Sunday, April 6th, 2008
On the short three block downtown radius in White Center, you can find a Halal shop that seems to serve mostly Ethiopian or Somalian clientèle, a handful of Vietnamese pho places, a Cambodian cafe and a Cambodian supermarket - as well as a few other markets that have a staggering variety of Asian and Mexican groceries, a few shops where you can buy quinceanera dresses, several taco vans and a couple of Mexican restaurants (a new one is opening in the old Indian restaurant), a pawn shop, a classic grill that clearly used to be a drive-in, a biker bar … and oh, I’m sure there are several things I’ve forgotten. There’s also an awesome hardware store where the cashiers are those lovely older ladies that wear bright lipstick and call you “Dear.” All this is a mere two miles from my rather white bread neighborhood.
Yesterday at the Cambodian New Year’s Street Festival, a bunch of strapping white firemen stood in front of the taco van with a handful of very pretty brown skinned teenage girls to listen to the Buddhist monks chant blessings over the crowd. The announcements were in Khmer and English and were followed by traditional Cambodian dancing and Prach Ly, a Cambodian American rapper. We poked our noses in a handful of markets where you could buy little gold Buddhas and candles with the Virgin of Guadalupe on them. It was cold and windy, so we bought lattes in a cafe decorated with a huge dayglo painting of a decaying Cambodian temple scene.
Sure, White Center has too many empty store fronts and there’s an obvious community in need of support. But I love going down there to slurp big bowls of pho, to watch the amazing variety of people go about there business, and to believe in the old myth of a melting pot America.
Side note: I can’t speak for the beef pho, but the chicken pho at Pho Tai is delish.
White Center, 98106
Posted in Seattle, White Center Eats | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 16th, 2007
There’s a bright green building near the corner of Delridge and 16th. We sat in a booth inside pondering the remains of our meal. “You know, this wasn’t a waste of time,” we all agreed.”We would have had to do this sooner or later. We’d have seen this bright green place and said - we have to go eat THERE.”
It’s not the slow service, though the service is kind of a disaster. The food arrived in its own good time and was oddly combined across the plates. K’s tamale was on N’s plate, I got the maduras with my fish. N’s dish came from the kitchen well after everything else had arrived on the table and one of the tamales never came at all.
Okay, okay, I felt a little indulgent towards the service because the people that run the place seem like real sweethearts. You want them to do well - they’re friendly and rather charming. But when your food takes forever to get to the table, it has to be really spectacular to make up for it. My fish was big mass of bones and skin, fried whole. J’s chicken was unexceptional. The stuffed potato looked impressive but it was cold when it got to us. Everything left us non-plussed and feeling a bit doped up from too many carbs.
The owner told us that he has to rework the menu. Some of the dishes on there take too long to make, he says, and they’ve been pinched by large parties ordering complex dishes. They seemed pinched by our visit and there were only two other tables occupied when we were there.
All in all, a disappointing turn out. We have advice for the folks at Mi Bohio. Strip the menu way down. Make a few simple things and amp up the cooking to make them spectacular. Because there’s loads more to try in White Center, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be back to Mi Bohio. Research completed. Mi Bohio? Meh.
Read the review in the Seattle Times.
White Center, Mi Bohio
Posted in Seattle, White Center Eats | 1 Comment »
