Want to watch cask beer being brewed? The Washington Brewers Guild is inviting the public to watch as Herbert's Legendary Cask Festival Ale, honoring Northwest beer pioneer Bert Grant, is made.

On Feb. 6, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m., the beer will be brewed at Water Street Brewing Co. in Port Townsend. On Feb. 8, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., it'll be brewed at Elysian Brewing (Tangletown) in Seattle. The beer will be casked four to five days after the brewing sessions. It'll be served at the guild's spring cask beer festival March 10. Two versions of the beer, based on the same recipe but by a different group of brewers, will be served side by side.

Groundhog Day is a couple of days away, but there are only six more weeks until spring -– at least according to the Pacific Northwest beer festival calendar.

The Washington Brewers Guild's spring cask beer festival takes place March 10 at Seattle Center. The Hop Scotch Spring Beer and Scotch Festival, previously known as Hops on Equinox, happens March 24-25 at Jonas Jensen Studios in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood.

The Washington Cask Beer Festival will showcase late-winter and early-spring beers. There'll be two four-hour sessions, with 250 tickets available for each session. Tickets are $35 advance purchase, $40 at the door. Tickets are available online now or at guild member pubs starting Thursday.

Hop Scotch will feature spring seasonals, scotch whiskey tastings and food-and-beer pairings by Seattle pubs.

Tickets –- beer: $20 advance, $25 at the door; scotch: $30 advance, $35 at the door -– go on sale Feb. 24. The promoter's Web site, hopscotchtasting.com, doesn't appear to be functional yet. For more information, call 206-633-0422.

UPDATED It's still winter, so here's some info on Elysian Fields' winter beer festival, happening Feb. 24 in Seattle.

On Feb. 10, Hops & Props takes off at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

All events are for people 21 and over.

Comedy Underground has moved from its Taboo location in the Bowes Building at 9th and A streets in downtown Tacoma to the upstairs space at Varsity Grill on Broadway.

Comedy Underground's old space is being renovated for an undisclosed project. Varsity Grill operating partner Jon Tartaglia told me two years ago that he wanted to put a pub or a burger joint in that space, but plans are still unannounced.

Comedy shows are currently running Friday and Saturday nights at 8:30 p.m. at Varsity Grill.

Wednesday's post about dogs in restaurants (d)evolved into a discussion about kids in restaurants.

One reader nailed the connection and the consternation:

Inconsiderate parents of misbehaved children are indeed similar to inconsiderate pet owners and misbehaving pets...

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Co-owners John Fotheringham, left, and Ken Wolfe offer burgers, hand-cut french fries and fish and chips at their 12th Street Diner, which opened in December at the former Frank’s Drive-In site at 4008 S. 12th St., Tacoma. TNT photo by Bruce Kellman

I wrote about some new burgers in town today. Now I want to know who makes your favorite burgers.

Do you like the char-broiled half-pounder at Gary's Steak Out?

Smitty burgers at Don's Drive-In?

The old-fashioned goodness of Pick Quick?

Pacific Grill's sliders?

What about Frisko Freeze?

McDonald's?

Vote here and vote now for your favorite burgers. I'll review top vote-getters at a later date.

An Ed's Diner patron asked a You Plate Special question about food-related reading.

Another patron recommended Jim Harrison's "The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand."

The book, published in 2001, collects Harrison's food essays and columns, many of which I read in their original publications in the '90s.

Harrison comes up again today, in a New York Times story.

Sure, the guy over-indulged with Jack Nicholson and went fork-to-fork with Orson Welles, but that's not why Harrison's worth reading. Here's why Harrison's worth reading:

Mr. Harrison, a self-described "food bully," has very particular ideas about cooking. He thinks rosemary should be banned. He has no use for huge restaurant-style ranges: "Why should I spend $7,000 for a stove when I could spend $7,000 on food?" And he doesn’t believe that game, birds especially, should be tarted up with elaborate sauces. "As the French say, game birds taste best at the point of the gun," he said.

... Then he declared: "Food is a great literary theme. Food in eternity, food and sex, food and lust. Food is a part of the whole of life. Food is not separate.”

=> Read more!

"Mmm! Now that's tartare!" El Gaucho's steak tartare. TNT photo by Russ Carmack.

My story today about raw meat ravers steak tartare and beef carpaccio prompts me to share a passage from a book that's been bouncing between my desk and the back seat of my car.

The book is "How I Learned to Cook," a collection of 40 essays by chefs on their (mis)adventures in getting where they got.

Chef essayists include Tamara Murphy of Seattle's Brasa and Seattle-reared Mario Batali.

Here's Anthony Bourdain on the lesson he learned "when I found myself feeding steak tartare to a regional 'gourmet' host on yet another morning news-and-banter show."

I thought steak tartare was a shrewd idea. I wouldn't have to rely on the studo for any cooking equipment. I'd bring my own plates, my own locally (and easily) acquired ingredients. I had a metal ring and a knife and a spatula in my kit. I figured I'd chop the steak by hand -- impressing with my fast, furious and precise knifework. I'd quickly fold in the mustard, capers, choped cornichons and shallots, swirl in the egg yolk and neatly shape the result in the metal ring. A few pre-toasted croutons would make it easy for my host to take an on-camera taste. "Mmm! Now that's tartare!" Retire to the hotel to the sound of deafening kudos...

Didn't happen. Apparently the practice of eating raw meat had not penetrated this far into America's interior. News of mad cow disease had reached the state, however, because the host looked on in terror as I forced the uncooked egg and beef concoction into the metal ring, the idea dawning on her that yes ... yes ... she would be required to eat this thing absolutely raw. The word Ewww! actually escaped from her lips as she tenuously reached for a meat-smeared crouton. ... She took the tinest nibble, fighting the urge to gag -- her head swimming with images of spongiform bacteria riddling her brain, turning it into swiss cheese. When the segment was over and she'd spit the tiny taste out into a trash bin, she fixed me with a look of such pure loathing that it haunted my dreams.

Here's a story that interests me on three fronts: restaurants, bars and dogs. The Associated Press reports from Olympia:

If dog-loving lawmakers prevail, Fido could soon be sidling up to bar stools around Washington state under a measure that would allow well-behaved, leashed canines to join their human companions as they down their favorite microbrews.

The measure was introduced by Sen. Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle, who got the idea at the Fish Tale Brewpub, formerly known as the Fish Bowl, a downtown Olympia staple where he's a regular.

"I was sitting at the Fish Bowl looking at all the dogs outside sitting in the cold and the rain, while all the owners were warm inside," said Jacobsen, who doesn't own a dog.

"There's all sorts of places you can bring animals now. You can take dogs into hotels. My God, some people are carrying dogs in their purses. Why can't we have them in the bars?" Jacobsen said.

Here's the whole story.

Here's a dog story out of my notebook:

Baron Manfred Von Vierthaler Restaurant in Bonney Lake has a house dog, a German shepard. One night a few months back I was the last customer out of the restaurant. Actually, I was in the restroom when they locked the doors and let the shepard down from the owners' quarters upstairs. The dog headed straight to the kitchen. One of the owners was startled to see me see the dog. The dog looked well-fed and happy.

Here's some info from the fall 2005 edition of City Dog Magazine, which featured pooch-friendly pubs in Seattle:

The Beveridge Place, West Seattle: leashed dogs welcomed.

Blue Moon Tavern, U District: leashed dogs welcomed.

Boxcar Alehouse, Magnolia: well-behaved dogs welcomed.

Comet Tavern, Capital Hill: leashed, well-behaved dogs welcomed.

Nine Pound Hammer, Georgetown: well-behaved dogs welcomed.

Norm's Eatery & Alehouse, Fremont: leashed, well-behaved dogs welcomed.

White Horse Trading Company, Post Alley: well-behaved dogs welcomed.

Stumbling Monk, Capital Hill: leashed, well-behaved dogs that pass the barkeeper's "interview" welcomed.

Sully's Snowgoose Saloon, Phinny Ridge: lap dogs only.

And, finally, here's the best sentence ever written involving bar dogs, written by the Montana master James Crumley ("The Last Good Kiss"), whom I profiled a while back:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

UPDATED 1/25
Don’t expect to take your pooch into Primo Grill or any place else in Tacoma.

“I’m not sure if the Legislature passed a law that violated code that it would play out,” said Vic Harris, deputy director of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. “There are some slight problems because both the Washington state and federal food codes prohibit dogs in food establishments.”

Certified service animals “have always been exemptions,” Harris said.

Twice in the past week I've ordered Benedicts for breakfast. Twice I have felt like the victim of some traitorious breakfast conspiracy.

Here's what eggs Benedict is: poached egg, Canadian bacon and English muffin, covered in Hollandaise sauce.

At McMenamins Spar Cafe in Olympia, portobello Benedict included mushrooms, eggs, peppers and Hollandaise. At Affairs in University Place, crab cakes Benedict was crab cakes, poached eggs and Hollandaise.

Both of these breakfasts desperately needed English muffins -- to soak up the yolks and excess Hollandaise.

One could argue that the mushrooms and crab cakes were both round -- thereby filling in for the muffins. And both were meaty in their own ways -- so they stood in for Canadian bacon. One also could argue that a slab of Canadian bacon on top of a portobello mushroom, or on top of a crab cake, would be tasty. I wouldn't know. I never got the chance. And I left a lot of yolky Hollandaise behind, too.

Midway through telling a story about a woman who was born a man who was having sex with a man who doesn't know she's a man -- you know, just another episode of Jerry Springer -- the guy at the cafe counter, a friend of the proprietors, asked, "Is anyone back there?"

I was back there.

"Can he hear?"

Yeah, I could hear.

I was having a pancake and coffee in Spanaway. I'd already listened to the guy's F-bomb barrage about fixing one of his vehicles. Now he was keeping the cafe up to date on a transgendered Springer episode I may or may not have Tivo'd.

I put down Bukowski and listened. It wasn't exactly breakfast conversation. It was obvious he didn't like women who used to be men.

I tossed five bucks on the table and left. I didn't care about the change or the tip. I didn't want to bother the waitress. She was egging on the proprietors' friend and going, "Gross!"

Here's a nagging nut graf from a New York Times story about discrimination in restaurants.

In an industry that relies largely on immigrants, just how difficult is it for workers who don’t speak English as a first language to get ahead? And at what point does hiring someone to achieve a certain look or style in a restaurant turn into racism?

The Times' story Wednesday coincided with a blog post by Michael Bauer, the restaurant critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, who asked: Do San Francisco restaurants discriminate?

Although I'm Caucasian, I've experienced similar discrimination, too. One time I took an African American friend to a restaurant with several dining rooms, and noticed that we were seated in the only room with other black diners. ... I'm not sure how much of where people are seated is actually some subtle form of discrimination (too old, too gay, too fat, too dark) or just an oblivious insensitivity to what the diner might be feeling.

There's no local connection (or insinuation) to South Sound restaurants, except that one of the authors of the Times' story used to work for the News Tribune.

Restaurant trends start in big cities like New York and San Francisco. I hope these are two examples of trends that don't hit our neck of the woods.

Recently, a newsroom colleague asked me whether it was "safe" for her husband to visit Tempest Lounge. I replied, in humor that I'd hoped was soothing, that her husband was more likely to get hit on than shot at.

Tempest Lounge is among the food and beverage establishments that are creating a new reality on Tacoma's Hilltop.

Tempest's owners, Denise Tempest and Michelle Douglas, are passing out maps and promoting a Hilltop walking tour to show off what the neighborhood offers.

"The Hilltop is changing all the time and this is just the beginning of what we hope will be more maps with more and diverse business," Tempest said.

=> Read more!

Three restaurants and a grocery store are on the table in the burgeoning Broadway-St. Helens neighborhood near downtown Tacoma.

My TNT colleague John Gille reports today that an Arizona-based grocer has signed a letter of intent to open a grocery store in a planned $90 million mixed-use development near Sixth and St. Helens avenues, perhaps in summer 2009. The development is also slated to contain three restaurants, several smaller retailers, a hotel, a mix of condominium and apartment units and parking for 600 vehicles.

One South Sound restaurateur who's in discussions about opening a restaurant in the project told me last week that his restaurant, if the deal happens, would open in about three years.

Meanwhile in Sumner, TNT reporter Mike Archbold reports that the City Council delayed until Feb. 20 a vote on whether the town's taverns can host beer gardens.

The story notes that the council will hold a work session on the issue Feb. 12 at 6 p.m. It's a little chilly outside, but Sumner City Council members can call me if they want a recommendation on where to get a cold one and a bite to eat at that hour.

An Ed’s Diner reader writes: “…with all these chefs here you could ask them to publish favorite recipes or discuss cooking techniques?”

I’ll let Todd Wilbur start. Wilbur is a self-taught chef and author of “Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2,” which deconstructs “amazing clones of famous dishes from America’s favorite restaurant chains.”

Here’s Wilbur’s recipe for Original Roadhouse Grill’s 32-ounce Roadhouse Rita, chosen because the Oregon-based casual saloon chain known for jumbo drinks and barbecued meats just opened in Federal Way, its first location in Washington. Future openings are planned for Lacey and Everett.

I’ll spare us all Applebee’s Tequila Lime Chicken with Mexi-ranch sauce.

In the meantime, what recipes do you want from local chefs? Charlie McManus’ pumpkin ravioli? The Matador’s nachos? Place your requests and I’ll see what they’ll share.

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CORRECTION: I incorrectly credited Margarita Beach Cafe's blog to Gordon Naccarato. Steve Naccarato is the blogging brother. Ed's Diner apologizes for the error.

If it seems like everybody and his dishwasher has a blog, well, it’s almost like that. South Sound restaurateur Steve Naccarato blogs under Margarita Beach Café’s banner.

A vintage photo of his brother, Pacific Grill/Beach House at Purdy/Margarita Beach Café chef/co-owner Gordon Naccarato, sporting a quintessentially 1970s mustache is among the blog bits. The post on the whereabouts of former Margarita Beach/Beach House/Pacific Grill executive chef Matt Colony is as skimpy as the bikinis on the boys in another photo that dresses up Naccarato’s blog.

A press release I received today explains Colony’s departure: he’s now executive chef at Friday Harbor House Restaurant in the San Juan Islands.

Tiaunnah Knox, who cheffed at Beach House, is in charge of Margarita Beach's kitchen.

My TNT colleague Dan Voelpel is one IPA closer to his dream of McMenamins in Tacoma.

Today in Olympia, McMenamins, the Portland publicans, opened McMenamins Spar Cafe, after purchasing the 4th Avenue landmark last year.

The Spar's makeover includes a redone kitchen and the addition of McMenamins' smallest brewery. Many of the Spar’s original furnishings remain, including the antique tobacco counter that now serves as the back bar, plus several wooden bar stools.

Right now McMenamins Spar Cafe is only brewing Sunflower IPA, using water from the aquifer beneath the Spar. McMenamins' regular lineup of beer (Black Rabbit porter, Terminator Stout, Hammerhead pale ale et. al.) is on tap.

Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.

McMenamins Spar Cafe is now the closest McMenamins pub to Tacoma. I'll be checking out six McMenamins pubs from Centralia to Mill Creek for an upcoming story. Which McMenamins pubs do you like? Olympic Club Pub? Dad Watsons? McMenamins Mill Creek? McMenamins Queen Anne? Six Arms?

McMenamins Spar Cafe
114 4th Ave. E., Olympia; 360-357-6444

I’m redacting the name of the restaurant and the owner from this diner’s letter, which was e-mailed to the restaurant owner and cc’d to me. I’m not redacting the names out of fairness or deference; the particular restaurant isn’t as important as the diner’s complaint itself.

Yeah, too many restaurants are cold and drafty. And it’s not just because of the recent frosty weather.

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Paddy Coyne's Irish Pub will open in downtown Tacoma on Jan. 24. I just got off the phone with general manager Barry Boyle.

UPDATED JAN. 23 I'm told Friday is Paddy Coyne's Irish Pub's new opening day at the Olympus Hotel, Pacific at 8th. Blame the usual delays. By the way, Paddy's looks suave. Love the warm glowing lights and the tesselated tile floor, newly cleaned but which proudly shows of decades of wear. Paddy's sign is hard to read from the street; it's partially obscured by the Olympus Hotel's awning.

UPDATED JAN. 26 Paddy's opens at 5 p.m. today. You've been alerted.

A lunch launch date for The Matador is still up in the air. The Matador's publicist told me the Tex-Mexy restaurant's managment team is still trying to figure that out.

UPDATED As a reader notes in the comments, and as one of my sources confirms, weekday lunch starts at The Matador on Monday.

Speaking of downtown (unfortunately, not Tacoma's downtown), here's a really neat idea, from Sacramento, where I first made my restaurant (and saloon) critic's bones:

By the way, it wasn't that long ago that Sacramento -- "Hooterville" as one of my editors referred to it -- was a culinary backwater with a stagnant downtown.

Do you eat raw beef -- steak tartare or beef carpaccio? Or does the stuff make you go, "Ewwww"?

If you won't eat steak tartare or beef carpaccio, why? E.coli fear? The texture?

I'm working on a raw-beef-eating story for next week. I'd like to know your opinions. Please comment with your full name and the city in which you live. If you want to keep that info off the blog, then please e-mail me (with that info) at ed.murrieta@thenewstribune.com.

If you're a meat-is-death kind of person, save us both the bits and bytes.

Thanks.

The James Beard Foundation is asking food writers for nominees for its 2006 restaurant awards.

Do you folks wanna play? Keep it local and keep it real -- no looks, personality, politics or Seattle restaurants.

If you're gonna nominate your boyfriend, please have a compelling reason, and say why in the comments section.

Thank y'all.

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Well, do ya? What's open? What's closed? Are deliveries messed up today? Is hot chocolate on the specials menu?

If you're watching TV today -- say, KIRO at 3 p.m. -- and need a little snackie-poo, Rachael Ray recommends Honey Roasted Peanut Roca, one of Brown & Haley's Tacoma treats. Peanut Roca is the snack of the day on the Rachael Ray Show.

The Washington Restaurant Association’s 2007 legislative agenda just arrived in my e-mail inbox. Here’s some of what the WRA wants to accomplish in Olympia this year:

Lower minimum wage for teenage workers. The WRA wants a teen wage equal to 85 percent of the state's minimum wage rate. The WRA cites state Employment Security Department figures saying teen employment in the restaurant industry is down nearly 16 percent since 2002. The WRA says employers can't afford to hire teens at today's wages.

Tax equity for employers who must pay taxes on employee tips. The WRA wants to create what it calls “tax fairness” by reversing policies that require the restaurant industry to pay payroll taxes on the tipped income received by their employees. The state does not recognize tipped income as wages; the WRA says paying payroll taxes on this portion of a worker's income penalizes the employer.

Health care. The WRA says employers should not be required to purchase health insurance for employees. It says those decisions should be made on an individual basis between the employer and the worker. It says the state should focus on implementing measures to reduce the cost of providing health insurance and encouraging more competition from insurers.

UPDATED: Here's an interview my colleague C.R. Roberts did with Anthony Anton, the head of the Washington Restaurant Association.

Got something to say? Here's the place to say it. Thanks to a recommendation from an Ed's Diner blog participant, I'm launching a space for you to comment on and discuss what's on your plate and on your mind. Don't wait for me to post something to respond to. Two rules: Don't promote your own businesses or your boyfriend's new cafe. While I've yet to use it, I've got access to the delete button.

I don't mind circling the block looking for a parking space. I don't mind parking three blocks away from my dining destination either.

But I do mind when I see restaurant/bar employees and owners taking prime parking in front of those establishments (watch those personalized plates on the SUV, chef J). Lately, I've seen a pick-up truck belonging to a bartender parked in prime spots in front of two downtown pubs during business hours.

So I was happy to hear about Pacific Grill's new parking deal. Not only can customers get free validated parking at some lots near the downtown convention center, but Pacific Grill's staff can, too.

"My customers at the Beach House would tell us, 'We didn't stop the other night because the parking lot was so full,'" said Gordon Naccarato, chef and co-owner of Pacific Grill and the Beach House (now Margarita Beach Cafe). "It would be a night in winter and we were DEAD S-L-O-W. I realized it was all my staff parking in too close to the front door. So they are now supposed to park way past the end of the parking lot."

=> Read more!

You liked Asado and you disliked Duke's. You want a full-service bakery, a full-service deli, a bone fide breakfast place and a Greek restaurant. You've had plenty of teriyaki and corporate restaurants with great views and mediocre food. Here are the results of the 2006 Ed's Diner reader restaurant survey. Thank you for taking part.

I get e-mail. I get letters. I get calls. I got a voice mail on Friday from a reader named Jerry. Jerry reckoned I'd ignore his message. I won't. Here's a quote from Jerry's call:

"You eat some very weird food. Not really American food or anything else that the average person would want to go to. Your tastes are different from most people."

After I checked my front lawn for burning crosses, I got to thinking: Of The News Tribune's readership, I'm not sure which or how many readers read my reviews. Like all newspaper journalists, I aim for a broad audience. It's difficult to eat by consensus. So I try to do what journalists and critics do: dig in, examine and report. Like swinging for the fences, when you write for the masses, often times you miss.

My tastes are catholic. I'll eat anything twice. I can't physically travel the world as much as I'd like, so I'm eager to eat anything that's from somewhere else. All's the better that some of it's served here in the South Sound.

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The comments in my post about what type of retail and entertainment amenities local diners would like to see and patronize in downtown Tacoma got a little off track. That's cool. I'm about to go off on a tangent myself.

Here's a snippet of one comment, which I agree with to a certain point:

Show me the advantage of opening in Downtown vs Sixth Ave, Proctor, UP, or Lakewood. Go ahead. It's still an industrial city. And fine dining is a tough go here. Most people want cold beer, fun food, loud conversation. They want Anthony's, Katie Downs, The Ram, and the West End. The fine diners (the vast minority) get the rest, and there is more of that than the market can handle.

From my outsider's perspective, Tacoma and Tacomans seem to pride itself and themselves on not being Seattle or any other city. That often leaves us outsiders -- and there are more of us coming as every condo rises -- feeling awkward at best.

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People. Restaurants. Downtown. TNT photo by Lui Kit Wong

I ate lunch yesterday at Pacific Grill in downtown Tacoma. Despite construction, I parked in one of my usual spots on Market Street, one long city block up the hill from Pacific and 15th. Rain was intermittent. Business was brisk.

Midway through my soup and sandwich, I looked out the window and over at Sea Grill, the restaurant that opened shortly before Pacific Grill in mid-2005 and which ceased lunch service last week.

It was dark inside Sea Grill. Some people ate at the bar, overlooking Pacific Avenue. I knew from their pin-stripe kitchen pants and chefs coats that they weren't customers.

A month ago, I parked a little farther north on Market Street, my usual parking haunts for this particular destination, and ate a lonely lunch of steak, mashed potatoes and veggies at Varsity Grill.

I walked around afterward and saw empty restaurants and very few people on the street.

Two weeks ago, I had a fine Saturday breakfast at Puget Sound Pizza –- eggs, perfectly over-easy, sprinkled with fresh parsley; home fries that looked and tasted cooked; bacon that was just shy of burned; and a biscuit, split and grilled.

I walked around afterward and saw empty everything. I let my dog off leash.

A downtown Tacoma restaurant owner sent me an e-mail recently. Reading between the digital lines, it sounded like the restaurant was being sold or shut down. This much was crystal clear: The restaurant owner was angry for having drunk the Downtown Revival Kool-Aid. The restaurants came. Where's the retail? More condos are coming. Where's the retail?

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Think there are too many pubs in Tacoma already? That’s not stopping Barry Watson, proprietor of Rosewood Café in the Proctor District. Watson’s Public House, a “British-Northwest fusion” pub, is in the early stages at South Union and South 13th, in Tacoma’s Central District.

“It’s always been a goal of mine,” said publican-to-be Watson. “There are people who have done it ahead of me. But I think there’s a place for something that focuses on fresh food and service.”

Here’s how Watson backs up his “step above pub fare” claim:

“No deep fryers,” he said. “It’ll be all sauté and convection cooking.”

Expect a menu of salads, soups and sandwiches, like at Rosewood Café. Watson said he’s also taking with microbrewers about making his Rosewood Red ale recipe.

Look for 75 seats and a lot of Northwest tap handles, plus Euro guests. When? Watson wouldn’t say – not because he was being cagey, but because he sounded hip to the realities of construction and permit delays.