On a rainy day, the little striped pop-out awning on the Los Giles Taqueria tucked in the lot behind US Bank in Arcata looks like an oasis (953 G St.). (Yes, it’s the same black truck you see up the street across from the Arcata Theatre Lounge in the evening.) Pressed for a recommendation, owner […]
What’s Good
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Bread and Sugar: Pan Dulce from El Pueblo
When fire shut down El Pueblo Market on Broadway in Eureka, it left a sweet roll-sized hole in our hearts and stomachs. While we wait for the market and its wall of baked goods to reopen — soon, we hear, though there’s no firm date — we’re feeding our pan dulce cravings at its Redwood […]
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A Mess of Ribs
If fighting over politics isn’t intense enough for you, may I suggest ribs? Even within the guidelines of competition judging, our personal and regional aesthetics make the whole business like drawing from a deck of wild cards. Still, the pros will generally tell you that for competition ribs, the meat should cling lightly to the […]
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Sub Conscious
Graduations, birthdays, christenings, communions and shotgun weddings — any event worth filling the yard with folding chairs in my hometown back east meant a 6-foot-sub. Laid out on a long table would be a seemingly endless loaf of Italian bread stuffed with layers of salami, ham, pepperoni, provolone and peppers doused in oil and red […]
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Morning, Porkchop
So if we’re willing to blur the line between breakfast and lunch, we may as well luge down the slippery slope to dinner. We’re really only an order of steak and eggs away. Abandon labels and be free. Well, at least until Cafe Waterfront (102 F St., Eureka) stops serving breakfast around 11 a.m. We […]
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It’s All Gravy
In the interest of transparency, I would like to confess that I have been closed minded about biscuits and gravy. Haunted by a decades-ago plate at a truck stop near the border of Texas and Arkansas with payphones in the dining booths, it was hard to accept any variation on the standard dusty-topped, fluffy biscuit […]
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Is Brunch Dead?
A few weeks ago, iconic pop star and holder of Champagne flutes Mariah Carey declared brunch over. On some level, she may be right. We may be done waiting in line (Mimi would never) to pay through the nose for swanky, Instagram-ready cloud eggs and a pass to day drink. But old-fashioned brunch — the […]
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Sea Change
The stretch of Eureka’s Fourth Street between T and R streets is broad-daylight sketchy. And yet two restaurants have built cult followings there: Tandoori Bites, with its lunch buffet of curries, and La Patria Mariscos and Grill (1718 Fourth St.), just a samosa’s throw across the street. A couple of years ago, Adrian and Cici Ayala […]
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Pie/Cake Truce
Let us not fall into the factions and false dichotomy of pie vs. cake. Really, given the fact that Boston cream pie is really cake and cheesecake — with its graham cracker crust — is more of a pie, are we not already living in a post pie-vs.-cake society? (Drag me in the comments if […]
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Mole Feelings
There are those who roll their eyes at the mention of another Mexican restaurant opening in Humboldt. And fine, I just did a quick count of around 60. Whatever. The cuisine of Mexico contains multitudes and we have merely scraped its surface here. The vibe at Tuyas (553 Main St., Ferndale) is modern and a […]
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Hotsy Totsy
School cafeteria lunches don’t have their bad reputation for nothing. Those of a certain age remember when ketchup was declared a vegetable and meatless Fridays meant frozen fish sticks or pale, Styrofoam-y squares of pizza. Still, did you secretly revel in those fish sticks and their accompanying tartar sauce packets? Was there shameful pleasure to […]
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Don’t Drive Hangry
You wouldn’t think a slick, black truck edged with flames and emblazoned with a majestic rooster in profile would be hard to find. And yet, there I was, circling the Broadway Cinema parking lot, cursing the person who’d recommended the Tacos El Gallo truck (a film reviewer who shall remain nameless and who, it turns […]