Bacon pancakes at Original Pancake House.

TNT Diner reader Heather e-mailed me asking me about the new Original Pancake House on Meridian in Puyallup. I dutifully went to research pancakes and found a great discovery – bacon pancakes. It’s an efficient and tasty way to eat breakfast – bacon and flapjacks all in one vessel. What’s not to like?
The Original Pancake House, a Portland-based chain, also has about 15 other kinds of pancakes besides bacon: Banana, coconut, potato, blueberry, buckwheat, sourdough, corn, wheat germ, granola, Georgia pecan, Hawaiian pineapple, blueberry, chocolate chip and the classic pigs in a blanket. And there’s a lot more breakfast on the menu – in fact, that’s all they serve.

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Puyallup High School grads from left, Wade Reynolds, Jordan Caine, Tim Satre, and Scott Reynolds, right, opened Bagel Boyz Bakery July 19 in Puyallup. Photo by Dean J. Koepfler/The News Tribune.

Tonya Reynolds remembers when the idea for Bagel Boyz Bistro was just small talk around her kitchen table.
Her sons – fraternal twins Wade and Scott Reynolds – were kvetching that there weren’t any bagel bakeries in Puyallup. They grabbed a notebook and started jotting down ideas – those ideas formulated the yeasty origins of Bagel Boyz Bistro, which they opened with Puyallup High School classmates Jordan Caine and Tim Satre on July 19 in downtown Puyallup.

The four partners – all 19 years old – are 2008 graduates of Puyallup High School. They run the business with help from friends and family like Tonya Reynolds. The four partners are self-funded – they paid cash to start up the business. Wade is the foodie. He worked as a line cook at The Rose restaurant in Puyallup. Jordan and Wade both were students in the culinary arts program at Puyallup High. Scott and Tim lean toward the business side of Bagel Boyz.

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Julia Child’s birthday is this Saturday, Aug. 15. Do you have anything planned to commemorate the treasured chef? Going to see the movie “Julie & Julia” that opened last week? Hosting a dinner party, or cooking Child’s favorites?

Gordon Naccarato will host a celebratory Julia party Saturday at his restaurant, Pacific Grill (the party also celebrates the fourth anniversary of the downtown restaurant). Karyn Lindberg, a food columnist for our sister paper The Olympian, is taking a cue from Bon Appetit magazine and hosting a private dinner party at her home Saturday night toasting Julia Child with a menu of Child’s favorite dishes. Click “read more” to see the menus and memories that Naccarato and Lindberg shared with me.

Are you planning anything special? Even if it’s something small, such as seeing the movie, post a comment and let TNT Diner readers know.

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Diners are curious – what happened to the Indochine Café on Mildred in Fircrest?

It closed July 12 – and in the same location, Royal Thai Bistro opened Aug. 1. Heng Han is the owner of Royal Thai Bistro. His brother Eric Han manages it. The menu is mostly Thai – a change from Indochine’s broader focused Southeast Asian menu – but one of the Indochine Café assistant chefs joined the staff at Royal Thai Bistro.

Hong Ngov and husband Sean Yean, who owned the Mildred Indochine Café, still own and will continue to operate the sister Indochine Café on Pearl – and the head chef Savath Sok remains at the Pearl restaurant. And here’s the back story.

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Mark Eggen wants to serve the frostiest mugs of beer in Bonney Lake. With a mug froster and high-tech beer taps installed at his new restaurant Hop Jack’s, he just might. His beer is served at a chilly 27 degrees. My teeth hurt thinking about it.

A beer-sicle might have slid down parched pipes a little more easily two weeks ago during the heat blast, but even on an overcast Monday, Eggen had a better than expected turnout when he opened Hop Jack’s yesterday. And the brew was cold, as promised, he said.

The casual restaurant, located a few doors down from Old School Custard and Jersey Mike’s subs, is the first of its kind for Eggen, who also owns The Rock pizza franchises in South Hill and Lacey.

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By Sue Kidd and Craig Sailor

Freighthouse Square is a microcosm of what’s good about the culinary landscape in Tacoma: It’s big on variety. Lots of it.
Gyros, fish and chips, bubble tea, lumpia, fried chicken, bulgogi, curry chicken, burritos, Chicago-style hot dogs and scratch-baked cookies all can be found under one roof.
Save for one chain restaurant – Subway – Freighthouse Square is an incubator for small, family-owned and operated restaurants.
Freighthouse Square restaurants are a sincere reflection of Tacoma – a little big gritty and worn around the edges, but with hard-working people at the core. And there is quality noshing to be found there at fair prices.
As much as there are success stories, there are failures, too. Restaurants come and go: Sushi, Italian, Belgian and German eateries have all cycled through in recent months. The only positive of that failure is there always seems to be something new.
Restaurants thrive there, too. Wendy’s Vietnamese, Mediterranean Palace and Paya Fish and Chips have called Freighthouse home for about 20 years each.

Here, a look at 10 (and a few more) restaurants, all under one giant roof at Freighthouse Square.

Editor’s note: This is the third installment of Ten-in-One, where we eat at 10 restaurants grouped in a compact area. Read our South Tacoma Way Ten-in-One report, published last October, and our McKinley Ten-in-One report, published in February.

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The strawberry cupcake served at Le Cupcake in Graham showcased the seasonality of the cupcakes.

A blueberry cupcake with a hidden center of caramelized blueberries and homemade caramel. A coconut-marshmallow-chocolate cupcake that’s a kitschy spin on a Hostess SnoBall. A peanut butter-fudge cupcake that made me a little weak, it was so rich and chewy. A strawberry cupcake with a base of buttery pound cake. There’s a revolving daily cupcake menu at the new bakery-cafe Le Cupcake, which opened five weeks ago in Graham. You never know what will be in the display case. I like the element of cupcake surprise.

Owner Faith Guptill’s grandmother won awards for her cakes and desserts at the Puyallup Fair decades ago. Today, some of those recipes appear in the dessert case at Le Cupcake.

Guptill’s family has lived in Pierce County since her grandmother migrated to Tacoma from Sweden.

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Associated Press photo

I took a cheese eating tour to Portland and on my way, I stopped at Burgerville in Vancouver for an asparagus grilled cheese sandwich.

I did a double take when I noticed a wine counter adjacent to the order counter. It’s the first for the chain that serves burgers, fries and shakes made with locally sourced, seasonal ingredients. With Burgerville looking to open a Tacoma location, I wonder if a Burgerville here might serve wine and beer.

Click “read more” to peruse an Associated Press story about wine and burgers served in unlikely places – fast casual restaurants, including Burgerville and Chipotle; as well as coffee chains like Starbucks, which opened its first wine-coffee concept restaurant in Seattle last month. In South Sound, some locations of the coffee house chain Forza are expanding to serve wine. I wrote about the Gig Harbor Forza in March after owners Chad Roy and Scott Teodoro opened the Harbor Greens Wine Bar inside the coffee house. They’ve created an interesting nosh menu paired with an impressive list of affordable wine options. The Puyallup South Hill Forza also has applied for a license to serve wine, as have other Forza locations. I’ll report more on that soon. Have you seen wine served at fast casual restaurants or coffee chains? I’d be interested in hearing if you have. I’m curious how to pair up wine with burgers, too. Beer seems a no-brainer burger pairing, but what kind of wine would you sip with your burger?

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