The other day my dad told me about the vegetable garden at the old folks' home. He said his neighbors grow a lot but don't eat much. So he's swimming in tomatoes and squash.

After I got off the telephone with my dad, things started arriving from my neighbors.

A beautiful day in the neighborhood, indeed.

My neighbor Vern's tomatoes and basil, on my deck.

My neighbor Nancy's blackberry pie, on my deck.

Soon, the morning sun can hit your eyes like a big pizza pie at Puget Sound Pizza.

Puget Sound Pizza, the little pizza parlor that could, will serve breakfast seven days a week starting Sept. 12.

“We will continue to serve our current breakfast menu but will add some lighter fare for the Monday thru Friday crowd,” PSP honcho Jim Higgins told me. “We will be adding oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins, seasonal fresh fruit plate, as well as assorted breakfast sandwiches for the grab-and-go construction workers who seem to be all over the St. Helens neighborhood these days.”

New breakfast hours will be 6:15 a.m.-10:15 a.m. Mondays-Fridays. Saturday and Sunday breakfast times remain the same: “9am until 1:30ish.”

In February, Puget Sound Pizza nearly tripled its seating capacity and acquired a full liquor license.

Puget Sound Pizza ups the breakfast ante in downtown Tacoma: The Harmon, Paddy Coynes, Courtyard Mariott (weekends) and The Sheraton (seven days) all serve breakfast. Looks like I've got some early eating ahead of me.

Yep, I'm talking about you and me sitting down to a meal in the middle of the day.

Oh, it'll be an anonymous affair. Most likely, I'll regale you with fibs and tales about my stint in a Venezuelan prison, or my adventures as Maya Angelou's personal assistant. You'll probably even pay your own way, too.

There's a new Web site/service called noonhat.com. It matches you with available lunch partners. Pick a geographic location and day. Input your e-mail address. You'll be matched up -- by no criteria other than the willingness to have lunch -- with someone in your area.

Today, I was matched up with myself, having registered at noonhat with both my work e-mail address and one of my goof-off Yahoo e-mail addresses. (Oye, the gripes of a restaurant critic who can't get a date.)

I know I'm not the only one in Tacoma using noonhat.com. Earlier this month, noonhat set me up with a lunch date. But the dude I was matched with canceled. I think he was looking for someone with a less masculine e-mail handle than the one I'd used.

I'm not shilling for noonhat. I'm testing the Web site for a story I'm working on about Lunch.

So if you want to do Lunch with me in Tacoma, give noonhat.com a shot.

Michael Jackson, the world's leading beer critic-historian, died today.

"Michael gave us our voice and vocabulary, and grounded the history and traditions of beer," says a memorial note on AllAboutBeer.com. "Beginning in the seventies with the publication of the 'World Guide to Beer,' Michael began beating the drum demanding more respect for beer. He swirled and tasted beer, filling pages with new words. He traveled unceasingly, discovering styles and traditions long gone or on their way out the door. He chided the mainstream press for its beer provincialism. He even wore one glove, just one glove, to mock a similarly named celebrity.

"Originally a newspaper reporter, a badge he wore with pride, he never lost the newsman's love for a breaking story or a tight deadline. He was a prolific writer, an expert in whiskey and fine food as well as a pioneer beer writer."

Here is what Jackson said about himself recently:

I am hoping that my next book will be an account of my dealings with Parkinson's Disease. I have lived with Parkinson for many years, but I have only recently allowed him out of the closet. I find myself referring to 'my Parkinson's'. We do this, don't we? We refer to our ailments possessively, as though we are staking a claim. Perhaps we are. Perhaps I am. ... I cannot exclude him, so I embrace him. It is not the bear-hug of old buddies. We are more like heavyweights in a clinch, or even schoolboys locked in a playground fight.

Drive-thru service is one of the "key business builders" recommended in a national restaurant survey.

Sixty-three percent of quick-service restaurants expect unspecified but larger sales from drive-thru operations, according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association.

I'm a California kid, so I understand car culture. We had a drive-thru dairy in our town, and there were no cows in sight.

Drive-thru cleaning. Drive-thru cigarettes, even drive-thru frisky espresso, they're all part of our vehicular addiction.

Back when I worked for Restaurant Ray, I did a drive-thru promotion. One of his restaurants did great lunch business, but suffered for customers when downtown workers drove home in droves.

DRIVE-THRU TAKE-OUT

Leave Work Fast. Get Dinner Faster.

Phone in your order. Pay be credit card.

Call us when you get to the parking lot next door.

We'll bring your dinner right out to you.

Yeah, pretty much what Outback does.

By the way, my favorite South Sound drive-thru is at Wagner's Bakery in Olympia. Pastries. In the side alley. Delicious.

Where's your favorite drive-thru, with or without fries with that?

A food critic, a walleye, a stick, at the Minnesota state fair. AP photo

A fellow blogger at a major West Coast news organization reports on a whirlwind eating tour at a large Midwestern state fair with a bunch of food writers from across America.

Walleye on a stick. Who knew?

But this is the line that sticks with me: "Other delicacies we tried included ... pork chop on a stick ..."

Um, I think we called that a bone before we started skewering food with irony.

But whatever.

Today, I want to talk about that stick up my kebabs, brochettes, candied apples, popsicles, and, especially, corn dogs.

The Puyallup Fair is a national leader in sticking it to trans fats. Anthing deep-fried -- Krusty Pups, elephant ears, funnel cakes, Snickers -- they'll all be better for us this year.

So how about more food on sticks?

I know why I like food on sticks: Ever try dunking golden-hot, grease-glistening corn dogs heads-first into buckets of mustard without those handy sticks in the weenies?

Alrighty then.

What's your favorite food on a stick?

What crazy and delicious food-on-a-stick creation can you dream up for any fair-food vendors who might seek inspiration from a blog?

Remember: Food-on-a-stick needn't be limited to traditional deep-fried fair food.

Toothpicks, too, count as sticks. So since I'm dreaming -- by the way, my recurring dream in which corn dogs rule the earth, came back last night -- I fully expect to see Pacific Grill's Meat Candy tent near the Puyallup Fair midway next month.

Roasted dates.

Stuffed with Parmesan cheese.

Wrapped with apple-smoked bacon.

Skewered.

I'll take a dozen.

On a stick.

My dinner companions Friday night were ages 10 and 40. One stuck a straw in her nose. One sat quietly.

The 10-year-old is the one I dine with the least, and the one I enjoyed the most.

"I'm cranky," the kid announced when I met her and her dad at Farrelli's newest pizza parlor, the one on Pacific and Garfield in Parkland, near PLU.

"I hate tomatoes," the kid said halfway through the meal, joyously licking tomato sauce off a slice of pie.

"Bacon!" she exclaimed at one random moment. "I loooooooooove bacon!"

"I love Swedish fish," I said, matching her non sequitur for non sequitur.

"Sour gummies," the kid replied, hitting my candy curveball right back at me.

"I lost a tooth in a Big Hunk," I said.

"Beans!" she screamed, beaming at me devilishly. "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeans."

Then she did more things kids do: rolled her eyes into the back of her head, stuck both ends of a straw in her nostrils, laughed, smiled rays of honey sunshine and looked cute as hell.

The straw up the nose was over the top for my tastes, and I wondered why her dad let her do it. His dad and my dad would have smacked us both upside the heads for doing that during any meal, anywhere.

But there was no question why I enjoyed talking and eating with this cute kid who'd stuck a straw up her nose:

Food, to her, was uninhibited joy.

Tomatoes may be fruit that taste like vegetables, but simmer some with sugar and spice and spread the sauce on a disc of dough with cheese and wait for the oven to do something nice. What kid of any age wouldn't lick that pizza?

(Which is now a good time to say: Farrelli's crust is too bready and under-baked for my tastes, but I enjoyed the meatball and veggie deluxe pies. The former looked like a marvelous Margherita dotted with bite-sized balls of mildly spiced ground beef. The latter was a democratic array of pine nuts, artichoke hearts, petso and feta. Adults loved that one; the kid wouldn't touch it.)

I looked around the restaurant and counted kids. Babies, tots, lads, lasses and those in various stages of adolescence ... I ran out of fingers and toes. Except for the straw in the nose, I saw minors acting up.

Last night, I walked into a bistro in University Place and encountered a baby on a table. That sounds like a set-up to a joke, right? (Mmmmm, stuffed kid a la Swift with Gerber sauce.) But seriously: The baby slept, and the parents dined in comfortable silence.

I haven't reached the stage where I'd consider breeding my own dining companions, but to those who have: Next time you see me, I'll buy you a drink.

Pretty porterhouse, on my deck.

See that porterhouse? That's what I've done with my summer vacation.

I take that back. Eating steak is work. If you chewed on the New York strip I had for breakfast today, you'd agree.

But about that porterhouse, and that bone-in rib steak and that London Broil and even the filet mignon that was bigger on price than it was on flavor ...

I melted a load of butter in a hot cast-iron skillet. I seasoned the porterhouse with salt and pepper. I seared the steak on both sides. I finished it in a 500-degree oven.

I don't measure cooking times. With meat, I have a mother's instinct, and this big baby cooked up dark and charry on the outside and ruby-bright on the inside. The flavors were intense and clean, the texture was firm, and the meat on either side of the bone, the New York strip and the filet mignon, practically chewed itself.

I've got more homework on my plate.

A hot dog bar opened on Tacoma's Sixth Avenue last week. I've been in twice but haven't blogged about it until now because I'm lukewarm on The Red Hot.

The concept is certainly welcomed: A beer bar that serves hot dogs. The prices are right: $3-$3.75 for franks, brats and Polish dressed with kraut, chili, slaw and other toppings.

I liked the poppyseed buns on three dogs I ordered. The dogs, however, had as much bite as a toothless terrier. Mealy was more like it.

The kitchen closes a couple of hours before the bar, so prepare for an early last call on those hot dogs as the steam table and bun warmer are put up for the night.

Decor-wise, I like The Red Hot. It has devilishly divey vibe, one I wishes that Cans, downtown Tacoma's self-proclaimed dive bar, had. Dog-wise, The Red Hot has some catching up to do with the likes of Hot Rod Dog near the UWT campus and Klem's in Auburn. Even Cans' dog, at about twice the price, is twice as good as The Red Hot's chili dog.

The Red Hot: 2914 6th Ave., Tacoma; 253-779-0229. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 11 a.m.-midnight Fridays, 2 p.m.-midnight Saturdays.

One Heart Cafe opened its second downtown Tacoma location last week, in the Merlino Arts Center space formerly occupied by Kickstand Cafe, next to the Grand Cinema.

One Heart serves coffee, pastries, sandwiches, salads and soups (the latter from nearby Infinite Soups).

The cafe is colorful and cozy, accented with African art, comfy furniture.

Wi-Fi is de rigeur these days so One Heart one-ups that, by offering free Internet access at four terminals with window seating.

Look for the bright red Adirondack chairs and the bowl of water for dogs out front.

One Heart Cafe: 604 Fawcett Ave., Tacoma; 253-722-2940. Also at 1117 Broadway Ave. Ste 301, Tacoma.

Mary's Burger bistro opened today at 2301 Pacific Ave. in downtown Tacoma. The restaurant and diners celebrated with cookies. Maybe "celebrated" is the wrong word.

Service was slow at high-noon today. The grill guys looked harried. When I arrived, there were five people in the place, two of them waiting for their orders. Shortly after I ordered my burger, Mary's filled up. Within 15 minutes, 36 people were in line or waiting for burgers.

One of the fast-thinking owners started passing out peanut butter and chocolate-chip cookies.

No one in the room -- not even the hungry restaurant critic who hadn't had a bite to eat all morning -- betrayed visible signs of impatience.

Mary's Burger Bistro occupies the renovated location of a Tacoma icon, Art's Hamburgers. Mary's honors Art's with Art's Burger, served with pickled, grilled onions, mustard and ketchup.

Mary's Burgers are a throw-back to burgers of old: thin patties on soft buns with minimal toppings.

They're priced right, too: single burgers are $1.50 (99 cents for each extra quarter-pound patty), the priciest is $5.

Mary's building is a lot bigger than I thought it was, and even though all the decor is completed, Mary's bright tiles and corrugated aluminum counter give the restaurant a bright and comfortable, if simple, feeling.

Big windows afford views of Pacific Avenue, plus glimpses of the 509 Bridge and gantry cranes at the port.

Mary's opens at 6 a.m. for coffee, breakfast burritos and pastries.

One night this month, I arrived at a restaurant in Milton at 8:55 p.m. I was told the restaurant closed at 8:45, but I was welcomed anyway.

(Note: I don't think I got special favor. My steak tasted sour, and I woke up sick. Other diners came in after me.)

This weekend, I sat down at a Tacoma hot dog bar at 8:55 p.m. The business hours posted on the door said the place stays open until 11 p.m. However, the "kitchen" -- steam tables and bun warmers, really -- closed at 9. I only had time for one round of dogs.

Restaurants commonly tell customers "We're open until ..." "but we stop serving at..."

I understand labor costs. I understand the need for staff to lock the door and rush off to last call themselves.

But please don't close up on customers' time. If the sign on your door says you're open until 11, please accept our business until then.

Months ago, a caller complained that I eat "weird" food, not "American" food.

This week, an e-mailer wants me to tell him where to find the best pozole and the best borscht in Tacoma.

I love swimming in the melting pot, but I'm coming up empty on pork-and-hominy stew and beet soup recommendations.

Meantime, my colleagues and I are working on a series of stories about South Tacoma Way. I'm doing the cultural angle, which can often be told through food.

Hong Sheng Fung (aka The Pot Sticker) opened recently at 8302 South Tacoma Way, across from the drive-in flea market. The restaurant serves Chinese food cooked by a woman of Chinese descent who was born in Korea and later moved to Tacoma.

My first meal at Hong Shen Fung included pot stickers -- one-bite dumplings with crisped edges and mild, meaty fillings -- and once I got those out of the way, I moved into the small menu's more interesting territory:

Pigs feet and cold roast beef.

Chinese delicacies, both, according to Jennifer, the chef who came out of her kitchen to see who ordered her house specialty combo.

"I wanted to see if you are Asian," she said.

I hardly had to assure her I am not Asian, and we spent the next several minutes talking about the pan-cultural pleasures of pigs feet and what many American diners won't eat.

"These are my mother's recipes," the chef said. "I cook them how I want to, how they should be. If they don't like it, tough."

By "they," I assumed she meant anyone who wasn't Chinese or didn't have a taste for the edible unknown.

Not everything on the menu is "authentic." For instance, meals are served with banchan, mini plates of mixed Korean appetizers. Sweet and sour pork, fried rice and the like are on the menu, too.

I wanted pigs feet, boiled until the fat melted away. Roasted and glazed to a light-brown sweetness, they were chopped and served cold.

"Enjoy them with a beer," the chef said.

I enjoyed them for their swine simplicity: Shed of fat, the pigs feet were all about cartilage and collagen -- chewy, almost creamy morsels accented by pockets of meat.

Roast beef, too, was served cold, in slices that revealed no fat, just layers of meat accented by cracks that used to contain fat. This beef was dense and tender and intensely black from its soy-chili seasoning.

On my next visit, I opted for sweet and sour pork, plus steamed pot stickers (a little more slithery than the fried dumplings, but just as good).

Sweet and sour pork is one those dishes tailored to American palates. It's the chalupa of Chinese cuisine. I didn't expect to find crunchy slices of black mushrooms, or sweetly marinated cucumber tossed among battered pork and pineapple. An otherwise unimpressive dish made a slight impression.

Now, where to find pozole and borscht in Tacoma?

I know a place on South Tacoma Way that serves pozole. I don't recommend it. I'll gladly search the eastside's Mexican joints for the best bowls, amigos.

Borscht? Beats me, comrades, but there's a Ukranian deli in downtown Auburn where I'm hoping to find something "weird" and edibly un-"American."

Lutefisk, anyone?

"When is Bombay Bistro gonna open?"

That's the No.1 question in my e-mail in-box hit parade.

I've popped my head into the on-the-verge-of-opening restaurant so many times now that I feel I've been welcomed and adopted as a member of the owners' family.

The answer to the question I've asked the people at Bombay Bistro keeps going like this: "In about ..."

Let's park that sentence there. Because parking is what is keeping Bombay Bistro from opening. Co-owner Anita Walia told me today that she and her husband, Kamal, are ready to open ... in about a week, maybe two.

She said the city of Tacoma required Bombay Bistro to build additional parking. There are already 14 spaces in front of the restaurant, which is housed in a former convenience store building at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Stevens Street, a thoroughfare intersection, where there's not much street parking.

The Walias are building a 20-space parking lot across the street from Bombay Bistro. But only 20 spaces -- one more and the project would fall under a different set of codes, Anita Walia said. Meanwhile as the parking project turns, heavy equipment dug up the parking lot in front of the restaurant this week.

"Everything was stuck because of the parking issue," Anita Walia said. "I do not see any reason why anything has to be so complicated."

Walia said Bombay Bistro's liquor license is in conditional limbo until the city of Tacoma signs off on the parking lot construction. But, reached by cellphone in New York today, she said she's ready to open without a liquor license.

And that'll happen in about ...

Stay tuned, Indian food lovers.

If you dare drive to Seattle for dinner now through Aug. 29, The Georgian at The Fairmont could be your destination.

Or it could just be the source of your daily chuckle, as it was mine when I opened my e-mail today and read about the restaurant’s I-5 Menu, in honor of the construction that’s predicted to snarl northbound traffic into Seattle.

In addition to the $12 I-5’er Martini (Tanqueray Ten Gin, Cointreau and Red Bull with splashes of fresh cranberry, pomegranate and lime juice), The Georgian is offering 3-course dinners for $45 person. Here’s the menu:

Spokane Street Caesar
Romaine Bumper-to-Bumper with Lobster Caesar Dressing
~
Horn Honking Smoked Salmon with Pothole Smashed Potatoes
or 1-90 Farms "Free Range" Chicken
Honking Honey Corn Cake, Jammed-Up Beans
~
Tail Light Delight
Black and White Soufflé

Just to prove that the promotion isn’t highway robbery, The Georgian is throwing in free valet parking.

Looking for dog bones, I got lost in the meat department of a supermarket whose initials aren't important. Quizzically frustrated and confused, I asked the person wearing a butcher's smock if the store sold shank bones.

I'm pretty sure the guy in the butcher's smock wasn't half as sharp as the idle butcher's bandsaw in the background. After giving me a look that was as dull and blank as shrink-wrapped sirloin, he said he didn't know.

A customer came to my rescue. He pointed to bags of sawed-up bones in the freezer section, near the pizzas, lasagnas and enchilada dinners.

That day, I began sniffing out butchers who would sell my dog a bone, or at least cut one to the size my dog likes best.

Which got me to sniffing out butchers who will custom cut the meat I want. Paper-thin cuts of carpaccio? Frenched rack of lamb? A strip of skirt steak that Paula Dean could wrap around her waist?

I'll write my report later this month. Until then, tell me what you want from a butcher -- besides good meat, years of experience and friendly, knowledgeable service.

One of my last assignments for Restaurant Ray was cataloging Social Security numbers from employees at two restaurants.

"You don't have to verify them," Restaurant Ray told me. "Just collect them, stick them in a binder and put the binder on that shelf."

When I said, "But ... ", Restaurant Ray said it's the government responsibility to verify whether the Social Security numbers were real or bogus.

I knew about the "no-match" letters that the government would occasionally send employers. I have no idea whether Restaurant Ray ever received a no-match letter from the government.

It's easy, on the streets of San Jose and other areas with immigrant populations, to buy fake identification. "Micas" is the Spanish code word, as I found out from some of Restaurant Ray's cooks when he asked me to ask them where his handyman could score a fake ID.

I did what I was told. I'd already figured that many of the employees' Social Security numbers didn't match their real identities. Saul, Miguel, Moises, Ulysses, Roberto, Elizabet and two dishwashers named Fabian ... none of them got their papers stamped at Ellis Island. I saw taxes deducted from their paychecks. I doubt they ever filed returns. This was another of those wink-and-go-on moments in life.

This one, however, isn't:

American businesses will be forced to fire employees whose Social Security numbers do not match government records. The new rule, imposed by the Bush administration on Friday, takes effect in 30 days.

"We strike at that magnet" of jobs, the administration's chief of Homeland Security said Friday, announcing sweeping border enforcement.

The biggest impacts are predicted in agriculture and service industries such as restaurants, hotels and nursing homes.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the Bush administration's new rule "will require employers to fire employees unable to clear up problems with their Social Security numbers 90 days after they've been notified or face sanctions and a fine of at least $2,200 for a first offense. Up until now, employers have routinely ignored what are called no-match letters."

Full disclosure:

My father came here from Mexico on a tourist pass in the 1950s. He stayed illegally until he filled out the right number of forms 30 years later. In between, he built a business. He paid taxes. He raised a family. He's about as American as it gets, amigo.

Without guys like my dad, Saul, Miguel, Moises, Ulysses, Roberto, Elizabet and two dishwashers named Fabian, where are we going to find the bested damed chile verde in this whole stinkin' country?

Anyone care to add Hon, Tran, Malick, Ahmed or Nimish to the list?

What is that taste in the melting pot today?

Showcase Tacoma got cooking today, and some of downtown Tacoma’s best restaurants – or at least some of the best ones in the direct vicinity of Harold M. Tollefson Square, the location of the arts-and-culture event that also spreads to the UW Tacoma campus -- got cooking, too.

Food at this year’s festivity is a little scaled back from last year. For instance, The Harmon, which among other things last year, served terrific barbecued turkey legs and its Fuggles-hopped Extra Special Bitter ale, is only serving mini burgers and bottled water this year.

For a taste of The Harmon’s beers, slide over to Pacific Grill’s patio space atop Tollefson Square at Pacific Avenue and 17th Streets. Pacific Grill is serving The Harmon’s blonde ale, along with Mach 5, a pale ale from White Pass Brewing Company (the beer’s named after a run at White Pass ski area). One of the investors in White Pass Brewing Company is an investor in Pacific Grill. Pacific Grill is one of three places in the state serving Mach 5. The other two are the White Pass ski lodge, and the Fircrest Country Club.

Mach 5 is a semi-cloudy beauty with a firm, creamy head. Like most Washington beers, it leads with hoppy high notes, but sweet straw notes mellow the finish. Pacific Grill is serving it on the plaza for $5 a pour.

Pacific Grill is also serving salami sandwiches, seafood cocktails, mini burgers and Asian chicken salad. At TwoKoi’s tent, the offerings include chicken and sushi bento boxes. The Rock is serving pizza slices. Hot Rod Dog’s menu speaks for itself. Click here for a list of other food vendors, or check out Showcase Tacoma, now thorugh through Sunday.

Love at first bite.

Unless you count my silly habit of assiduously searching for the hidden come-hithers that Maureen Dowd writes in her columns only for me, I don't normally rely on the New York Times for dating advice.

But here's something I can sink my teeth into: Dinner dates with women who love steak.

"Be yourselves, girls," the Times urges. "Order the rib-eye."

According to the newspaper of record, salad is out, gusto is in. Ordering medium-rare steak is a declarative statement for today's dating and dining gal.

I am woman, hear me chew.

Even vegetarians succumb to the pleasures of beef in pursuit of eligible beefcake.

"Restaurateurs and veterans of the dating scene say that for many women, meat is no longer murder," the Times notes.

And, remember, girls: Another way to a man's heart is talking like a geek.

Dropping into conversation the fact that steaks of Kobe beef come from Wagyu cattle, but that not all steaks sold as Wagyu are Kobe beef, demonstrates one's worldliness, the Times' story notes.

"Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson," said one meat-eating man-seeker.

Alrighty. If anyone reading this looks like Kate Hudson and loves steak, I want to hear from you. Hey, even if you look like this guy and love steak, I want to hear from you.

Who's got the best steak in town?

So far, I've eaten filets, strips, rib-eyes, T-bones and porterhouses at The Keg, Outback, El Gaucho, Sizzler, GoodFellas, Black Angus and the General Saloon and Steakhouse in Roy. Some were excellent. Some were bad.

I'm digesting the results -- based on value, quality, presentation and an X-factor or two. I'll share the full South Sound steak story later this month.

But now it's your turn. Write a personal ad in the comments section: M/W Seeks Steak ...

That's not paté. That's potted meat.

I just filed a report for Friday's GO section. It's part of a cover story on thrifty things. My assignment was to build a cocktail party for $20.

Vodka ($10.60 at the state liquor store) consumed more than half of my budget.

I think I made some OK choices (read Friday's report), but I know I made a mistake in one way I approached my assignment.

Being "thrifty" doesn't imply cheap, or worse, ironic. I felt conspicuously ironic -- or was it ironically conspicuous? -- shopping at a discount grocery store I don't normally patronize.

I grabbed three cans of potted meat for 33 cents a can. I had some snarky vision that I'd find cheap capers and make paté.

Then I squeezed down an aisle, past a family of four and boxes upon boxes of the kind of food people buy when they're stretching dollars -- food that's eaten without irony.

As I walked to my car, a lady with a cart full of groceries used a pay phone to call a taxi.

I threw my potted meat on the passenger's seat. The taste in my mouth was flavored with shame.

How good was this pretty Pence peach on an overcast day? It was so good I sucked the napkin.

The rail route from Renton to Woodinville is sorta gritty. The rail route from Tacoma to Lake Kapowsin is sorta pretty.

My question:

Why didn't they do this sooner?

I'm still digesting last night's ride on The Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, on the inaugural run of the train's new route. (Look for my dinner train dining review in next week's GO section.)

I was in good spirits from the moment we rolled out past the Almond Roca factory until we returned to Freighthouse Square.

I saw some concrete, graffiti and unattractive industry, but I also saw llamas and horses and pigs and bulls and a cool sculpture garden/bicycle graveyard.

I squeezed past galley kitchens. I careened my way down the rocking aisles of seven dining cars. I didn't have to share a table with strangers.

The Renton-to-Woodinville route afforded views of million-dollar back yards along Lake Washington. There was a stop at the Columbia Winery at intermission.

I didn't miss 'em. Sure, the train's new route goes through Midland and past the Boeing plant in Frederickson, but we also rode through horse country and down long and lush, if somewhat littered, corridors that intensified the intimacy of the train.

The train stopped at Lake Kapowsin. Evergreens reflected off the water, and one diner approached me to announce that he's 84 years old and pulled his share of bass and trout out of that lake.

I let my wife finish my glass of Dr. Burklin-Wolf Riesling and I forced myself to be content with just a few sips of nectary ice wine for dessert.

So I was sober when I wobbled and zig-zagged the length of the moving train, made my way to the open-air section of the Ste. Michelle car and leaned over the railing as the Spirit crossed over Highway 512.

This was no DiCaprio-king-of-the-world moment. But if you heard a strange Doppler effect near Midland last night, that was me:

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

Woody’s Wharf opened Monday in the Thea’s Landing location vacated by Blue Olive, the swank martini bar that sunk last year.

Woody’s looks and feels a lot like the old Blue Olive. Except for removing a table or two, the only real décor change is bar that’s no longer the coolest in town. That ice floe that once ringed the bar wasn’t there when I stopped in this week.

Woody’s menu includes steaks, burgers, seafood and salads. I definitely like the lunch hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily Woody is open for dinner Sundays-Thursdays 5:-9:30 p.m. and Fridays-Saturdays 5-11 p.m. Lunch prices are $7.95-$13.95. Dinners run $15.50-$29.95.

Woody’s Wharf principal, Coy Woods, previously owned the Best Western Executive Inn in Fife, plus “specialty” restaurants in Utah and Idaho.

Woody's Wharf: 1715 Dock St., Tacoma; 253-272-1433.

John Fotheringham, left, opened 12th Street Diner in December, at the former Frank’s Drive-In site at 4008 S. 12th St., Tacoma. Now he's selling it.

According to the voice message on her answering machine, Mary’s Burger Bistro is scheduled to open Monday in the totally remodeled former Art’s Hamburger stand at 2301 Pacific Ave. in downtown Tacoma.

I’ve been curious about this place since I moved here three years ago. Then, a sign on top of the tissue-box of a building announced 24-Hour Chicago Diner. Whatever that was. It never opened.

Then a deli was supposed to go in there. That never happened either.

Now the exterior and interior of the small building are spiffed up and ready for Mary’s burgers, fries, shakes and whatever else is on her menu when I show up Monday.

In other burger news, 12th Street Diner is for sale.

“I bought the building and opened the restaurant because it looked like something that would be fun,” said John Fotheringham. “I would entertain the idea of just leaving the business. I’m a builder. I’d rather get back into that.”

Fotheringham said he’s open to offers.

“It was really a run-down old building,” Fotheringham said of the former Frank’s Drive-In site at 4008 S. 12th St., Tacoma, which seats 48 people in 1,350 square feet, inside and out. “I kinda brought it back to life.”

I wanted to attend Zoobilee, the food-filled fund-raiser, but I'm currently between waist sizes and my formal duds don't fit.

So I stayed home, which, I insist, is what the management of a new Tacoma restaurant and lounge with fine-dining ambitions should have told its hostess to do when she showed up for work wearing the dress that revealed more than I, as a diner, could stomach seeing.

Hosts and hostesses are the faces of restaurants and lounges. They greet customers. They seat customers. They set the tone. We might come for the chef, but we're met by someone else -- the host or hostess.

The tone set by this hostesses' dress -- disclosure: I'm not a fashion guy, so I'll describe the dress as a mini print toga with a V-neck that plunged to her sternum -- turned my date and I into a couple of butch and catty schoolgirls. It was like "Mean Girls," but with a decent pinot grigio.

Actually, it was like this:

"Oh. My. God. I didn't know panty lines could stretch that far."

And this:

"Is that my veal burger under there? Or is her dress way too tight?"

Back when I washed dishes at my parents' restaurant, I tried dressing new-wave for work one night. I put on one red Converse sneaker and one orange Converse sneaker. My parents wouldn't even let me in the car. They ordered me to stay home instead.

The hostess at the new Tacoma restaurant and lounge sat near the front door, on which a sign announced that proper attire is required. I'm sure that's code for something like "no shoes, no shirt, no hoodies, no cammo, no beaters no service." It should also be a mandate to the staff.