In today’s GO EAT, I write about new barbecue: Honey Bee in Tacoma and Speedway Brewing Company in Lacey.

Now I want to hear about barbecue from you.

But, first, let’s put on this caveat bib:

Barbecue is a many splendored thing. Pork. Beef. Ribs. Brisket. Sweet sauce. Hot sauce. Vinegar sauce. Mustard sauce. Hickory. Alder. Apple. Cherry. Texas. Memphis. Louisiana. Virgina. It’s all different. It’s all good.

I’ve found big differences in consistency at some barbecue restaurants. What’s succulent this month (sometimes even day) can be dry the next.

Here are

Read more »

A cheese reporting trip to Montesano this morning cut into my blogging today. So will a cheese dinner tonight.

So here’s something really cheesy: blogging-by-linking, in this case to Grit City, which has the names and numbers of the top 10 Pierce County bars to patronize if you want to end the night with a state trooper and a DUI.

I suppose this puts to rest the popular belief that the stiffest drinks in town are at Harbor Lights, whose core clientele, like fine cheese, is well-aged.

Well?

Dad’s Bakery is dead on the tracks, but the owners of Old Milwaukee are steaming ahead on a bake shop next to their diner, the TNT’s Biz Buzz reports.

The Hop Scotch Spring Beer and Scotch Festival, featuring spring beers, Scotch whiskey tastings and food-and-beer pairings by Seattle pubs, takes place Friday and Saturday at Jonas Jensen Studios in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

Tickets –- beer: $20-$25; Scotch: $30-$35 -– are available online or at the door. The event benefits Northwest Folklife. 21 and over only.

Meantime, vegetarians can sink their teeth into VegFest 2007 at Seattle Center on Saturday and Sunday. Food samples, chef demonstrations, nutrition seminars and more are on the meatless menu. Admission is $5

Read more »

“Our whole goal of sustainability means using as little energy as we have to. Shipping bottles of water from Italy doesn’t make sense,” said the general manager of California’s venerated temple of sustainability, Alice Water’s Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which will switch from imported bottled Italian acqua con gaz to what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “house-made sparkling water” this week.

Other restaurants are already making their own water — by turning on the municipal taps, filtering the water and, in some cases, adding carbonation.

As the Chronicle notes, the move away from bottled water reflects

Read more »

I had asked one of the Masa-Asado owners about this before and got a flat “no.” But TNT business editor Marce Edwards now reports: The creators of the Sixth Avenue restaurants will add another to the family — a new restaurant/lounge on the ground floor of the Walker Building at the corner of Sixth and St. Helens avenues.

A reader writes:

I drove by the Tacoma Tony Roma’s location 2 weeks and saw it was closed. I was in Southcenter on Saturday and Tony Roma’s is closed there also.

I’m getting disconnected numbers, or no answers, at Tony Roma’s from Southcenter to Silverdale to Olympia to Federal way to Tacoma, including the corporate number.

Consider this the first draft of history. I’ll get back to you when I dig up more.

By the way, I’m not crying in my barbecue sauce over this one. If Tony Roma’s is closed, I say

Read more »

A new Nordstrom isn’t the only Seattle-identified thing in store for Tacoma Mall. Mall general manager Steven Heim tells News Tribune business reporter Devona Wells that new restaurants — the kind you find in Seattle, and not just Ivar’s — are coming to the mall.

“We’re going to add two full-service, sit-down restaurants,” Heim said. “We’re going to recruit the names that get people excited, names people are driving to Seattle to find, names that will mean something to our community.”

Look for the new restaurants some time in 2008. Look for an announcement when the

Read more »