By now, Tacoma’s Secret Supper is not such a secret…but the newly formed event taking place on August 10, 4-6 p.m., is striking a chord with lovers of food and drink who wish to come together and share in a meal.
The supper is organized by the Tacoma Alcohol Consortium and Todd Buckley, whose aim for the event is to test drive the experience of a distillery/restaurant combo.
The menu, below, looks to be French, paired with cocktails.
What is still a secret is the location, which is yet unknown.
The inaugural Care to Dine event is this Tuesday, July 23, and benefits the South Sound CARE Foundation, which raises money to provide cancer clinical trials to residents in the Pierce County and South Sound communities.
Participating restaurants will donate 20 percent of proceeds raised on July 23 to the foundation.
Restaurants include:
Adriatic Grill
HG Bistro
Pomodoro
Savor Creperie
Ben Dew’s Clubhouse Grill
Moctezuma’s in Tacoma and Gig Harbor
It’s always a great reason to dine out when charity is involved!
Today is the 15th Annual Art on the Ave, 6th Avenue Tacoma’s awesome street fair celebrating art and community. There’s a fun food aspect, the Grub Crawl, where participating restaurants feature a special $6 appetizer-sized item.
Participating restaurants include Medi’s Pizza and Pasta, North China Garden, Jazzbones, Gateway to India, Marrow Kitchen Bar, O’Malley’s Irish Pub, Dirty Oscar’s Annex, Legendary Doughnuts, Ice Cream Social and Gateway to India. Check out their special menu items on the article I wrote for NorthwestMilitary.com. Stop by the brick and mortar locations of the restaurants to purchase the items. Ice Cream Social and Gateway to India will have booths at the festival, however.
The Grub Crawl has a second component, the Grub Crawl Challenge, where the restaurants will enter their items to be judged by Elisa Jaffe of KOMO 4, Tyrus Smith, Executive Director of the Tacoma Evergreen State College and myself, Adrienne Kuehl. The winner will be crowned King or Queen of the Grub Crawl.
I’m looking forward to trying all the different dishes! I have a feeling it’ll be hard to choose a favorite. Come by the Community Stage in the Walt’s Parking lot today at 2:30 to watch the judging competition.
Art on the Ave is today from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. between Cedar and Trafton Streets.
This weekend, June 28-30, is the Taste of Tacoma, the largest annual food festival in the South Sound. I wrote about the changes the festival has made this year, including healthier and lower priced options, the integration of food trucks, and The Taste Cooks!, a cooking stage featuring Tacoma chefs and food experts, hosted by Amanda Westbrooke of TV Tacoma.
I’ll be one of those folks on the cooking stage on Saturday, June 29 from 3-3:45. I’d love for you to come see me! I’ll be talking about Tacoma Foodie, my cooking blog, A Big Mouthful, what it’s like to be a food writer, as well as how to shop the farmers market, and then doing a cooking demo with local ingredients from the farmers market. On the menu is a smoked salmon, asparagus and goat cheese pasta and a shaved zucchini salad.
Check out the full schedule of chef cooking demos, as well as the Chef Cook-Off! following my demo at 4 on Saturday. The contestants, Chef Hudson Slater of Maxwell’s, and Aura Mae, known as “The Kitchen Beautician”, will be cooking from mystery ingredients in a battle similar to Chopped or Iron Chef. Other demos include Tom Pantley of Toscanos, Gil Turturici of Boathouse 19, Kris Blondin of STINK, Geoffrey Yahn of Dirty Oscar’s Annex and more. It should be a good time.
I worked hand-in-hand with the organizers of the Taste of Tacoma this year to try to get the festival to be a little more Tacoma, a little more local. The changes they’ve made seem to be in the right direction. It’s not perfect yet by any means, but it’s good to see Tacoma restaurants be involved in the Taste Cooks! portion, as well as the healthier and lower priced items available from the vendors.
If you haven’t been to the Taste of Tacoma in the last few years, it’s worth a revisit. For more about the changes to the festival this year, read my article on NorthwestMilitary.com.
Hope to see you Saturday!
