Yesterday, one of the owners of Tacoma’s Asado told me he was in Chicago researching Mexican food at Rick Bayless’ Frontera Grill as he and his partners prepare to do a "high-end" Mexican restaurant in Tacoma.

I ran into Bayless at IACP and button-holed him regarding Mexican food and American palates. A gringo, Bayless has a deep appreciation for, and skill with, Mexican cuisine. I told him about my parents’ experience doing upscale Mexican food in their restaurant, which didn’t go over well with 1980s Sacramento diners seeking 2-items-rice-and-beans combos for $4.99 – the typical Mexican fare

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As a veteran of a few Grateful Dead shows, the hand-written notes tacked to the bulletin board in the IACP hospitality suite reminded me of the “need a miracle” signs Deadheads carried. The sought-after treats here are tickets to tonight’s “Food Meets Art” dinner at Dale Chihuley’s Boat House restaurant, featuring the Tacoma-born glass artist and a sampling of Northwest cuisine.

One woman, a self-described glass jewlery artist from Nashville, wants a ticket “with all my ? … Please, please, please ? ? “

Blame it on convention center banquet service, or traffic that slowed me down near Boeing Field, but everything on my IACP breakfast plate was cold, though tasty.

Here’s today’s breakfast menu, sponsored by Cuisinart:

Spinach-tomato frittata, firm outside, nearly creamy inside.

Roast fingerling potatoes, flecked with parsley.

Apple sausage links, juicy enough to squirt when I cut into them.

Half of a roasted Roma tomato.

English muffins and bagels. The latter were bready and a tad sweet.

OJ.

And coffee … by Millstone(!), not Starbucks. Gulp.

In the hospitality suite, mini

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I’ll be lurking among hundreds of chefs, restaurateurs, food-service professionals and cookbook authors over the next couple of days at the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ 28th annual conference in Seattle.

The theme of this year’s conference is Inspiration, Creativity, Innovation –- in the kitchen, in the dining room and in our lives.

In addition to speakers (R.W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times, celebrity chefs Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless and more), conference workshops will focus on a range of issues of note to the Puget Sound, including indigenous foodways and pairing beer with food.

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When escrow closes on Friday, Gig Harbor’s Brix 25 will have a new owner: Nick Reynolds, who owns Seabeck Pizza in Seabeck, Belfair, Bremerton, Port Orchard and Poulsbo.

Mark Wambold, who started Brix 25 with his wife, Jill, in late 2004, said Reynolds will keep the current staff.

Wambold said he and his wife are planning a trip to Italy and “then perhaps we will be

surveying the lay of the land in downtown Tacoma.”

Wambold’s non-compete clause with Il Fiasco, the Sixth Avenue Italian restaurant which he sold to Mark Gaimster in 2005,

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The owners of Asado have bought Ricardo’s, across the street from their Argentine-inspired restaurant on Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue.

Partner Troy Christian said the plans are for a “high-end” Mexican restaurant. I reached him in Chicago, where he’s checking out celebrity chef Rick Bayless’ Mexican restaurant. Asado chef Sean Quinn has recently checked out places in Phoenix. They’re also gathering Mexican inspiration in California and New York.

The as-yet-named restaurant will likely open in November, Christian said.

“It’s like the Prohibition movement, and we all saw what happened with that. You take away certain things, and they become more desirable.”

That’s an 18-year-old Northern California high school student talking about … soda pop.

Rocky Slaughter of Shasta High in Redding wants students to be able to buy pop from school vending machines. He’s out to collect 373,816 valid signatures to put an initiative on the state ballot.

Shasta, which shares its name with a brand of pop, is one of a handful of schools in the state that have pulled the plug

…

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My heart skipped a joyful beat when I read this one: American music icon Buck Owens’ last meal was chicken-fried steak.

“He had come to the club early and had a chicken-fried steak dinner and bragged that it’s his favorite meal,” Jim Shaw, a longtime member of Owens’ Buckaroos band, told the Los Angeles Times.

After dinner, Owens played his regular Friday night gig at his Crystal Palace nightclub in Bakersfield, Calif. Hours later, he died in his sleep at age 76.

Here’s Crystal Palace’s menu description of Owens’ last meal:

Skillet

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