TNT Diner » Primo Grill Tacoma

The smoke, the oven, the pasta – Primo Grill delivers polished fare from its bustling display kitchen

Sue Kidd — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 08:01:25 +0000

Charlie McManus, executive chef and co-owner of Primo Grill with wife Jacqueline Plattner, prepares seared Alaskan sea scallops, potato gratin, broccoli, citrus tarragon beurre blanc. In the foreground is steamed Kamilche Farms mussels (from near Shelton) with chive curry cream.
Peter Haley / Staff photographer

When Primo Grill opened in 1999 off Sixth Avenue, it was just ahead of a period of openings that turned Sixth into Tacoma’s destination for dining and nightlife. If you call Primo Grill anything, it should be the patriarch of Sixth Avenue. That makes husband-wife owners Charlie McManus and Jacqueline Plattner …

Q&A: Charlie McManus and Jacqueline Plattner of Primo Grill

Sue Kidd — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 08:00:21 +0000

Ask chef Charlie McManus a simple cooking question and you’ll get a five-minute earful about technique and history, you might exit the conversation with a much broader knowledge of something fun or complicated – like how a biga works (it’s a sourdough starter that McManus uses to give his pizzas their distinctive tang). Wife Jacqueline Plattner is a daily fixture managing the operations at Primo Grill, the Sixth Avenue Tacoma restaurant the couple opened in 1999. They also opened Crown Bar, a few blocks away, in 2007. That eatery is a pub serving high-end bar food and cocktails. …

Dining Out For Life: Spotlight on Primo Grill

Sue Kidd — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:08:41 +0000

Any dish kissed by fire at the hands of a skilled chef is good in my book. At Primo Grill, the wood-fired oven is on display for every diner to see. Charlie McManus, pictured here, is the chef manning that fire.

The Sixth Avenue eatery is one of dozens that will participate today, April 29, in Dining Out For Life, the dine-out event where participating restaurants in Pierce County will donate 25 percent of meal sales to the Pierce County AIDS Foundation. To contribute all you have to do is dine at Primo Grill or another participating restaurant …

Happy Hours: The siblings of Sixth Avenue

Sue Kidd — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:18:42 +0000

Forget drink discounts, happy hour is about the food. Or, rather, it’s about the food if you’re a deal seeker who also happens to enjoy well-crafted cuisine.

For this installment of happy hour food deals, we headed to Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue, an eating district rich with restaurants and bars that offer deep discounts during happy hour dining.

We couldn’t write about every restaurant in that neighborhood, so we focused on just a few blocks along Sixth – from Pine to Oakes.
Within those few blocks you’ll find four restaurants with sibling connections: The first pair is Asado and Masa, …