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Northwest Niblets

23 Feb

Ok, I’m going to try to be more regular with this Northwest Niblets thing–a round up of cool little things you may have missed on Twitter or Facebook or the grocery store when you were busy with the rest of your life. If you know of something I should include in Northwest Niblets, please email me or tweet at me.

  • Corina Bakery in Tacoma has new digs, and from the look of it, they’re gorgeous! The new address (their website is not yet current) is right around the corner from their old location. Find them at 602 Fawcett Ave. If you don’t know the deliciousness that is Corina, I suggest you read this right away, or just get down there and discover it for yourself.

  • If you’re a bit farther to the north, maybe you should head to Seattle’s Bang Bang Cafe, where my Seattle Times colleague Tyrone Beason wrote about “a little scoop of heaven that is spicy, smoky and wonderfully crunchy”–that being the vegan mac and cheese that is the talk of Belltown and much of Seattle.

  • Seattleites might also like to know that Rachel’s Ginger Beer is now available, among other places, at Central Co-op. Delicious on its own or as a mixer.

  • Maybe you’re even farther north, all the way into BC! If that’s the case you’re SO in luck next month. On March 10-11, Fairy Cakes Cupcakes is having its Grand Opening, complete with samples (some gluten free, all vegan and free of tree nuts and peanuts) and other great stuff. But wait! There’s more! On Thursday, 3/22, New Westminster is the place to be for a Vegan Wine and Cheese Soiree. Yes, you read that right. And if you’re wondering what else you would do if you were to venture to New West for this event, you should instead be wondering why you’re not already there.

  • Our friends to the south might like to know about the opportunity to help start a vegan, artisanal ice cream truck in Portland. More into savory than sweet? Then check out the Kickstarter campaign to help Homegrown Smoker add a second truck, on Portland’s east side. And if you haven’t tried Homegrown Smoker’s magically delicious street food, you need to plan a trip to their current downtown cart right now.

  • Two favorite food discoveries this week: FatFree Vegan’s Polenta Lasagna, which was deliciously rich, hearty and loaded with vegetables. It’s also gluten free, easy to make and reheats beautifully. And then for dessert, Eat Pastry cookies (or just eat the dough!). Warm, soft, vegan cookies out of the oven in about 15 minutes. And Whole Foods Westlake has three varieties on sale right now, through 2/28. Other Whole Foods stores probably do, too. Now is the time to try this wonderful stuff.

ETA: Thanks to Brooke for reminding me about Jodee’s Desserts in Seattle, which is celebrating its first anniversary this Saturday, 2/25, with special treats in the storefront. You can read how much I love Jodee’s desserts here.

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Soak up the atmosphere at Tacoma’s delicious 1022 South

12 Feb

Several months ago, in researching spots to check out for this blog, I stumbled upon the website of 1022 South, a craft cocktail lounge in the Hilltop area of Tacoma. I don’t often get down that way, so it wasn’t until last weekend that I visited–a result of a last-minute decision to get food and a drink before returning to Seattle from a day of snowshoeing near Rainier with Jud. 

First off, now that I’ve been there I need to give props to whoever designed their website. It’s clean, attractive, easy to navigate even on a phone (hurray for no PDF menus!), tells you what you need to know and gives a nicely visual first taste of what you’ll experience if you go. If only all businesses had such good websites!

Secondly, I’ll note that 1022 South is primarily a bar (or lounge, if you prefer), and there’s an excellent write-up in Tacoma Weekly about the business and its unique cocktail menu by an author who might be quite familiar to South Sound vegans.

I like a good drink, but since I’m no expert on cocktails I’m going to focus here on the food and the experience of going there.


Cozy and elegant, there’s seating at the bar and at a few small tables.

With its small, narrow space, 1022 South is not the place to take a crowd–but it’s a great place to take a date or a good friend with whom to relax and catch up. We waited just a few minutes for a table for two to open on a Saturday night, though we could have sat at the bar without a wait.


Vintage-styled lights are kept at a sultry dimness, but candles throw plenty of light on the tables.

The cocktail menu is extensive, creative and uses lots of house-infused liquors for complex flavors. Jud had a Sazerac, and I had a “Red Over White,” (Aquavit, beet-infused dry vermouth, Benedictine, celery bitters, sage and salt, which came together into an interestingly astringent dryness and a glowing red color).

The food menu had been updated somewhat since this one from the website, but the online version gives a good idea of their offerings, which are remarkably vegan-friendly and also remarkably rich in fresh produce. That sounded like just the thing after a day out enjoying the snowy sunshine in the mountains. We decided to get a number of small plates, plus a sandwich to share.


Grilled green beans with balsamic vinegar, sea salt and lemon zest

The green beans were deliciously crisp and complemented in both taste and presentation by the vinegar and trace of salt. We didn’t taste the lemon zest, but the beans were quite good anyway.


White-bean-and-fennel spread with baguette and green apple

We both really enjoyed this light but flavorful spread, which got even better when paired with the apple.


Spiced Marcona almonds and pistachios (left, background) and pickled vegetables

The nuts were a satisfying addition to the rest of the food we had, though again, the promised spicing (with coriander) was not detectable: they just tasted like good, salty nuts.

The pickles more than made up for that, though. The mason jar held a mix of pickled beets, cucumber and fennel. All of them were perfectly fresh-tasting and crunchy, with an excellent balance of tart-salty-spicy flavor that didn’t overwhelm the taste of the underlying vegetable. The beets were gorgeously red in the candlelight, and the others looked pearly white. The mixture varies according to what they’ve got at the time, but I will absolutely be ordering this again next time I go.


The “Winter Flora” sandwich, with beets, apples and tomato jam. Unexpected and lovely.

This was the one vegan sandwich offering available, so we went right for it. Neither of us would have dreamed to put these things together, let alone in this way, but it was wonderful. The thinly sliced beets brought a firm, chewy bite to the sandwich, and the fresh apples offered juicy, tangy crunch. I’m not sure what, other than vegan mayo, was in the top layer, but it worked very well to bring the other flavors together. The crusty potato roll it was served on was substantial without being a chore to get your mouth around, and the green side salad added even more welcome fresh veggies to the meal. Seriously, since when do you get this many vegetables–good ones! seasonal ones!–in a bar?

Our server was friendly and efficient, and when Jud peppered her with questions to figure out which wine he wanted to try after his cocktail, she led him to exactly what he was looking for.

If you’re looking for a place to get gussied up a bit and enjoy some cocktails in beautiful surroundings that let you pretend you’re visiting another era, this is it. If you’re “gussied up” in REI’s finest with hat head and find yourself looking for good food and a drink or two to complement it, they’ll still be really nice to you.

Two cocktails, a glass of wine, one sandwich and four small plates came to an even $50 before tip, and it was a perfect amount of food for two.

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Northwest Niblets (Cool little things you may have missed this week)

1 Sep
  • First off, hurry and grab one of the last spots for Hungry Taurus’ awesome vegan bike tour of New Westminster, BC, on Saturday the 17th. As of 4:00 today there were only three spots left, so don’t dilly-dally!

  • If you miss out on the bike tour, or if you didn’t get enough of a Portland fix with VidaVeganCon, you should hit Portland’s VegFest on 9/17 and 9/18. Only $6 (or $5 with online coupon), and full of great speakers, food, and information.

  • FORKS OVER KNIVES is now streaming on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth checking out. You could even host a little movie night!

  • Love fresh produce from the farmers’ market? Hate watching it go bad before you use it? Here are some good tips on how to store things for maximum life (Tweeted by Queen Anne Farmers Market. They’re missing my favorite produce tip, though: keep your mushrooms in a paper bag inside an airtight container (I use a plastic bag, but refrigerator glass would be good, too). That way, they don’t get dry or slimy.

  • Don’t you hate it when that nearby pizza place your friends rave about doesn’t offer vegan cheese? Here’s a way to change that! Check out this site for tools to connect those non-vegan-friendly pizza joints with free samples of Daiya cheese.

  • The TNT did a nice little round-up of vegetarian dining in Tacoma, including some places I went on my recent trip and some I didn’t make it to.

Why you really need to go to Tacoma

21 Aug

Yesterday I took my boyfriend (a willing-if-somewhat-skeptical accomplice) for a food-and-sightseeing tour of Tacoma, and we had a blast! After following @veganmoxie’s excellent Twitter reporting on vegan deliciousness in T-Town and taking some tips from a Tacoma-based friend, I pulled together a little Google map to help us get where we wanted to go, including some areas that looked nice to explore while walking off all that food.

The results were better than we’d even hoped! Here’s the low-down on some great spots to eat vegan in Tacoma.

We started at Caffe Dei for lunch, which is full of delicious vegan cooked and raw food (the one non-vegan item on the menu is an option of dairy on the grilled cheese). The space manages to be at once cozy and airy, and the staff is friendly and helpful. I took one more step in my quest to find all the best vegan Reubens in the world, whereas Jud went for the BBQ meatloaf sandwich:

The meatloaf was seasoned with a nice balance of flavors, and the Reuben was right up there with my current favorite Reuben source, Seattle’s Highline Bar. Less greasy and a little sweeter than its northern cousin, it’s a very well-executed sandwich and one I look forward to eating again, which might be a challenge given all the other things I want to try on their menu.

It took plenty of walking out in the sun and around the Washington State History Museum (Did you know they have a mummy?! And that it’s been in Tacoma for well over 100 years?) before we could muster enough appetite to hit our next stop: Corina Bakery. Given our ambitious eating schedule (and the fact that it was already nearly six, and we hadn’t had dinner yet), we passed on the tempting slices of mocha cake, carrot cake, red-velvet cake and Aztec cake (all of which were vegan, and the last of which I’ve had and loved), and instead split this absolutely gorgeous chocolate-peanut-butter cupcake:

It was exactly as delicious as it looks. Perfection. Corina also offers gluten-free (and vegan) items and beautiful custom cakes. No wonder it keeps winning “best-of” awards!

Dinner was at the very-new (just over a week, if I’m reading their Facebook page right) AmeRAWcan Bistro, which is mostly vegan and raw, but with a little build-your-own-sandwich menu that includes cheese and meat options. While it did seem that they were still getting their bearings, the service was very friendly and helpful, and the food was excellent. Not exactly ravenous after our earlier dining, we kept things on the light side. Jud had the cream of vegetable soup, which was tasty if a little nondescript, and some Brazil-nut-stuffed cremini, which we both really enjoyed. The star of the meal, though, was the plate of nachos I ordered:

See those three colors of sauce drizzled under the perfectly ripe avocado? When Executive Chef Francisco Hernandez came by our table to ask how things were, I asked what each sauce was. There’s a cashew nacho cheese, cashew sour cream, and a sun-dried-tomato-molé sauce. All of that on a variety of colorful flax chips with an expertly seasoned walnut paté, which took the place of ground meat. We decided that neither of us had had better nachos, traditional or otherwise, anywhere. You’ll find them on the sides/starters menu, but don’t let that stop you from making them your entrée, and don’t wait too long before finding your way there and ordering them. The one thing that puzzled us a bit was the fact the nachos were the same price as the stuffed mushrooms ($9.95), for a lot more food and something that seemed far more complex and laborious to produce. Perhaps the price of Brazil nuts is unusually high right now?

It was late enough at that point that we decided to save 1022 South for next time (though the place looked hoppin’ when we drove by), and we also didn’t make it to Quickie Too, which had been low on the list only because we have three Howell-family restaurants up here in Seattle and wanted to focus on things new to us.

And just in case any of my fellow dwellers in larger cities are still harboring doubts as to whether a visit to Tacoma would be enjoyable enough to make even these treats worthwhile, rest assured: we had a great time checking out some of Tacoma’s non-culinary offerings, too. Museum Row is worth wandering, both for its exhibits and its architecture; you may stumble across cool public art or beautiful public stairways; if you luck out with the weather you can get some wonderful close-up views of Mt. Rainier; and you can visit wonderful parks, like Wright Park (which is over 100 years old and really has something for everyone) and Point Defiance Park (visited on an earlier trip, which can offer even better views of Rainier).

Tacoma fans, where else should we eat or visit next time?

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