The walk-up burger restaurant DeLong’s Deluxe opens today in Lakewood. The restaurant is from retirees Tim and Marie DeLong who came up with the idea in their Milton kitchen. Read more »

Lakewood’s House of Donuts has reopened. The bakery with the iconic neon “Donuts” sign on Gravelly Lake Drive Southwest closed Dec. 31 and reopened Sunday after three weeks of renovation by new owner Tom Peterson, who bought the business, recipes and land from longtime owner Marilyn Cheatham.

The Cheatham family had operated and owned the business for more than 50 years, but leased it in recent years to Dan McCarthy. The family also operated three other doughnut and coffee shops in Tacoma. Read more »

February is shaping up to be the month of the burger for South Sound diners. Two retro-style burger restaurants plan February openings – DeLong’s Deluxe in Lakewood and Shake Shake Shake in the Stadium neighborhood. Additionally, here’s good news for Pick-Quick fans: The Fife burger restaurant reopens Friday from its annual two-month winter hiatus. Also at the end of this blog post, I have an update about Jubilee – a Lincoln neighborhood burger restaurant that closed in November and has been rumored as reopening. I’ve also got an update for diners on the Gourmet Burger Shop – the restaurant’s move to downtown Gig Harbor has been delayed to March. Read on. Read more »

Gertie Rice was a woman who loved gambling and St. Patrick’s Day. She was best known as the Gertie behind the iconic South Sound restaurant, Galloping Gertie’s.

While Gertie’s children usually celebrate their mother’s life on her favorite holiday in March, this year they moved the celebration to July. It’s the month that Gertie opened her Tillicum neighborhood restaurant in 1952 and also the month she died in 1991 at the age of 83. Through Friday, to celebrate their mother and 60 years of business, Galloping Gertie’s will sell 60 cent burgers, fries and sodas and offer other specials as a thank you to Gertie’s customers. Read more »

Think of the pupusa as the Salvadoran cousin to a Mexican sope crossed with a quesadilla. It’s a thick disc made from a masa corn dough; stuffed with meat, beans or cheese; and griddled until it’s a crunchy pancake with gooey innards. The cakes are served with a fermented cabbage slaw called curtido. One or two make an appetizer; three or four make a meal.
Pupusas are eaten with just about every meal in El Salvador. The dish is so much a part of the country’s culinary fabric, the pupusa has its own national holiday (no lie – the second Sunday of November).

Salvadoran food is challenging to find in the South Sound, but we are home to two pupuserias – one opened five months ago in South Tacoma. Read more »

It almost is an obsession: waiting around for workers to fire up the doughnut machine at Pal Do World, a Korean grocery store in Lakewood. If you’re lucky, you’ll find someone pouring batter into the molds that turn out hot doughnuts filled with sweetened bean paste and walnuts. Most likely, you’ll just find the doughnuts in plastic clamshells stacked on the table. I know from experience – it’s worth the wait for hot, fresh walnut doughnuts.
The sign calls the doughnuts “mini walnut bread.” In Korea, they’re street food called “hodo gwaja,” or walnut cookies. They’re one of the few Korean sweets you’ll find sold on South Tacoma Way. This is my final installment on Korean dining in Lakewood, and I could think of no better ending to this series than to talk about the sweet finish of Korean dining. Read more »

In this week’s installment of my series about Korean dining in Lakewood, you’ll read about the other kind of KFC – Korean fried chicken. Two restaurants serving the sticky, spicy dish are in the neighborhood that is the region’s finest concentration of Korean dining. I’ll also take you shopping at three grocery stores with ingredients you can turn into Korean feasts. Read more »

If you were the kind of person who planned ahead, you already would have found a recipe, borrowed the molds and purchased the ingredients to make a magical batch of chocolate truffles for mom’s special day this weekend.
But you’re just like the rest of us. Off to the store you go for chocolate. Before you settle for a drugstore buy, consider this: South Sound is home to three chocolate makers who specialize in truffles – decadent chocolates made with a creamy ganache center. Two chocolate shops are cafes with a truffle side business; the third is one of the oldest candy companies in Tacoma. All three will sell truffles for Mother’s Day, but you best not delay your purchase because supplies are limited. Read more »