Tripping: Tacoma, more than a truck Click it!
By Remi | Oct 20, 2008 | 6 ResponsesThink the west side is only Seattle and Portland? Swallow your pride and give Tacoma a chance; you might be surprised.
Downtown Tacoma is strange. While the city is the size of Spokane, the core feels more urban, buildings wise. This can possibly be attributed to the lack of surface level parking lots, which I am just OK with.
On the flip side, the town feels deserted. Empty. Abandoned. Give Spokane this; you rarely feel alone there anymore, which you couldn’t say was the case just five years ago. I attribute the relatively good selection of restaurants we have downtown to this influx of people. Yes, many prefer to go to The Melting Pot, but to have spots like Mizuna, the .com, and even Neato after the less than stellar years Spokane has seen… Hey, knock on wood, good stuff.
That’s not to say Tacoma is a complete culinary wasteland. Take Pacific Grill for example, a place very much like Mizuna, both inside and out, and not a million miles away in terms of food quality either. I got a perfectly cooked sliced lamb flank in red wine sauce with a goat cheese mash. Awesome. My dining companion, meanwhile, had a filet mignon that looked equally nice.
The only issue with Pacific Grill was the prices. I mean, had Tacoma been New York, then fine, but come on… It’s Tacoma. Go outside of downtown or Old Town, and you’re borderline having bullets whizzing over your head. (Some might call that hyperbole.) For two meals with an appetizer and half a bottle of wine, I would have expected to pay $20-$30 less at a comparable restaurant in Spokane.
Still, you only live once, and you know what they say. “When in Tacoma…”
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martha Comment 1 of 6
Oct 20 2008 7:42 pmAnother problem with downtown Tacoma is no movie theater. But, one awesome thing about Tacoma is that there is a farmers market all summer right in the center of downtown.
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Remi Comment 2 of 6
Oct 21 2008 11:07 amFarmer’s market, nice. I think Tacoma has a lot of potential, particularly if it can grow and prosper, and not become as pretentious as Portland. (Nothing wrong with SOME pretentiousness obviously, but y’know…)
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Joe Comment 3 of 6
Nov 23 2008 10:11 pmTacoma also has a great British store for you ex-pats and others. They have English Cadbury (much creamier than American aka Hersheys). They also have Lucozade, Irn Bru, McVities, lots and lots of great British foods and teas. They just opened near Costco off of the 38th St Exit.
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J101 Comment 4 of 6
Aug 11 2009 10:07 amMartha, Tacoma does have a movie theater in Downtown. It is called the Grand Cinema. It may not be the place to see the big action packed blockbusters but it has shown movies such as Milk and Juno, among many other hit movies. You can usually see the movies at the Grand before they are overly popular and played at the big cinemas.
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Issaquah Brew House « Spokane Food Blog Comment 5 of 6
Dec 15 2009 10:14 am[...] evident by our very first post on this web site, we like to enjoy other towns than Seattle when we travel to the west side. And why not? If you go to Issaquah, for example, [...]
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Southern Kitchen in Tacoma « Spokane Food Blog Comment 6 of 6
Dec 16 2009 1:01 pm[...] don’t care what people say, we like Tacoma! In fact, we like it so much that we stopped by Southern Kitchen on our way back east. And Southern [...]
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