Do you like Guinness? Do you like public radio? Doyle’s Public House in Tacoma wants to serve you and serve public radio at the same time.

From April 7-17, for every pint of Guinness customers drink at Doyle’s, the pub will donate $1 to KUOW public radio station.

Doyle’s goal is $550.

“Over the last two years we have helped raise over $1,600 dollars for public radio, but we have never eclipsed the $500 mark for any given pledge drive,” said

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Now there are seven kinds of Coke

500 kinds of cigarettes

This freedom of choice in the USA drives everybody crazy

– from “See How We Are” by X

My dinnermate dove into the mosh pit of side-dish indecision at McGrath’s Fish House in Federal Way last week.

The wild roasted salmon stuffed with asparagus came with a choice of side dishes: red potatoes, pasta, rice, fries, tomato slices or cottage cheese. It also came with green salad or cole slaw, and an unspecified vegetable that

…

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Ed: Since tiny family owned restaurants are both our passions, let me recommend …

I’ve got an e-mail thing going on with an elected state official who prefers not to make culinary comments in public forums. I don’t vote for him, but I respect his tastes.

So, in the interest of democracy, I’m asking you to lobby for your favorite restaurants. If you recommend interesting places I haven’t been, I’ll check them out and publish my reviews side-by-side with your comments.

Someone asked me: Do you ever eat out for fun? Do you eat out without being a critic?

I tried that Saturday night. It didn’t work.

It was my night off. I was battling fever and aches. I craved fried chicken. I’d promised my bosses that I’d be on budget hiatus through the end of the month. I was spending my own money.

One of the owners of the restaurant dropped by my table to tell me that the chef is now asking his grass-fed beef supplier to cut more fat into their hamburger. (In

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PORTLAND — I stuck my nose in hillocks of ground coffee beans.

Colombian: sweet. Panamanian: chocolatey.

A barista poured hot water over the beans.

Sweet turned fruity.

Chalky chocolate intensified.

I dipped a spoon into coffee. I slurped — just like the barista instructed, in order to spray my taste buds with coffee. I was taking part in a cupping at Stumptown Coffee Roaster‘ The Annex in Portland, the coffee connoisseurs’ year-old equivalent of a wine tasting room.

Fruit deepened. Citrus seeped through chalky cacao.

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Try out our new restaurant guide

&bull Search location, cuisine and more

&bull Find my recommendations

&bull Write your own reviews and star ratings

Like the South Sound’s dining scene itself, this restaurant guide is evolving. Know of a restaurant that’s not in there? Tell us. Got technical questions about

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In a single-wide building perched above a north Tacoma tattoo parlor, in what formerly housed Temple of the Bean coffee shop, the cult of Stumptown is percolating at Satellite Coffee.

Stumptown is, of course, Portland’s coolest coffee roaster. Coffee cognescenti wag their tongues over Stumptown’s beans. Satellite Coffee is the first café in Tacoma to serve Stumptown’s coffee, including varietals touted for notes of jasmine, honey mead and watermelon. It’s not easy: More than half of the cafes that want to sell Stumptown beans are turned down — because they lack either the top-of-the-line espresso

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I had three glasses of orange juice with breakfast recently at The Bite, the new restaurant in the made-over Sheraton Hotel, now the Hotel Murano hotel in downtown Tacoma. The first refill came so fast I wasn’t sure it even happened. Then I was asked if I wanted another refill. Paying my bill, I was offered even more. Refills on orange juice? Now, that’s service. Four bucks is a great price for bottomless OJ. Yowzer — even better than that prosciutto Benedict with Plugra-butter hollandaise ($14), which was pretty tasty itself, even if one yolk one poached harder than the

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