I don't think I'll ever figure out why some restaurants are successful and some aren't.  Sure, some restaurants provide delicious food, great service, and an enjoyable atmosphere, and deservedly experience success. Other restaurants consistently provide mediocre food, rude service, noisy atmosphere, and are always busy. Yet other restaurants have great food, great service, pleasant atmosphere,and don't stay in business very long. I'm sure location plays a part. But there's also some psychology involved: People tend to want to go where other people are dining, and avoid places that aren't busy. When asked about whether he wanted to dine in a particular restaurant, Yogi Berra once answered "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too popular." I recently visited a couple of local places that I've been to numerous times, but don't think I've ever written about.  The first is Rubattino's, 808 S 3rd St, Renton. Rubattino's is Renton...

  Despite restaurants being a tough way to make a living, they continue to open. In the Renton area, at least three restaurants should be opening within the next few months. Sabah Cafe, 420 NE Sunset Blvd, Renton, in the old Amante Pizza space, will be serving Turkish food. Turkish food is good. In downtown Renton, Premier Meat Pies will be opening in the original Armando's space at 919 S 3rd St. They will be a restaurant, bakery, and pub. They have a couple of existing branches, in downtown Seattle and the central waterfront near Ivar's. And just a few blocks north of the Renton city limits at 11301 Rainier Ave S, 98178, Winnie's Cafe and Deli will be serving Ethiopian food and coffee. South Seattle and Tukwila have a number of Ethiopian restaurants, but I don't think Renton does. But this will be only a couple of minutes from downtown Renton. I haven't eaten a lot of Ethiopian food, but Ethiopian coffee is the best. Yirgacheffe ranks right up there as one of the b...

 A good falafel is a marvelous thing. Falafels are crunchy, crispy, spicy, salty, and meaty(even though they're vegetarian). Paired with salad and either a sesame tahini sauce, a yogurt/garlic sauce, or a mango sauce, hummus, and pita bread, it's a good meal with a lot of flavor.  Unfortunately, Renton, Washington is not a place that has had many good places to eat falafel. Oh, Gyros House at the Landing had falafels on the menu, but they were more of an afterthought. They had lots of things on the menu much better than their falafel. And they've been out of business for a while. Organic Juice Bar and Gyros also has falafel on the menu. They have other things on their menu that stand out, but their falafels seems to be made from a mix, and don't wow me. The newly reopened Red House has something they call falafel fries, and they're good, but as they're shaped like steak fries, so they're not exactly the real thing. The Red House has some marvelous food, so m...

 In the local restaurant world, one really good place recently opened not too far away, and three others are opening soon, which gives me reasons to get excited. The place that recently opened is Momoya Sushi and Bento, at 241 Sunset Blvd N, Renton 98057. It's in the same complex as Westernco Donuts.  Momoya is not a new restaurant. They have relocated to Renton after a  15 year long run in Kirkland. They're a small place with a not very large menu. They don't need to have an large menu because these are people who know what they're doing, and put out a delicious product. Friendly, competent, and reasonably priced. The salmon teriyaki was perfectly cooked. The sushi rolls tasted fresh and were addictive.The Bento boxes are an especially good value. I'll be back. In Renton, after something like an 18 month absence, the Red House is rising from the ashes, under new ownership, scheduled to open sometime in February. The Red House, at 410 Burnett Ave S, Renton, was a po...

Somehow, it escaped me that National Coffee Day was just a few days ago.  A day late and a dollar short, I do want to praise coffee.  I begged Grandma Sylvia to give me coffee when I was 5 years old. She eventually caved,  gave me a small cup that was 80% milk, and I was hooked.  At this point, a few years later, I generally drink coffee at home, coffee that I've roasted myself outside on the back porch. Coffee roasting can be an acrid smelling, smoky endeavor, so many years ago my coffee roasting was exiled outside, which is where it should be unless you've got some pretty powerful exhaust fans. Despite my roasting and drinking most of my coffee at home, I've been to all of the places in downtown Renton that serve good coffee,  have seating, and it's acceptable to just have coffee. I'm not counting giant coffee chains that start with the letter S, even though Renton has a bunch of them. I'm talking about the independents. Like anywhere else in the Seattle area,...

  When I started Freakazoid Freddy Eats seven years ago, it was with the rule that the only thing that could be discussed was food. Not discussions of politics, religion, sex, literature, or the weather. Vegetable gardening would be okay, as well as recipes and restaurants. I've kept to that rule strictly. Until now. Why now? Because I wrote a book(under my real name), and I'm trying to hawk it. It's a science fiction/genealogy novel. And food does play a part in the book. How could it not, being written by someone so irreparably food obsessed? Also, you know where you can buy a copy? Smoking Monkey Pizza, 613 S 3rd St, in beautiful downtown Renton, Washington. How cool is that? The pizza is good, they have pickup and delivery, as well as dining in. Whether you can have a copy of my book delivered along with your pineapple and blue cheese pizza, I couldn't tell you.  If you're nowhere near Renton, or are allergic to the smell of garlic and pizza dough, you can also ...

 I have liked fish tacos since forever.  In fact, I've rarely eaten a fish taco that I haven't liked. And I feel very lucky that the town I live in, Renton, Washington, has a huge number of restaurants that serve fish tacos.  So it's been my mission the last six months or so to try as many different fish tacos as possible. This list contains my top ten finds. There may be others I haven't tried, so if I've missed any, point me in that direction and I can update this list. So which place has the best fish tacos in Renton? I couldn't decide. I had to go back and retry places several times( a good excuse to eat more fish tacos), and I still couldn't declare one place's fish tacos as the absolute best. Instead, I've broken it down into tiers. I did not dislike any of the fish tacos on this list, and if you brought me a plate of fish tacos from any place on this list, I'd happily gobble them up. So, without further ado, the top tier, in no particular ...

 Spring is in the air. Baseball spring training is underway,  people are starting to get Covid vaccines, and restaurants are either re-opening with some indoor seating, or opening for the first time.  One of those places is El Muchacho Alegre, 111 Airport Way, Renton. The location, built as a burger joint in the 1950's, has gone through many incarnations. It was most recently a hookah bar, before that a Bangladeshi restaurant, before that Vietnamese, and had a long run as Lermond's, a diner-like place. El Muchacho Alegre opened a couple of weeks ago.  I often like to wait a couple of weeks before trying a new restaurant, to give them a chance to work out the kinks. But this time, we went on their second night of business. I like seafood, and I like Mexican food, and the place is close by.  Anyway, the place is good, and they had their act together even on the second night of business. They make a green salsa that is served with warm chips, that is both flavorful...

  CHEESECAKE, MEXICAN SEAFOOD, GOOD RYE BREAD, AND MORE! As a kid, I had really good eating habits. My mother would offer me candy, and I would ask if I could have some cucumber instead. I didn't like sweets, and I didn't like rich foods. Unfortunately for my waistline, my tastes have changed. I now like sweet, rich foods.  Like cheesecake. It took me years to appreciate cheesecake.  But here we are, in a land( the Seattle area in general) not known for cheesecake. So I could easily avoid indulging. Until now... River Valley Cheese, at 826 S 3rd St in beautiful downtown Renton, was, until the Covid 19 pandemic, a place to take cheese making classes. Kristi, the big cheese of the company, liked to make cheesecake out of cheese that she made. She didn't teach people how to make the cheesecake, but she taught people how to make the cheese. And then because of Covid-19 related regulations, she was not allowed to teach classes in her facility any longer, in order to ensure soc...

 I do like my fried noodles.  Whether it's Chow Mein, Chow Fun, Phad Thai, Filipino Pancit, Indonesian Mi Goreng,  Yakisoba,or Jap Chae, pictured above.  Jap Chae is a Korean stir-fried sweet potato cellophane noodle with vegetables and either meat, seafood, or tofu. Jap Chae might be my favorite of all of the stir fried noodle dishes. It's comfort food.    A few years ago, Jap Chae could not be found in any restaurant in Renton. Now there are at least three places.  Yummy Kitchen is on SW 43rd near Ikea, and is Korean and Hawaiian. Exit 5  BBQ is on N 10th Place in the Landing. And Pho Box is across the parking lot from the "downtown" Renton Fred Meyer, at 364 Renton Center Way. Given the uncertain status of a lot of restaurants these days, I'm not certain if either Yummy Kitchen or Exit 5 are operating on reduced hours, but I think they're both open, and I know Pho Box is. When Pho Box first opened a few years ago, it was a Vietnamese restaurant...

                                                              BABKA AND BAGELS                                                                                                                                                                                         As many people have done during the pandemic, I've been experimenting with sourdough baking. I've experimented with baking...

BAGELS IN RENTON?  Although I've lived in Western Washington for 43 years, and in Renton for the last 22 years, I was raised in the Garden State, New Jersey, a place where people take bagels very seriously. And as much as I love living in Renton, it's not a place famous for it's bagels. In fact, Renton does not have a single place that calls itself a bagel bakery. Safeway bakes their ghastly version, and Fred Meyer's aren't much better. Uwajimaya and Top of the Hill market carry the products of Seattle Bagel Bakery, baked in nearby Tukwila. They're a little better than Safeway and Freddy's, but they're underwhelming. A few years ago, the late, great Flour, Sugar, and More bakery in the Renton Highlands made bagels, and they were surprisingly good. But now, alas, gone. Now there's a new bagel player in town. The Red Tea Room is offering hand made, boiled, authentic 'New York' style bagels once a week,  available for pickup. I bought a dozen la...

If you open a brand new restaurant during a pandemic, does that qualify you as nuts? It might. Opening a restaurant when there's no pandemic around is something that requires a little insanity in the first place. Even when the economy is just buzzing along, restaurants fail. A lot of them. What I think I read was that for every ten restaurants that open today, five years from now, eight of those ten restaurants will either be out of business, or owned by someone else. And that's when the economy is going good. Some people shouldn't be in the restaurant business. Some don't start out with enough of a financial cushion to start out with. Some open restaurants in "jinxed" locations, and the curse doesn't reverse. Some are great cooks but can't run a business. Some have health issues, or the economy implodes. There's all kinds of reasons why restaurants have to cease operating. And yet, here we are.  People are still opening restaurants. Restaur...

KITCHEN SINK ENCHILADAS If I'd known how good these were going to taste, I'd have made them prettier. Thrown some avocado slices on top, and some red onion. Or sliced black olives. It was a " use what's in the refrigerator" meal, and we had a lot of vegetables in the refrigerator. So I sautéed  some mushrooms, onion, garlic, cauliflower, broccoli, and Asian eggplant. I happened to have some leftover green enchilada sauce. I'd made the sauce a few days earlier, but if you're less ambitious, the canned green enchilada sauces taste pretty good also.      I also had some leftover cooked kasha, roasted buckwheat groats. And threw in some chopped hazelnuts, which were hiding in the back of the refrigerator, but till tasted good.  And Ballyshannon, an Irish cheddar from Kerrygold, which was both inside the enchiladas and also on top of the outside. It was vegetarian and delicious. Definitely not low fat. I found a bottle of  coconut aminos, a soy sauc...

                                                  A Public Service Announcement We are living in weird times. As a result of the fast spreading and potentially lethal coronavirus, many states are under Shelter in place, or Stay at home orders. One is allowed to go outside for exercise, or to pick up food or medicine, or other essentials. But many businesses have been ordered closed,  and social distancing is urged. Thus, while many restaurants are still open as take out and delivery places, very few of them are thriving. Some were noted as being hangout places, and hanging out at these places is not an option. Some  have closed. It wasn't easy to run a restaurant here before the Coronavirus. Lots of people are out of work. People are being urged to stay home. And we are urged to minimize contact in person with other humans. But if you can affor...

     We all have our "little quirks". One of mine is that I resist going to restaurants that refer to themselves as bistros. I know it's not fair.  I've sometimes later gone to places with bistro in the name, and had a perfectly good meal. But my immediate inclination is to run for the hills. A few months ago I went to the Renton Bistro on S 3rd St, the place that use to house gene's, and Pino, and Vino. It's now a Vietnamese "Bistro", and the food was good in the couple of times I've been there, but the service was slow. Yet one evening about a month ago, it wa getting late, we were tired, nobody felt like cooking, and Diane had a cold and a craving for congee. We passed by the Red Bamboo Chinese Bistro(1306 Union Ave, Renton, in the same complex as the driver's license place) and took a chance, despite my aversion to bistros. You know what? The place is really good! The black bean sauce green pepper shrimp was fresh tasting. That'...

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...