Two Columns joins our Worldly Little Mile

Cuisine-ly speaking, you can travel around the globe in less than one mile along Sprague. At the eastern end of this short trip is O’Dohtery’s where a clock on the wall counts down the seconds to the next St. Patty’s Day and on the far end of this worldly mile heading into the sunset is The Three Sisters Vietnamese and Chinese Cuisine that gets the very high Urbanspoon rating of 90 percent ladling out a Pho they say is unfogetable.

In between Ireland and Vietnam lie a handful of eateries representing countries near and far. The majority of the owners were born in these foreign lands far beyond the Spokane Valley city limits. I am not sure what it means but I think it might say that people, including restaurateurs find our little neck of the planet to be a nice place to set up camp.

Though it seems unlikely, maybe it just means that these folks think we have a wide range of taste here. At any rate we certainly have a wide range of selection in that short but global mile. You can dine in the Orient at the HuHut Mongolian Grill or at the Sushi Saki just across the street.

Abelardo’s next door puts you back in our hemisphere south of the border. The cooks may not know English real well but they know how to serve fluent Mexican. Trust this gringo when I tell you that the American dollar goes a long way at this place. If you have a belly that can bury one of their burritos then you got yourself a belly to be proud of.

Down the avenue just a skip and a jump to the west you  wind up back in the busiest part of the planet at A Taste of India and its neighbor The Peking Palace which is by now one of the oldest eateries in the Valley considering I remember eating there as a kid and that wasn’t yesterday.

If you did not want to travel that far, you could back up two buildings and land in Italy at Ferraro’s where the owner Pat Ferraro still speaks in a heavy accent 50 years after moving to Spokane from Italy at the age of twelve. Across the street, Monica Sanders who owns the cupcake shop, Love at First Bite, speaks with an equally charming accent that she has retained from her motherland of Columbia.

The new kid on the block is Two Columns Greek and Italian restaurant located at the recently old T Pranos, formerly known as Pinocchio’s and originally known as Wendy’s. Owner Masada Areano, who immigrated to America after picking up a doctorate in business at Cambridge 30 years ago, certainly fits into this varied Valley neighborhood.

Two Columns may be the only place in town serving homemade gyros which makes those of us living close to the Valley’s International Mile quite fortunate. Additionally, the Mediterranean menu is emphasizing gluten-free and vegetarian dishes that have become sought after amongst the dining crowd.

This is a small enterprise where the owner is cooking and serving the recipes he brought with him from the region of his ancestors. There is something very genuine and old world about that and I hope the Valley embraces his efforts. We should because we are, after all, a culturally diverse and sophisticated little city, cuisine-ly speaking.

This Gyro was absolutely as good as I’ve eaten.Though admittedly not that experienced, I have had a few of these ethnic eats. It and the rest of the homemade menu are a welcome addition to our little strip that rivals a worlds fair for cuisine diversity. The price at only $7.50 makes it food fare fit for even our tightly-mitted, fair little village.

Open Season In the Spokane Valley

Ay Caramba! What is going on with all the activity here in the Spokane Valley hospitality scene? I don’t believe I have seen the scene in such a seismic state of shift. I know of five eminent openings and one business moving out of an oft-failed building making way for a personal favorite to move in. With eyes and ears as open as my mouth at a barbecue buffet, I have gathered some interesting tidbits. Some of it rock solid, having talked firsthand with the owners and some of it a bit like dust in the wind having merely caught a whisper here or there.
Before I talk about what is yet to come, I should mention Porky G’s barbeque which opened a month or so ago. I have spent so much time researching their product that I have yet to find time to write a blog post. It is out there next to Fred Meyers where A & W was for several years. This place is not one that I can take the family to help me out. Barbeque is far too serious of a culinary genre and I insist that my data be gathered firsthand with messy fingers. I can only say for now that Porky’s is the sort of place I cannot afford to think of my belly or my family, but rather selflessly sample as many dishes as possible on my own in order bring Scoop readers the most accurate report.

1) The Blue Kat next to Halpins

I wrote about Jesse Martinez and The Blue Kat in my last blog post. They are still hoping to open in a few weeks.Read the blog here.

2) The Handle Bar in Greenacres

This one is a whisper in the wind, though I have heard a lot of whispering. For example, I talked to the food distributor rep who told me they would be serving California Sandwiches which she explained but I never really understood except that they are kind of souped up deli sandwiches.
I also ran into their bar manager at Kinko’s as I was printing off the floor plans I had drafted for the Blue Kat. She was waiting to use the printer to make copies of their layout that the liquor board requires. This chance meeting gave me the opportunity to get a peek at just how the business would be configured. As I had been hearing, it is going to be three businesses in one location. The concept and focus are not bad since it is aimed at servicing the baby boomer bikers which is an ever burgeoning segment of the population as the boomers thunder into their advanced years looking for ways to spend their leisure time and spare money.
There will be an apparel shop and mechanic shop to go along with the bar. It is located out in Greenacres where The Hat Trick used to be which is where Huppins used to be which is where who knows what used to be.

3) Little Euro on Pines

My dirt on this place I got firsthand from one of the owners named Dave Sevier, who was sweeping in his parking lot the other day as I happened to be conveniently walking by. Since I did not reveal my secret Scoop identity, he did not realize we were both collecting dirt at the same time.
I had been watching the renovation progress since it began and had already guessed it was the Old European gang by the name on the reader sign and the familiar colors they were painting on the building. I was just making sure that the Valley would once again be able to indulge in their heavenly Ableskeevers and devilishly delicious stuffed French Toast. The place is only 1600 square feet compared to their 6,000 square foot Northside location. Living just around the corner with fond memories of the old place at Sprague and Bowdish, I told Dave we would be glad to take what we could get.

Update The Little Euro opens June 18th

4) Two Columns at the old T Pranos/Pinochios on Sprague

This is some more owner-direct dirt I picked up the other day when I strolled over from the convenience store parking lot next door. Here my clandestine snooping was thwarted by my poor hearing and the owner’s thick Greek accent. I know his first name is Masada but I gave up trying to understand his last name after several attempts. What I did understand him to say, I think, is that he plans to serve Greek and Italian. He is an interesting retired gentleman. He told me he used to have a Greek restaurant at the old Riverpark Square and a creamery next to Godfather’s Pizza by Hastings on Sullivan.
As we talked while he painted the ceiling tiles with a roller, I thought he was a bit daft at least as far as this venture was concerned. But I could tell he knew kitchens and service and recipes by the things he was saying. I stopped second guessing him when he told me he had been a teacher for 18 years before he moved to the Spokane Valley back in the 70’s. When I asked what he taught I was expecting something like history at a junior high somewhere in Greece. When he said he taught business at a school in Seattle called the U of W, I figured I would wait to pass judgement on his prospects.

5) Something or Other at the old Luxury Box/ Percy’s

Ok, I admit this one is pure Dustin “the wind” Hoffman. But I bet I am right. I have been smelling the smoke for a while and where there is smoke there is fire, some times. My secondhand smoke signals inform me that the original owners of Casey’s sandwich shop at Sprague and Evergreen have signed a lease and plan to open in August. That is all the Scoop can divulge at this point in time and probably more than good journalism would allow.

Lastly, on a sad note Winger Brothers has joined the growing list of ventures to come and go at that spot at the Valley Mall. But my beloved Hong Kong Buffet has boldly decided to go there where no man has profitably gone before. I am betting on them since the same could be said of the spot in the mall near the movie theaters that they successfully conquered. To see why I think they will be winners at the old Wingers, go to this recent blog post.

The Blue Kat steps up to Bat in the Spokane Valley

The last time I wrote a blogpost about a couple of new places I took a little unexpected heat. The owner of Holly Rock, one of my subjects, weighed in with a comment within 30 minutes and Fred Lopez who owns The Ref commented first thing the next morning. Neither were appreciative of my musings about their establishments. I guess that blog taught me that owners not only know how to read, but also that they find my blog interesting, though perhaps not entertaining, when they are the subject.
What I found interesting was that I ended up writing a long article on Fred for my Scoop newsletter and then another blogpost reviewing the newly opened Ref and we became pretty good friends in spite of all my writing and critiquing. I am sure he was more surprised than me because I already knew that I was a decent chap, while he had to get to know me beyond my caustic comments concerning his career choice. Once he did that, everything was fine. While I pretty much follow the Thumper Rule and only say nice things about an establishment, I have been known to get on my soapbox and preach about the road to hell by way of opening a new bar or niteclub. This does not make entertaining reading for the brave few who have already committed to that sort of venture.
So I kept all this in mind one day when I got a phone call out of the blue, well actually it was out of the Blue Kat where Jesse Martinez was standing as he talked to me on his cell phone. He had found my ad in Craig’s List about my drafting services and he asked if I could draw plans for the nite club he was working on in the vacant space where Habitat For Humanity had been next to Halpin’s in the Valley. Little did he know that he was talking to Spokane Valley’s self-appointed busybody blogger. I told him I was on my way.
Upon arriving I found a small crew busy at work and quite a ways into the process of converting the space into a niteclub. It was actually way bigger than I remembered it and my experience goes back to the days when it was a fitness center back in the early 90’s when we were members. As I went through measuring rooms and hallways for an as-built set of drawings, I was swept by a wave of deja-vu when I came upon the old hot tub I had soaked in back in the days when my biceps were bigger and my belly was smaller which meant it was quite a distant memory. The tub is tucked away in a section of the building that won’t be a part of the niteclub which a blessing considering The Blue Kat is aiming for the 35-plus crowd which is often populated by folks wearing plus-size clothes and do not look good with them off their plus-sized bodies.
Once the drawings were completed and Jesse and I had gotten to know each other a bit, I finally told him about my secret identity and how he had been unknowingly revealing all of his plans and dreams to the snoop behind Scoop. I actually knew he would not mind since I had learned from my short experience with him that he, like myself, was a decent chap. I also knew that he was enthusiastic about the Blue Kat and so I predicted with great accuracy that he would be quite eager to help me in my effort to cast whatever spotlight of publicity my humble blog could shine in his direction. I told him he would not need to shield his eyes or don sunglasses to protect himself from the glare of attention the Scoop would shine in his direction. I told him to think of a pin flashlight with a failing battery.
Jesse, who moved to America at age 12 from Paraguay, plans on running a nite club like the Valley has yet to see. For starters he plans on opening only four nights a week, Wednesday through Saturday and opening at 6 on those nights. After measuring the entire space it dawned on me that there was another unique feature about the Blue Kat. “Where’s the kitchen?” I asked him when it finally dawned on me there wasn’t one. He said they planned on using caterers each night. His idea would be to charge a cover at the door that would allow access to the buffet line.
For now he is planning to have a DJ playing Blues and Jazz in the early evening with a live band starting at 9. The live music would not be limited to blues and jazz as it would include classic rock as well. The Blue Kat also features an awesome VIP room complete with plush white leather furniture and private bar, another novelty among the various Valley venues.
Another interesting idea of Jesse’s is to have theme nights where the staff dresses up. For example Jesse said that they have a projected opening target of June 1st or 2nd and they are planning on a Roaring Twenty’s theme for that.
So will all these new ideas add up to a home run? I think Jesse is taking a big swing and he’s got the stuff behind it to clear the fences but it remains to be seen if the ball goes foul or fair. I am not the ump calling the game but rather a fan in the stands who roots on everyone who steps up to the plate whether I think they should have entered the game or not.

The Ref in the Spokane Valley is in the game

So after months of waiting, the Valley has the opportunity to go in and enjoy a relaxing repast at The Ref, which is exactly what Elaine and I and two of our kids did on opening night. When it comes to putting out an opinion on food for public perusal, I trust all three of them more than I do myself. At 53, I’m getting to be more and more like Elaine’s beloved and long-departed grandfather Alvin Clark.

Apparently, everything set before him tasted great and even better when he mixed together seemingly unrelated foods on his plate like green salad with Blue Cheese dressing together with the mashed potatoes and brown gravy topped with ketchup. While his never-ending food mismatching caused all the younger generations, including myself , to shutter at the sight of a few strands of green beans disappearing into his mouth forked just ahead of a chunk of turkey topped with ketchup, he always cleaned his plate, had  dessert and lived a robust life until the age of 94.

Jacque, our 17-year- old, and Eli, the college student, are far from their great-grandfather in regards to taste buds, while I seem to be following in his elderly foot steps. But that may not be all bad. As with bad hearing that allows me to miss unkind words and a bad memory that allows me to forget the ones I do hear, perhaps tired taste buds are another blessing of old age, allowing no foods to offend me. At the Ref, however, I would have preferred youth on my tongue as the reading glasses on my nose made clear to my aging eyes that the pizza Elaine had picked out looked very tasty indeed.

I was a bit worried that a large pizza would not be suffice for the four of us and so I slipped in a small order of wings with sweet chili sauce. Silly me. The pizza turned out to be a 4-person-butt-kicker. Being the one who gets the check put in front of them ( before I slide it over to Elaine), I liked that aspect of the pizza.  It basically meant we could have dined to everyone’s capacity on very good pizza for about $7.25 a person. Considering the fun, lively atmosphere and friendly service, that was a bargain. (And when there is a big game on when the fam has to be fed out for some reason, The Ref, with its host of flat screens insuring there is not a bad seat in the house, will be every Fathers on-demand choice).

It was pretty much a given that I would find the pizza tasty since I love Thai and they did a great job. As the family scavenger, I had an additional bonus because  when I picked  the perfectly good left-over crusts off my family’s plates and dipped it in the ranch dressing I found it made delicious bread sticks for me. Alvie would have been proud even if I didn’t add ketchup.

But as I said, I am not the consumer the chef  at the Ref is worried about. That would be Elaine and the two kids. The next afternoon as Jacque munched on one of the three pieces of pizza we brought home, she asked when we were going to go back. She loved the pizza and thought the wings were perfect. The menu, she said, looked so good she could not wait for another round at The Ref.

Here is the awesome menu that, combined with the delicious pizza and wings, made us all look forward to another round at the Ref.

This is a pretty darn good-looking appetizer menu. I got my eye on the loaded chips and the Slam Dunk Buffalo Dip.

They have the salads covered.

Hopefully, Jacque won't read this because I already went back for lunch on Friday with my mom. She had been gone a month and had a birthday while she was away so I feel quite justified indulging myself. She had the Chicken Ceasar wrap that was big enough for her to take half home to Dad. I tried a few of her fries and they were quite dandaroony with great seasoning. I had the Pulled Pork sandwich that is their Friday lunch special ( the real reason for eating there on a Friday). I love BBQ and so I can vouch that this is a good one , especially with the appleslaw mixed in there. Unlike a lot of the inventive food pairings Alvie used to come up with, the slaw with the pulled pork was obviously the conncoction of a culinanary talent in the kitchen that is sure to be a crowd pleaser, I know it was a Craig-pleaser.

This is where things start to get a little serious. There is a lot of pizza to be had in the Valley, but not a lot of premium pizza. The Ref saw the situation and has seized this opportunity, making their place the place to go for really good pizza in the Valley. The Thai Pie that we tied into came with their house appleslaw on the side. Elaine, taking after her Grandpa Alvie, slathered it all over the top and thought she was up there in heaven with him.

Really can’t vouch for their burgers since I seldom touch the buggers.

Their wings are their knockout punch. You can tell by their sauce selection that The Ref is not coming in on a wing and a prayer in matters concerning this part of the beleaguered chicken's anatomy. ( What a bummer for cows and chickens to be so tasty to the American palate. Much better to be a dog or cat. Though India would have been a great place to be born a cow and China for cats is not where you'd want to be.) At any rate, I can tell you they have willy wonderful wings. The first night with the family we had boneless with chilli sauce. While I loved the sauce, boneless is not what behooves a man, but both my kids prefer them and they loved The Ref's rendition. Friday night Elaine and I had a late night snack of a 1/2 pound of the traditional wings with the Thai sauce. The wings to us were succulent and delicious, there's just something that the old bone does for the meat that works for Elaine and I.

Unlike Alvie, I never have room for dessert, but these look like destination desserts, worthy of their own visit.

This menu is smart because the Valley is a special place in more ways than one.The Happy Hours apply to the weekends which I think is very smart. A lot of places do not remember to keep the Happy Hour sacred on Saturday let alone the Sabbeth.

The bottom line on this new place is that the originality and inventiveness of the menu is backed up by genuinely good food and good service. If you have been keeping track, (and I hope Jacque’s not) I have eaten there three times with four different people. The service was always good and every dish was dead on in presentation, portions and preparation. I am proud of the owners, Fred and Melanie Lopez, for creating a new place from scratch that obviously puts a heavy emphasis on good food.

   I love that their menu was put together and dialed in by people who live right here andnot by East Coast chefs working  in a million dollar culinary laboratory back East somewhere like they do for Applebee’s. This Pulled Pork sandwich with the appleslaw mixed in there a la Alvie was really good  and that is coming from a guy who has been carrying on a decades-long love affair with the old pulled porkarooskie. The sweet potato fries were pretty darn good as well.

They obviously paid attention to a lot of little things. For example the celery that came with these wings were crisp and fresh while the Blue Cheese dressing that we dipped them in was about as good as it gets. And those wings are as mouth-wateringly good as they look. They are able to bake them at the Ref and not just deep fry them and so they come out with an outsanding succulence. These are what Elaine and I would call the Right Wing while the kids, who grew up during the height of the McNugget Era, seem to be fonder of the boneless wing.

      While the visual focal point  of the interior of The Ref is the huge oval bar with its eye-catching  and very original scoreboard/ flat screen display hovering above, the real focus of The Ref’s owners and staff is on putting out a great tasting product with friendly and professional  service. Which is exactly the way it should be.

Update: since writing this post I have become something of a regular at the Ref and have now tried quite a few different things there and talked to a lot of people about their meals. I still stand firmly behind their pizza, and can now add atleast the BBQ burger to my list of recommendations, having tried and loved one. Two friends told me they loved their burgers as well. We always order their great sweet potato fries that come with a great dipping sauce.
But I have to pull my tip of the hat to their pulled pork sandwich and warn that their kitchen apparently has some consistency issues. The sandwich we had Saturday was a far cry from the one I had a few weeks before. It was flat out bad in that the bread was soggy and had the rubbery texture that nuking does to bread. It was tiny and had very little of the appleslaw that earned my ravenous ravings the first time around . In truth, Elaine, who split the sandwich with me, and I both felt that the sandwich reminded us of one of those that you get at a convenience store wrapped in paper that you cook yourself in the microwave.
All that being said, I still have no problem standing behind my glowing review and after having the opportunity to get to know the owner and some of his staff, I know they will eventually get everything up to the excellence and consistency they have been delivering from day one on nearly all of their menu.

To read a feature story on Fred Lopez click here.

One down and one ready to go… While Holly Rock is history,The Ref in the Spokane Valley is reving up for take off

Last October I blogged on the eminent opening of 2 new bars, Holly Rock and The Ref,  in the Spokane Valley. The Holly Rock opened late that month but not so The Ref. In other words, the people at The Ref are still having fun spending thousands of dollars creating their vision of the next version of a sports bar the world has been waiting for , while the people at Holly Rock are losing thousands of dollars as their eyes well up with tears, blurring out of focus whatever remained of the vision that inspired them to get into the hospitality trade.

While my voice may sound cynical, it is a viewpoint that cost me a lot of money and tears to acquire. So well I remember 9 and half years ago as we excitedly worked at getting ready to open the Rock Inn. It was exhilarating to meet lots of new people from salesmen to band members to soon-to-be-customers. I painted the building, resurfaced the parking  lot, bought a new sound system, and spent thousands on buying the existing business. We couldn’t wait to take over and start counting all the money.

We finally got our liquor license on Halloween night and it was over the top. The next two years, in fact, were over the top with great crowds packing out the dance floor every Friday and Saturday night. But all the money we were counting went into everyone’s hands but ours. It took us a full two years to begin to make a profit and that was only because we were willing to work harder than I’ve ever seen any other owners work.

I fervently hope that the Ref owners make money from the get-go. But I am afraid it will be rough going because beyond my own experience, I have watched very closely every place that has opened in the  Spokane Valley for the past 10 years and have spoken to most of the owners and become acquaintances with many and friends with more than a few. The story is always the same just about every time.

I guess to prove my point , fate delivered me a sad example between the few days since I began writing this blog and now as I sit down to complete it. Just last night as I sat among the revellers at Iron Horse’s 15th anniversary celebration I learned that Holly Rock closed last Friday. A friend told me he had just talked to Scott Lane (the landlord and owner of Hotties) who told him he just got it back from them. That means they lasted about 90 days. I rest my case.

That does not mean The Ref will not last a long time. There is a good chance we will all be celebrating their 15th anniversary 15 years from now. Another person that I visited with last night was Mike Robb, who runs the Iron Horse with his wife Patty. He had told me before that it was very rough there at the beginning and that it took them two years as well to get established and begin making a profit.

From all that I have heard of the Ref’s owners, they have the most important ingredient to making it in the hospitality industry: deep pockets, lots of dinero, capital with a captital C. From what I’ve seen they are spending lots of it transforming their 8,000 square foot space , which they own ( another hugely key ingredient), into a place the Valley can go to spend money and enjoy themselves. And though had they asked my advice I would have said don’t do, I still hope they beat the odds and create a great success that keeps building and building. I know I will be a fan of The Ref.

The Ref Update:  The Ref will be open Tuesday, March 6th. You can read a full article I wrote on Fred for our newsletter by following this link.
Also you can like their page on Facebook or join their group.

While I think getting into the business is a bad idea, I think they have some good ideas. This oval bar is one of them.

This cement bar top is another great idea. Easy to maintain and it'll last forever. Here's to hoping the same for The Ref .

Holly Rock Update

I would have let this blog rest but somebody from the Holly Rock contingent sent me a comment about half an hour after I posted . They said:

“please check your information before blogging, Hollyrock was doing amazing, until Mr. Lanes decided to violate the lease agreement and contract and forcefully remove us from the building. Hollyrock is in no way dead we are just in the process of relocating”

In my reply I told them I had gone to talk to Scott before I wrote the blog but he wasn’t around but the bartender gave me an earful. I really did not care to hear the whole story, I’ve heard it all before. The characters are different, the stage and the props are different but it is still the same old story:

New blood comes into a place with big dreams and some cash, they are so excited getting ready to open. They open and the first night is a blast. Then the reality of what they just got themselves into starts to slowly creep in as they see things like how ugly and sad people are when they get drunk, and how depressing an empty bar is on a Sunday or Monday night . Things really start to get bad after a few months of taking in some times thousands less than it takes to run the place. That is when the new owners start looking for ways of getting out. If they are lucky they find one and it is nearly always the landlord fault.

I saw that same exact movie four times after we left the Rock Inn. Some of the details were different, but the beginning and middle and ending were remarkably similar and Jack Riley, the landlord was always the badguy.

So after getting this comment, I went to down to talk to Holly Rock’s bad guy, Scott Lane. The jist of what he said was that the owners of Holly Rock told him on around the first of February that they would be vacating the premises after they held a big party after Mardi Gras. That made Scott mad and so he told them that he would be taking back his liquer license that they had been operating under since they opened.

Some of it doesn’t quite add up but over all it sounds about right. Holly Rock could have fought it hard if they wanted to and why did they never bother to get their license. Scott could have worked with them and made a smoother transition for himself instead of getting the place back in his lap overnight. But I really don’t care about all the details. Whether the people at Holly Rock want to believe it or not, I still say it was the same old story and they were lucky that it was a short story. And if they are serious about a part two, they can march right back down to our old place where they were originally going to open at Sprague and Vista. That old building is like a haunted theater that keeps replaying the same old scary movie.

Landlord gets the business back in the middle of the night, his building has been improved while he was away... I am just sure I've seen this picture before.

Lastly, go back up and check out the comments where Fred Lopez, owner of The Ref ,blasts the Scoop and the Scoop sends  back a savory salvo.

Monica Sander’s battle against Spokane Valley’s crazy cupcake craving

I was sad to see two Valley hospitality establishments did not make it into the 2012. Both Victoria’s Espresso on Pines and T Prano’s  on Sprague near Bowdish have been around for perhaps as long as 10 years ( though T Pranos was known nearly all that time as Pinnochio’s.) Small independent eateries are like marriages in that they often dissolve after years of weathering the trials of life.

On a brighter note, Monica Sanders and her Love at First Bite  cupcake bakery just down Sprague a ways from T Pranos is going like a batter out of hell cooking up as many as 20 dozen each day. Elaine and I stopped in Saturday around 2 in the afternoon and found her display case nearly empty as she appeared from the back with a batch of freshly baked  Red Velvet reinforcements which another waiting customer and I snatched  two of before they could take their  place on the front lines.

It has been an ongoing battle each day to keep enough of her sweet ammo stocked up to meet  the onslaught of daily desserters  who come in each day seeking her little nummy-nummer bellybombs. She told us that since this was her first year she did not know what to expect and was told not to expect much in January. But it turns out she is doing way better than she or anyone else guessed that she would and has been caught on more than one occasion with her apron  down.
I guess I have been in La La land these past few years and was not aware that cupcakes have been making a run on doughnuts for the top pastry snack. Saturday’s outing brought me up to speed fast. On the one hand I was flabbergasted that this one-woman shop tucked away in an easily overlooked strip-mall location could sell so many cupcakes by 2 in the afternoon.
On the other hand, as I devoured this small but heavenly gourmet-level snack that only cost $2.50, I could see why cupcake shops like Monica’s have sprinkled across America in recent years. And on a final hand (if one is allowed to have more than two), I learned that the Spokane Valley has a very crafty and talented soldier fighting keep up with our demands, helping us to win the cupcake war but perhaps not so much with our battle of the bulge.

Monica Sanders, a Columbian native married to a Valley firefighter, said her husband inspired her to create a job she loved showing up at each day. Though she does not have a website, her Facebook page has 1,131 fans that get daily updates on the twelve flavors, out of 80, that she baking that day.

We had to take a few home. Clockwise and tummyfoolish: guava cheesecake, lemon huckleberry cheesecake,german chocolate and red velvet. They ate as good as they looked.

Facebook page: Love @ First Bite

Caruso’s Sandwich Company in the Spokane Valley has lot’s of company

Caruso's Sandwich Company is nestling in at a building the Valley has been dining at since 1965. Located at the corner of Argonne and Montgomery, it is in the heart of the Valley's most intense culinary beat. If I was told I had to pick a two-block area in the Spokane Valley where I would be forced to dine every night for the rest of my life, this would be the spot. Across the street to the north lies a Pizza Hut, Ambrosia Bistro, Subway and Panda Express. Just to the south soar the towering signs of the behemoths of fastfood including Jack, Wendy, BK and McDonald's. Given that Longhorn Barbeque and Timber Creek Buffet are also in the hood, I could easily spend all eaternity dining around this cornucopia of eateries.

To compete in this mad melee of marketed meals Caruso's has sunk a lot of bread into the old and venerable building. Some of it went into this unusual little statue/art piece between the building and the sidewalk on the Argonne side. Around the corner on the northside of the building they put in a raised concrete patio with an outdoor gas firepit covered by what is left of the old carport that served for years when the building housed the A & W Rootbeer stand.

Converting the interior from Scotty's Bar and Grill, the building's most recent occupant, to the stylish sandwich shop it now is , took the most serious amount of lettuce. Gone are all traces of the former bar and everything has been redone, costing somewhere between 200k and 300k, I would guess. They are going to need a lot of dough to raise that kind of bread. While Caruso's is not a mint, they do indeed knead their dough each morning and make their own bread fresh from their secret recipes and I can testify to the tastiness of their sourdough variety.

As tasteful as the remodel project was done, the Cordon Bleu sandwich I had there recently was done even tastier. However, like remodelling these days, Caruso's sandwiches are spendy. A half sandwich is around $6 and a whole is $12 which is more than you would spend at a sit down restaurant. But most restaurants don't make this good of a sandwich, certainly the sub store across the way does not. Caruso's also serves pizza and breakfast as well as beer and wine which makes them unique with the speed and casualness of a fastfood plus the quality and variety of a good restaurant

But will this newcomer in the old building make it in today’s vast and competitive hospitality trade that is so well represented in the surrounding neighborhood? While most people love to play armchair restaurant owner  and believe they know all the moves new places should and should not make, I am agnostic which means I don’t know. It is a lack of false pride and know-it-allness based upon having owned and operated one for four years in sickness and in health. But I do know this property and  its history very well. Maybe there are hints about the future in the past, maybe not.

In 1965, one of the three Armstrong brothers who operated the  first national burger franchise business in the Spokane Valley, A & W, hired my dad  to put in the foundation to the building. My dad and his partner, Don Barden, had been running their sub-contracting company, Custom Basements, for three years at the time. Dad has been retired for nearly 13 years now and Don Barden has  passed away. I know A & W preceded McDonald’s in the Valley because Dad put in the foundation for that franchise’s first Valley location on Sprague across from U-City when I was in about 4th or 5th grade.

At their peak, the Armstrongs had five A & W’s in the Valley from Greenacres to Dishman. The Argonne store prospered and they called upon Custom Basements again in the summer of 1975 to install the foundation  for the eating area they were adding on to the west side of the drive-in. Since it was a summer construction project, I worked on the job myself. To call my father frugal, would be like calling Bill Gates wealthy. He still takes pride retelling the story of how he pulled off and reused the original footing formboards that had been buried in place for ten years to save the Armstrongs a few bucks. “They were a little soggy after all that time, but they worked fine,” Dad told me recently when I quizzed him about his history with the building.

For one reason or another, the A & W at the corner of Argonne and Montgomery did not make it out of the 80’s, nor did the other A & W’s run by the Armstrongs. In 1989 a guy who I had gone to school with from 3rd grade , Terry Mazzie, was hired by new owners to convert the A & W into a Wolffy’s. His construction company gave the building its second major remodel, updating it to an older burger selling era, the one just before the one  it had originally been built for. Through the 90’s Wolffy’s sold old-fashioned burgers and shakes the way they did in the 50’s.

Then around 2002 another friend of mine, Del Stratton, was hired to convert the premises from its Wolffy’s trappings into Scotty’s Bar and Grill. I watched this transformation fairly close since I was in the business at the time and Scotty was often at my business. He told me it cost $250,000 to give the place its third setting in 37 years. Though Scott Reckord  left that business not long after he and Patty opened it and went on to start up Sullivan Scoreboard with his new partner Deanna, Scotty’s made it for approximately 9 year’s before following Wolffy’s tracks down the trail of broken dreams and financial setback.

I don’t know who the Caruso people hired to complete this most recent do-over, but I know enough to know that they did a good job and that it cost a fair to middlin’ amount. Is the fourth time the charm? Most armchair owners would say the location is jinxed since three businesses ended there. But I don’t know.

It reminds me of another location in the Valley that my Dad and his partner also put in the foundation for back in the 60’s. Having stewarded their profits wisely through the years, by 1968 they were able to buy the old Torrey’s Lockers property at the corner of Sprague and Moffit and build a building for Mr. Steak. For 20 years that national franchise stayed and paid the rent, but then they left and were followed by a succession of forgotten ventures. By the time Mike Robb and his family tied up their Iron Horse there, the place had earned the reputation as a loser. That was about 12 years ago and the Horse is at full gallop.

So it seems to me that Caruso’s has a good shot. I know they have found a worthy building that has a rich history serving the hungry Valley well, built and rebuilt through the years by hard-working guys like my Dad and Terry and Del who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and then go into places like A & W and Wolffy’s and Caroso’s where they wash those hands and sit down for a good lunch.

(Well actually, Dad was too frugal to take the time to eat lunch at a restaurant or drive-in on a work day. He never took more than a 30-minute break to eat the lunch my mother prepared for him. But that is why he has been retired all these years and still owns the building at Sprague and Moffit along with other investments that allow him to travel with Mom and pick up the tab when he takes his family to places like Caruso’s.)

This is an old Valley Trivia piece from a past Scoop newsletter:  Long before the Valley had McDonald’s it had A & W Rootbeer stands and quite a few of them. One was at the current Conley’s Restaurant location next to the White Elephant, one was at the corner of Montgomery and Argonne where Scotty’s Bar and Grille is now located, another was on Trent near Fowler road ,one was just east of Deja Vu(the old Dishman Theater), another was at the current location of King’s restaurant in Greenacres  and the last was located at the Mustard Seed location recently torn down when Winco Grocery opened.

To read more Spokane Valley trivea click here.

A feature story on Sullivan Scoreboard’s start.

One on the Iron Horse.

An incredible gift/furniture shop for the Spokane Valley and a super hero’s mancave

One day last summer our youngest daughter came home and started going on and on about some cool  garage sale she ran across down at 35th and Pierce and was so excited about it she took Elaine down to check it out. Turns out it was far more than a garage sale though there were amazing things being sold out of these people’s garage.Being against all shopping establishments from garages to malls to Ebay and beyond, it wasn’t until last weekend that Elaine finally succeeded to drag me down there.

What I found was a magical spot in the Valley that neither Jacque’s gushing nor Elaine’s many purchases prepared me for. The place had it all for me: a humble carpenter/craftsman/ artist, John Dunning, who works with his wife , Jen, running a little store out of their shop (it was not a garage though how does a teenage girl know the difference?). It is where he labors during time stolen after hours away from his day job. It was full of original pieces of handcrafted art and furniture as well as below-reasonably priced reconditioned used pieces. And then there was the JohnCave that would make both Batman and the Iron Man, as well as every mortal man like myself, as green as the Green Lantern with envy.

At this out-of-the-way little shop at 35th and Pierce, John takes those gifts God gave him, elevating and combining them to produce my favorite kind of art, “carpentry art” (which is a lot better than carpentry ants). By that I mean art that only an artist with carpentry skills can create. Being a carpenter myself, it is art I appreciate because  it requires skill it took years for me to acquire at a more modest  level and also a creativity and artistry I will  never attain.  A guy like me is lucky just to be able to appreciate his art.

This is what I am talking about. One of John's favorite mediums is wine barrel parts and pieces which he says are readily available from the local wineries. What he does with spent wine barrels is beyond craft by a mile or two. It is art. Though my photography is not flattering to John's work, check out the hanging light, the stools, the table , the heart /barrel-strap art piece. It is all a matter of wine barrels + creativity + God-given artistry = great shopping opportunities.

Some more examples of John's talent and creativity and my poor photography.

This is a nice refurbished military desk we picked up for $45 (without dickering). Notice the leather chair in the background. They have a bunch more like that for sale that they found on Craigslist. J.C. Penny's sold them in the 70's and they are all mint like every thing else in the store.

It was funny, while I greatly admire all of pieces on display I was most drawn to the background of half of the store. Elaine, on the other hand, barely noticed anything but all the great items for sale. One side of the store is John's shop area and the other is his mancave. The two pictures spliced together above show opposite ends of the John Cave. On the right is the full kitchen that John did all the work on and the left pic shows the fireplace and mantle he installed. I don't think he made the plasma television himself , though it would not surprise me.

I highly suggest that you check out their blog which has much better photography and displays lots more of the items they have for sale. I suggest even more highly that you go to their Christmas sale this Saturday .

Learn more at their blog.

Holly Rock in the Spokane Valley is Open, but is the Spokane Valley?

Robin Tuttle and gang recently took over the premises and what little business remained at the old Hotteez in the Spokane Valley on Raymond just north or Sprague. In a move that I admired and appreciated, they shut down the operation for 2 days in order to deep clean the place as I am positive had not been done since  the Sea Galley days back in the mid 80’s when Elaine worked there.

We stopped in recently on the way back from the WSU/Arizona game down in Pullman. Not being night owls, we took advantage of being out late to check out what the Valley’s first gay bar might look like in the hours after our bed time.

It was mostly as I would have expected from a gay bar recently opened in the Valley, but there were a few surprises. It was fairly slow and the crowd was not over-crowding but they were getting into the scene more than I was prepared for. By that I mean that while it was not a scene out of the movie Cruising, there was plenty of hot dancing and at least one same-sex couple making out in plain and unavoidable view. To further set the alternative lifestyle mood, a few queens with demeanors of  drama occupied a barstool or two.

I had no problem with all of this since I was in a gay bar where I felt it best to live and let live. I am not a critic of gays or their hangouts, but I did not like being frisked on my way in. I was more surprised by this than anything and I let them know it and Elaine actually refused to allow them to touch her when they attempted to pat her down after she returned from the bathroom and wanted to join me . They refused to let her even enter the bar, where I was waiting with a round, to tell me she was leaving.

Elaine called me as she walked across the parking lot to the Monkey Bar and I joined her as soon as I finished my drink. Ironically, the bouncer who frisked her came over too and I had the opportunity to ask him why they thought they had to frisk their patrons and then tell him why I thought it was a terrible idea.

He told me that since Hollyrock was the first gay bar in the Valley and since they had received a few threats ( which I find dubious), they were doing it to protect their clientele. I told him that was BS and unfortunate for everyone. If somebody wants to blow away someone at a bar they are going to do it just like crazies do when they walk into a McDonald’s in California or  an Air Force base in Texas.

On the one hand, I don’t like it on a personal level because I don’t want to go anywhere besides the airport or courthouse that I have to go through security for weapons. Actually, I don’t like going to either one of those places any more than I have to but sometimes I have to. The Holly Rock is sending the message that it is a dangerous place to go even though they are intending to send the message that they are protecting their patrons. Like I said, if someone wants to start shooting up the place, they’ll just start with the guy who wants to frisk them.

Then on a less personal note but still a bit offending, I take objection to the idea that the Valley would be more dangerous for a gay bar than downtown where the gay bars don’t frisk their clientele. We may be further east, but this is not Aryan Nations territory any more than the Northside is less tolerant because it is closer to the backwoods home of the MLK Parade would-be bomber.

All this being said, I can forgive HollyRock for their paranoia and over-zealous attempt to protect their people from the gay-bashing crazies that they fear populate the Valley. The truth is that they are newbies and have the right to make a few innocent mistakes. The trouble is that they don’t have time to make very many mistakes, innocent or not. Opening a new nightclub, gay or straight, is a brutally unforgiving and risky undertaking.

I believe that while they don’t need the intolerant, they cannot afford to not welcome everyone that is tolerant. Frisking everyone who walks in the door will neither deter a terrible hate crime nor welcome the tolerant non-gay crowd which I believe Holly Rock must have to succeed in the Spokane Valley.  The Valley, compared to downtown is the hinterlands as far as the gay nightclub scene is concerned, not because of backward thinking but because of demographics.

I think Holly Rock’s only chance is to welcome everyone that is either practicing an alternative lifestyle or tolerant of those who are. The gay community alone  is not enough to support them, but even if it were why would you want to discourage more business? There are actually a lot of free-thinking people in the Valley, like everywhere in America, who may not live an alternate lifestyle but they might enjoy having the alternative to go there once in a while for a drink or a dance. The Holly Rock needs them to survive and they need to welcome them, not pat them down.

 Read an earlier blog on Holly Rock

The Black Pearl Restaurant and Card Room in Spokane Valley

Having opened my own restaurant/nightclub years ago, I cannot walk into a new place without scrutinizing everything and calculating their chance for success. I am also a carpenter/homebuilder and I do the same sort of thing every time I walk into someone’s house for the first time.The new Black Pearl Restaurant and Card Room at Pines and I-90 in the Spokane Valley has some impressive ingredients that may contribute to its long-term success. I hope they are enough to overcome some things I see working against that obvious goal.

Top of the list of things to be impressed by at The Black Pearl is the rich decorum the new owners have sunk a lot of money into. Every surface in the old building has undergone a transformation from the paint on the walls to the coverings on the floor to the trim around the doors to the doors themselves. The furniture, the fixtures and everything else right down to the dishware has been selected to contribute to the overall stylish setting that puts the Black Pearl in rare company in the Spokane Valley.

Another feature The Black Pearl restaurant and card room has going for it is food. I have heard a few disparaging remarks but my experience after three visits is that their kitchen does a good job. The other night Elaine had the Chicken Oscar while my daughter, Jacque, had the Chicken Dane. They were both ecstatic about their meals and ate every bite. I had the barbecue ribs and was a little disappointed. It was not that they weren’t succulent and had great sauce, but rather this time that I had them they were overly fatty as opposed to the first time I tried them there a month or so before when they were great in every way.

The upscaleness of the menu, decor and prices is a feature that is good but could work against their success. While the Spokane Valley needs fine dining  places like The Max and Twigs and The Luxury Box, the truth is that for most us a $70 -$100 dinner date (with dessert and drinks) is about a once a year event. This is the Valley, where Thrift stores are the most prevalent type of retail outlet on Sprague.

Furthermore, I think trying to put the two concepts of “upscale restaurant” and “card room” together  in the average person’s mind is not going to be an easy thing to do. When I think of card room, I think of the old smoky, dingy places like the old joint next PM Jacoys downtown. I suppose card players will have no problem, but the decision where to dine is heavily influenced by the ladies and I saw very few in the Black Pearl’s card room.

The card room’s place in the building is one of my big problems with The Black Pearl as it has been reconstituted. Actually, pretty much the entire layout is a problem. Though hundreds of thousands were spent redecorating and recovering the building’s surfaces, the buildings layout remains exactly as it was before the remodel and it was not a good layout before and it is worse now.

Walking into the building, the first thing seen is the beautiful bar and lounge area. It has always been there but now it has a much more intimate or cramped feel, depending on the crowd, because the old dancing area to the right has been walled off to create the new card room. With large windows and two open passage ways, the partition wall does little to provide any privacy between the lounge and the bright, sparsely decorated card room. It is like those exotic aquarium bars you sometimes see in the movies, only the card players are the interesting creatures on display behind the glass. Personally, I found it more irritating than entertaining.

To the left of the front door is the dining area, I think. That is where we have always been seated anyway, though it does not really feel like a dining area so much as a wide hall way with long luxurious booths along the window wall and nothing along the other side. It is wide open with no coziness or intimacy or even much warmth. Beyond this area is another separate, lonely dining room. That is where the card room might should have gone and then been given a more private feel.

The point is that the Black Pearl’s building is large and strangely laid out since it is the product of something like three different add-ons that served an entirely different business. At one time that business, Mathew’s, was just a restaurant (which is now the bar and card room) that added a nice bar and lounge (which is now the dining area) and then added a niteclub area ( the empty back room). New owners came along and bagged the restaurant and completely switched everything around and never attained any visible signs of success as a bar/nightclub for the many years it kept its doors propped open.

My other problem with the Black Pearl is that it seems like the owner is not running the place hands on. I don’t believe it is possible to open such a complex place, hire some managers and then sit back and think it is going to take off. No one ever cares like the owner  because to every one but them it is just a job. I see a lot of little things that need attention like an incredibly long time between taking orders and delivering meals. While we had that problem, the rest of our service was fine but I have heard more than one complaint regarding the Black Pearl’s service.

One night during their grand opening the sign on the end of their building said “half off the entire menu” and the electronic reader sign on Pines said the same thing but our waiter insisted it was only the entres and not apps and sandwiches or burgers. The next night the sign said all steaks half off, but it turned out they offered just one 8 oz steak for $9 something. I didn’t bother with the $12 bbq rib special they promised on the last night. Little things, but an owner that is sweating out the details notices those things while employees may not care quite enough.

So will the good outweigh the bad at the Black Pearl? I think they will have to fix a few things in order to make a profit. I have heard the owner has deep pockets and he will need them. I know they are not as deep now as they were when he got into this venture. But it is a  beautiful building at a great Valley location where they serve a good meal, furthermore it is locally owned and staffed with people who live here and so I hope the Black Pearl makes the right moves and kicks butt and takes names for years and years.

Not a good sign.  

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