TNT Diner » Craig Sailor

Sandwiches and salads built to inspire

Craig Sailor — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 02:36:01 +0000

Big taste at Little Roni’s: Forward-thinking food and people-watching highlight lunch experience.

By Craig Sailor
Staff writer

Little Roni’s makes sandwiches. Not Reubens, BLTs or Philly cheese steaks, but versions of familiar food assembled in ways you might never have thought of.

Focusing on craft, freshness and flavor – and most of all creativity – the sandwiches here are unlike anything you can find elsewhere in South Sound. From the fresh, artisan bread to the homemade ingredients, thought and care goes into the creation and execution of every item on the menu. …

Imbibing in Oly: Sizizis and Cryptatropa

Craig Sailor — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:00:24 +0000

Sizizis is a 24-hour coffee and tea joint, a dark-hued hipster hangout and a palindrome. The small unmarked dark spot on Fourth Avenue is the only place in Olympia you can get chai at 3 a.m.

Walking into Sizizis is like stepping into the captain’s quarters of a 17th century Spanish galleon. It’s dominated by massive wooden pillars and arches salvaged from an old bar. Eight tables sporting an eclectic range of lamps fill the living room-sized space. There’s no theme to the room unless you count incongruity.

Red and purple velvet curtains almost reach the creaky …

Savor fresh Italian classics

Craig Sailor — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:41:36 +0000

Chef Franco Cannava shows off two of his top-selling dishes – cheese-stuffed ravoli with fresh asparagus and Dungeness crab (left) and veal Milanese with scampi – at Sorrento Ristorante Italiano in downtown Olympia. TONY OVERMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

By CRAIG SAILOR; Staff writer

Meet Franco Cannava. If you dine at his Olympia restaurant, Sorrento Ristorante Italiano, it’s pretty much a given. Sorrento is Cannava and vice versa.

Chances are he’ll greet you when you walk in, visit your table several times during your meal and toss you an “Arrivederci” as you leave.

Cannava, a native of Sicily, has spent his …

Drop-in dining: Dinner is where the hearth is

Craig Sailor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:35:23 +0000

By Craig Sailor
Staff Writer

Dining at Anthony’s Hearthfire Grill blurs the line between water and terra firma. And only a brief stop in the kitchen separates the fish on your plate from their still-swimming brethren a few feet below your perch.

Hearthfire, the three-year-old restaurant at the very northwest tip of the Port of Olympia peninsula, occupies the spot that once belonged to Genoa’s. Windows so big that they seem to defy physics frame Budd Inlet and the Olympics. Translucent sailboats ply the waters as curious seals watch diners on the outdoor deck. Friendly humans wave from their …

Mediterranean flavor, modern flair in Olympia

Craig Sailor — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:37:55 +0000

By Craig Sailor
Staff writer

It’s not every night when your dinner plans are punctuated by a gyrating male go-go dancer. We had inadvertently picked Girls Night Out, a downtown shopping event and fundraiser, for our visit to Olympia’s Acqua Via. Gangs of giddy women roamed the streets, stormed shops and packed restaurants.

Inside downtown gift store Archibold Sisters, the scantily clad dancer was giving it his all on a countertop. Enthusiastic women gathered around him. On the sidewalk stood a knot of men, clearly the husbands and partners of the women inside, wearing the shell-shocked expressions only survivors …

Better on the second Bite

Craig Sailor — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:38:54 +0000

It’s not very often I walk out of a restaurant before there’s even food on my table. But that’s what I did one evening in August ’08 at Bite, the restaurant in the then newly rechristened Hotel Murano. I left after 15 minutes of watching the staff amble about with confusion and a general malaise.

So when the hotel recently was voted number 6 on the Condé Nast Traveler’s Readers Choice list for top American hotels my first reaction was, “Did they visit the restaurant?” I had to go again.

What a difference a year makes.

This time the highly …

An authentic Italian escape

Craig Sailor — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:17:00 +0000

By Craig Sailor
The News Tribune

“Authentic” is a word thrown around the foreign restaurant scene with abandon. It lures diners in with the promise of being transported to a faraway land where they rub elbows with locals fresh from a National Geographic photo shoot.

But too much authentic and diners flee for the Americanized safety of Olive Garden and Panda Express.

Authentic, however, is what Olympia’s Basilico Ristorante Italiano is – with just a couple of additions.

Basilico’s menu, designed by chef and owner Arlindo Campello, is based on northern Italian cuisine …

Northwest foods, Southern flavors at Olympia’s Cicada

Craig Sailor — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:10:44 +0000

Chef Billy Roberson prepares to place a prawn on the Cicada Surf-n-Turf entree at Cicada Restaurant in Olympia. The dish combines New York strip steak, asparagus-potato hash, prawns, and corn-tomato butter sauce. (Janet Jensen/The News Tribune)

By Craig Sailor

The News Tribune

The scene: Occupying a corner spot on Olympia’s main drag and kitty-corner from the new City Hall under construction, Cicada is an intimate dining destination. Big windows look out to the street while local art fills its interior walls. The restaurant is named after the big,

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Half a century of serving Pierce County

Craig Sailor — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:37:50 +0000

Carol Yanusevich, center and Julie Jones, right, raise their glasses to toast the 50th anniversary of Harbor Lights Restaurant, Thursday evening, August 13, 2009. Long-time patrons Ardene Mattich and husband Ed Mattich, from left were among those attending the festivities.( Janet Jensen/The News Tribune)

You may have seen C.R. Roberts’ story Saturday on Harbor Lights turning 50 years old.

Over at our Bizz Buzz blog, Roberts has a list of other local restaurants and watering holes that are 50 years old or older. Check out the list and

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Chili Thai rises above the crowd

Craig Sailor — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:02:26 +0000

By Craig Sailor

The News Tribune

One can be forgiven for strip mall overload. There’s only so many nail salons, tanning joints and Teriyaki #1′s a person can take before the eyes glaze over. And yet to dismiss the ubiquitous Asian restaurant simply because of its location would be a disservice to some potentially good eating.

Chili Thai is a three-restaurant chain (University Place, Puyallup and Lacey) that doesn’t stray far from the tried and true Thai-American strip mall formula. But it’s in the preparation and presentation of the food

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