Renton's got a new brewery. It's Bickerson's Brewhouse, (4710 NE 4th St.), in the eastern Renton Highlands, in the complex where the QFC is. Renton now has three breweries. I went to check out Bickerson's on Thursday. A while back I checked out Dubtown Brewing, the next newest kid on the brewery block (201 Main Ave S), and at four years old, Four Generals Brewing( 229 Wells Ave S.) is the senior citizen of Renton breweries, and  is a place I continue to return to. Anyway, the beer pictured is Bickerson's Five Blind Mice, an IPA. It was delicious. What astounds me is that the last few times I have gone to each of these breweries, they were full of people drinking beer.  As Martha Stewart said " It's a good thing." Just a few years prior to Four Generals opening, there were a couple of Renton breweries, operated out of the owner's garages. Herbert B. Friendly was only open one afternoon a week. They were in South Renton, and it was the garage ...

First off, I have to brag that this blog is now featured on the Renton Chamber of Commerce's website.  Check it out at gorenton.com/visit/eat.  If you'd told me thirty years ago that I'd be hanging out with Chamber of Commerce types in the future, I'd call you nuts. But the Renton Chamber of Commerce is different. Grassroots. Nurturing and promoting the vitality of downtown Renton and other neighborhoods. A bunch of funny, creative people. So there! Go ahead, call me a corporate stooge! That out of the way, let's talk local Mexican food. I'm not going to tell you where I think the best Mexican food is in Renton. Because I don't know, and because my mood changes. But there are some worthy contenders. And what's best, anyway? For me, the food has to be delicious. And even if it is delicious, it might not be the best if it takes a long time for me to get the food I ordered, or there's very long wait for a table, or the service is unfriendly and inc...

I like bread. I know...carbs. I know...empty calories. I know....heart disease and cancer contributing White Death. But, y'know? We all make choices. I eat no meat other than seafood. I don't smoke. I barely drink. I eat lots of vegetables. I get lots of exercise. Fifteen years or so ago, I was on a low carb diet. I lost fifty five pounds( and only gained about twenty of it back), so for a long time( six, seven years?) I did not eat bread. Oh, I ate the stuff sold in the stores as low carb bread. And I told people it was pretty good. I lied. It was as if some crazed chemist created some weird concoction out of sponge, sawdust, and melted plastic. And called it bread. What I'm talking about is real bread, from a bakery( or made at home). To the best of my knowledge, Renton does not have a bakery that makes bread, other than supermarket bakeries. It's too bad, because I think bakeries really enhance a town or neighborhood. Renton Highlands used to have the Sugar, F...

Today's post starts with a quiz. The flowering plant above is something I grew in my garden. The photo was taken September 7th. What is it? A. Marijuana B. Opium Poppy C. Okra D. Tomatillo I'll reveal the answer at the end of the post. ************************************************************* Boon Boona Coffee is hosting some pop up fundraiser lunches for the Food Innovation Network as they try to obtain commercial kitchen space for budding entrepreneurs who need mentorship, guidance, funding, etc. They are raising money to develop the Tukwila Food hall( and I'm jealous that it won't be in Renton.) Nonetheless, it's already started, and on October 4th, they'll be featuring the food of the Congo, on October 18th Kenyan food, on November 1st Soul Food, on November 15th Kurdish, on December 6th Mexican, and on December 20th different Kenyan food.  It's from 11 AM-1PM. You can buy tickets in advance or just show up at Boon Boona, 724 S. 3rd St, Ren...

I didn't go into Dubtown Brewing(201 Main Ave S, Renton) thinking that I would like the place. For a couple of reasons. One is that I'm a Four Generals Brewing( 229 Wells Ave S. Renton) loyalist. I love Four Generals, and have liked almost all the beers I've tried there. Another is that I hate "progress" and development, and remember fondly the former gas station on the site of Dubtown that housed Jet City Espresso, the former coffee shop/junk shop/cool hangout space. I know, I don't sound like much of a real estate agent saying I hate development. But I'm more partial to funky old buildings. Nonetheless, Dubtown makes good beer. And the space is nice, in a modern space/concrete floor kind of way. I've sampled a few of their beers over a few visits, and the Pfudor(less intense IPA) is pretty delicious. I don't remember what it all stands for, but the PFU is Pink Fluffy Unicorns. Anyway, it appears that downtown Renton can support two breweries. ...

   Five years ago, I appeared on KCTS TV's "Check Please Northwest" as a panelist. Many months earlier, I had been watching the show, and at the end of the show, they expressed interest in having  viewers go on the show for one episode. All you had to do was suggest a restaurant for the panelists to all try , fill out some paperwork, and hope you got selected. I did! With three panelists, you had to try the other two panelists choices. And then get reimbursed for the food, which was really good at all three places. The host was Amy Pennington, who was perfect at the job. She absolutely insisted that the show would go better if we were loose, not tense, and comfortable talking. So we sat around and drank a lot of wine. Diane picked me up after the filming, and I just staggered out of there. But to make a short story long... The restaurant that I suggested was St. Dames, a vegetarian restaurant near Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood , on the light rail li...

About a month ago,  Boon Boona Coffee, 724 S. 3rd St.  in beautiful downtown Renton hosted a pop up for an ice creamery called Sweet Alchemy. It was pretty divine. Then a couple of weeks later, they hosted a couple more popups,  Sweet Alchemy once again, and also Seattle Bagel Bakery, who were doing a lovely bagel, lox, and cream cheese with tomato and thin red onion, as well as bagels with just cream cheese, or with hummus. Pretty great. So it begs the question: Wouldn't having the option to go get really good ice cream in downtown Renton make it an even cooler place than it is? Or going to get baked on premises cookies, breads, and pastries? Dude! That ups the ante on the quality of life scale by a lot. Boon Boona upped the ante. It's a large espresso place and roastery, with sandwiches, pastries,  lavender lattes, and Ethiopian coffee ceremonies. It's a hopping, happening  place. Some places seem to be instant successes. Efram the owner sure looks like h...

I consider myself fortunate that I don't have Celiac Disease, or a gluten intolerance.  Because I really love good pizza, and there's very little actually good gluten free pizza out there. Diane has arthritis in her left ankle, and when she eats gluten, her ankle throbs. So sometimes that calls for eating gluten free pizza. Either in a pizzeria, or at home. Face it, I'm a saint to suffer like that. Pizzerias often have gluten free crusts available these days, but they don't often make them. They buy them parbaked and frozen. From what I understand, there are only a few sources of wholesale to pizzeria frozen gluten free crusts. I've had a few. They're not terrible. But it would be a stretch to say they're good. I'm a native of New Jersey, where there is no shortage of good pizza. Thus, I'm a huge pizza snob, and while I'll eat most any pizza( and not leave it over), I will complain about it as I grab another slice. There's a pizza plac...

Three I've been to recently: Downtown Renton used to have an Afghan restaurant. It was really good. I miss it.  There aren't very many Afghan restaurants in the Seattle area. Maybe four or five in the entire Seattle area?  And that's too bad, because it's really a marvelous, wonderful cuisine. Sorta kinda like Indian food, sorta kinda like Turkish or Greek , and sorta kinda like Middle Eastern. Really delicious. Anyway, the Afghan restaurant in downtown Renton burnt down a few years ago, along with the very nice Thai restaurant next door to it. They didn't rebuild, and the Afghan place relocated to ritzier Bellevue. Some kinds of  foods you have to seek out: Places there just aren't a lot of nearby. Afghan is one of those. Maybe six months ago, I was reading a local food forum, and someone asked if anybody knew about a new Afghan place opening in downtown Kent, maybe a seventeen minute drive from home. Nobody knew anything, and google searches proved futi...

Early spring is the time to be hopeful. I've started the veggie garden again, and although there's always a lot of work to do, I'm hopelessly optimistic. Just as baseball season has started, and the Seattle Mariners are 3-0. It's easy to have delusions early in the season. It'll be a while before they are mathematically eliminated from post season contention, the dream can last until June, no? Same with the garden. Last summer was a bad one for the garden. First I managed to kill a bunch of tomato starts in the greenhouse. Then I didn't prepare the garden beds sufficiently, and the weeds got the upper hand. Plus I was busy working, and it was a hotter than usual summer, and I'd rather do almost anything else than be outside in the heat. But this year will be different. Mostly because I'm intentionally trying to make things easier. Instead of weeding and preparing seven or eight long  garden beds in the backyard, I'm only doing five. To...

I've discovered a new cheese. In my quest to stay healthy, I have to watch my salt intake. And, to my great dismay, most cheeses have a lot of salt. But this Middle Eastern cheese( made in California) has about 75% less salt than Cheddar or Swiss or Mozzarella, and is delightfully melty. Even though it's called " Sweet Cheese" it is not sweet, but is used as an ingredient in  sweet Middle Eastern desserts. I think it would be great on pizza. I found it at the DK Market, 720 Lind Ave SW, in the enchanted city of Renton. The DK remains my favorite place for grocery shopping. You can't find everything there, some things still need to be purchased at regular supermarkets like Freddy's, QFC, or Safeway. But the DK is great for fruit and vegetables, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Mexican cheeses, a zillion varieties of olive oil, Polish chocolate, baklava, Ethiopian flour, rice noodles, Indian toothpaste, etc. In addition to the great variety of foodstuffs sold in ...

Within the last month, Wallet Hub( whoever they are) came out with their annual rankings of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States. Jersey City, New Jersey ranked number one. But three out of the top twenty five were from western Washington State. Renton, home of the Freakazoid homestead, ranked twentieth, out of about five hundred cities ranked.  Kent, Renton's neighbor to the south, ranked tenth. And Federal Way, about fifteen miles southwest of Renton, ranked twenty fourth. Seattle, the nearby city of seven hundred thousand plus, ranked 138th. A city in Florida finished last, being 97% Hispanic/Latino. Renton has a smaller percentage of non Hispanic whites than Seattle does, but a larger percentage of African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, Hawaiians/Polynesians, people of two or more races,  and Asians. As someone who enjoys multiculturalism, and especially food from all over the world, how can this not be a good thing? But no matter the ethnic diversity o...