is an outspoken opponent of an increased minimum wage, was a donator to Donald Trump, and reportedly singled out ...

Twenty five years ago, if you'd asked me my favorite restaurants in the Seattle area, Gene's Ristorante in Renton, and Brad's Swingside Cafe in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood would always be at or near the top of the list. Both so good, unpretentious but inventive places, and primarily Italian. Gene's closed about sixteen years ago, and I was brokenhearted. I still dream about that antipasto. And that apple pie.  Often, when I'm brokenhearted that a restaurant I love has closed, the owners are not brokenhearted. They're very happy, relieved. Dancing a jig. Or the Kazatzka. Or in the case of Gene or Brad, the Tarantella.  A couple of years after selling Gene's Ristorante,  Gene started the still thriving Red House in Renton(which has on the menu the lasagna from Gene's), and had his fingers in a number of other restaurants ranging from Smoking Monkey Pizza, to Papaya Vietnamese in the Renton Landing, to Red Papaya Alehouse in Seattle, to Blossom Vege...

In Freakazoid Freddy's world, the answer to the question "How many Mexican restaurants can downtown Renton support?" would be " All that currently exist plus a few more." For Freakazoid Freddy loves Mexican food. So...how many Mexican restaurants currently exist in downtown Renton? Well, it depends on your definition of downtown Renton, and your definition of Mexican restaurants. For the purposes of this post, I am defining downtown Renton as anywhere within one mile of 3rd and Burnett, generally recognized as the center of downtown Renton. Thus, it slightly extends beyond the generally recognized boundaries, but close enough. I am defining a Mexican restaurant as one that serves Mexican food, but must have indoor seating(so no taco trucks, much as I like them), cannot be part of a national chain(so no Taco Bell or Chipotle), and the food must resemble or be recognizable to people from Mexico( so no Taco Time, even though I like their white chicken chili)....