Peter Mumford

I Ate This: Stumptown Coffee Roasters Just Open

First Call: Hooverville

First Call: Marjorie

This American (Financial) Life: A Primer

Breaking: Adriana Grant Is Trapped in an Elevated Teeter-Totter at Lawrimore Project and Needs Food!

Well, not quite yet. But she will be soon. At around 10 this morning, Adriana and her partner, the photographer Peter Mumford, are climbing into Alex Schweder and NYC artist Ward Shelly's fascinating suspended structure at Lawrimore Project and will be spending 48 hours there together. The piece, ... More >>

Living on Art for 48 Hours

Stability tested our balance, and our relationship.

Does OTB have a death wish?

On the Boards struggles to survive the PR debacle following its abrupt dismissal of artistic director Mark Murphy.

Not Dead Yet: Green Cab Gets Its Taxis Back From the Bank

Peter Mumford​Green Cab Taxi, which seemed on the point of collapse in April, is still hanging on. In a meeting last month with King County, Green Cab representatives revealed that they had gotten back seven Toyota Priuses that had been repossessed by the bank. "It was a very happy moment," s ... More >>

First Call: The Living Room's Charlatan

Photo by Peter Mumford First Call is a weekly Voracious feature in which we walk into a bar and ask the bartender to make us his or her favorite drink.​Where: The Living Room, 1355 East Olive Way, 708-6021. As its name suggests, The Living Room aims to be a homey hangout for all those Capitol ... More >>

Food Porn for the Discriminating Palate: Mistral Kitchen

Photo courtesy of Peter Mumford​A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, right? Well that's just awesome, because it means that, in addition to the couple thousand actual words I dedicated to Mistral Kitchen in this week's review, I can now offer up 13,000 additional picture-y word ... More >>

Food Porn: On the Floor at Steelhead Diner

​"So how long is it now? Seven days?" "Yeah. No. Uh...from today? Eight days. 17th--that'll be friends and family. Soft open on the 19th. For the public." "So eight days." "Eight days." "But really ten days." "Not for us." This was me and Kevin Davis talking. This was Tuesday night, Marc ... More >>

Mind-Altering Meals at Bai Tong

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​There are restaurants that are like narrowing funnels of options, and there are restaurants that are like widening cones of potential experience. At the former, the chef, the crew or the kitchen is known for doing one or two things really well, and once you have th ... More >>

Food Porn: Hooked on Bai Tong

Photo courtesy Peter MumfordThose are just my favorite pants ever​I can tell you all about the food at Bai Tong. And I do, in this week's review. I can talk of curries and pad Thai, run down the twenty-year history of the place, describe the tastes, the textures, the smells. But none of that a ... More >>

Super Gyro Food Porn: Mawadda Cafe

Allegedly, the best falafel in Washington state​Even in the most promising of neighborhoods, it can be tough to find the good restaurants if you're not a local. Smart gastronauts have developed a number of tactics for uncovering the best of everything. When looking for Mexican food, I wrote i ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Viva Mexico!

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​We've had a couple rough weeks, food porn-wise. Last week, there was that Indian place that I didn't like at all and didn't feel warranted any more attention than it'd already been given. And the week before that? The Voracious Tasting slideshow(s) which were aweso ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Getting More Pork in You at Huong Binh

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​No matter how much you get out, how often you dine, how far and wide your tastes range, eventually you'll come across a dish that you have no idea how to eat. There will be implements. There will be ingredients both familiar and strange. There will be plates and bo ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Dim Sum Weekend

​I will occasionally build an entire weekend solely around the eating of dim sum. Plans, schedules, travel, movies, nights out and nights in--all of it circulating around the ridiculous consumption of as many tiny plates of Chinese food as I can eat for breakfast on Saturday, Sunday or both. T ... More >>

Michael Romano, Seattle Weekly Writer Turned Attorney, Gets Prominent New York Times Coverage for Three-Strikes Work

Romano's Stanford clinic has had great success.​Former Seattle Weekly writer Michael Romano, now an attorney in San Francisco, received some highly flattering coverage yesterday from the New York Times Magazine for his efforts to free prisoners convicted under California's three-strikes law. ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Eating it Raw at Chiso

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ There was something about Chiso that calmed me the moment I walked into the room--that balanced my chi, settled my bitter humors, unwound some kind of clockspring in the middle of my chest that I hadn't even known was there. I don't know if it was the place itsel ... More >>

Seattle's Essential Dishes: Jiao-zi from Mandarin Chef

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Jiao-zi from Mandarin Chef: Dumplings are a little like magic--a shared magic, common across almost every culinary canon, present, in wildly differing forms, in nearly all cuisines. From Japanese gyoza and Chinese potstickers to Tibetan momo, Russian pelmeni and ... More >>

Going Down to Dumpling Town at Mandarin Chef

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​"Mandarin Chef has been around now for 13 years in this one shotgun shack of a space, serving Sichuan chicken wings, dumplings and noodles to generations of college students and starving grubniks questing after that sweet hit of Chinese authenticity. It exists wher ... More >>

Seattle's Essential Dishes: Deluxe Burger at Dick's

Peter Mumford​ Deluxe Burger at Dick's: Some things are essential because they're just so good you can't help but want to share them with everyone you know (or everyone who reads your blog). Some things are essential just because they've been around for so long. And then there are those thi ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: After Dark at Beth's Cafe

​ Oh, Beth's... Now that I have found you, there is a small and forever wired part of me that wonders how I managed to survive even six months in this town without you. Never again will I have to wonder where to go after last call on a Wednesday night. Never will I have to wonder where the wi ... More >>

Pizza & Soccer for Breakfast? Only at Filiberto's

Peter MumfordMina Perry's pizza: It's what's for breakfast.​For fans of family-owned Filiberto's former no-man's-land space on the SeaTac-Tukwila border, their current space in downtown Burien is heaps easier to find, and just as good, food-wise. We popped in for lunch Saturday during the Bur ... More >>

Seattle's Essential Dishes: Short Rib (in various forms) at Crush

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ The short rib from Crush: The menu at Crush changes a lot. With the seasons, with the tides, with the phases of the moon and the product at the markets and the whims of the cooks and chef Jason Wilson. But one thing that's always there? The short rib.

Friday Food Porn: A Gastronaut's Crush

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ This week's review of Crush was all about the quiet competence of a kitchen deprived of its award-winning executive chef. It's about silence and the rush, about the kind of training it takes to make a galley function just as well when the chef is in the house as ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Burgers, Bitters and Fried Chicken

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ "The bar here is like a wizard's laboratory. There are bottles, flasks, and jeroboams everywhere, filled with strange colored liquids. Most of the labels are unfamiliar, the brands so boutique or relentlessly small-batch that I'd need an entire second life just t ... More >>

Guess Where I'm Eating...UPDATED AGAIN

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ What with the 4th of July just past, I figured what better way to celebrate summer than with a quick, BBQ-centric round of Guess Where I'm Eating. As always, first clue first TWO clues THREE clues now, after the jump, and updated as necessary. Guesses in the com ... More >>

Stan's Bar-B-Q: All the Low Glory

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​"One cannot eat barbecue every day, at every meal. No matter how much one wants to, one has to space out the pork ribs and pulled pork and smoked ham and half-chickens and even the occasional foray into brisket and hot links with fruits, vegetables, grains that are ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Kansas City BBQ, A Long Way From Home

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Issaquah, WA is a long way from Kansas City. But the route that Stan Phillips has taken to get here from there has been even more circuitous than the simple distance between two points on the map. He spent his childhood learning how to be a pit man by watching his ... More >>

Bai Tong Opens a New Location

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ "I wish I had a time machine," I wrote in my review of Bai Tong back in March. "Not for the traditional reasons; I have no desire to kill Hitler or stop JFK's assassination. I've read enough bad science fiction to know that those things never work out as well as ... More >>

Bai Tong, Redux

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Yesterday, I got to share the good news that Bai Tong--the fantastic historical oddity and awesome Thai food joint buried in a Tukwila strip mall--had expanded into a second location while I wasn't looking. "According to the Bai Tong Facebook page (yeah, I'm sur ... More >>

Seattle's Essential Dishes: Moo Dade Deaw at Bai Tong

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Moo Dade Deaw from Bai Tong: I don't know what that guy has on that service tray he's hauling, but I love that picture (mostly for the pants), and in my mind what he's carrying will always be another plate of Bai Tong's moo dade deaw--a dish I will forever assoc ... More >>

USDA's Racist Legacy, Much Noted in Shirley Sherrod Affair, Seems Thing of The Past for Yakima Valley's Latino Farmers

Peter Mumford​As the brouhaha continues to spiral over Shirley Sherrod, the ousted U.S. Department of Agriculture official charged (unfairly) with making racist remarks, some are delving into the department's history of discrimination. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack himself referred to it as justi ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Pirates Love Tater Tots

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ "In the beginning, there was the Admiral Benbow Inn..." That's how the history of this week's review subject--the Heartland Cafe and the newly recovered Benbow Room--kicks off. There's a great story in there about stained glass, about a dedicated drinker's love ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Something Fishy

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Safety Restaurants--that's what this week's review of Flying Fish is all about. It's about those places you keep in your back pocket like cab vouchers and the phone number of you favorite bail bondsman, held out against the day when you'll need them desperately a ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Elvis Will Never Leave This Building

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Santa, Mohamed Ali, cacti, Mexican banditos--it's all there. And that's just one small corner of Mama's Mexican Kitchen, one little slice of the place, a corner near the bathrooms, that is indicative of the crazy-weird schizophrenic design ... More >>

Vegan Barbecue, Part III: The Conclusion

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ A couple weeks ago, I posted what I thought was a fairly innocuous piece about vegans, vegetarians and the search for some decent cruelty-free barbecue. What someone should've reminded me of was that, these days, there is simply no such thing as an "innocuous piec ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Tofu Is Sexy(ish)

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Tofu, seitan, texturized vegetable protein, soy loaf... None of these generally make the list of really "sexy" foods. They don't usually get the kind of glossy, centerfold play that, say, a big fat cheeseburger would, or a thick steak, or a beautifully prepared s ... More >>

Seattle's Essential Dishes: Mac and Yease from Sage Cafe

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​ Mac and Yease from Sage Cafe: If you are a vegetarian or vegan, living and working in the greater Seattle area and trying to get through your daily grind without being cruel to any animals, then I'm willing to bet you already know all about Sage Cafe (formerly H ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: Empanadas and Mofongo at El Pilon

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford​The menu at El Pilón, on Rainier Avenue, is short and sweet--two pages, including drinks and desserts. We read it while watching various men come out of the kitchen, walk out the front door, shout into their cell phones, smoke cigarettes, come back in, adjust the ... More >>

Yakima Municipal Court, Following Controversy Stirred in Seattle, Begins Sentencing Policy with Dire Consequences for Immigrants

​Edsonya Charles, the presiding judge of Seattle Municipal Court locked in a tough reelection race, touched off a firestorm when she requested an opinion from an ethics advisory committee based on her misunderstanding of new sentencing recommendations implemented by City Attorney Pete Holmes. ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: The Best of 2010, Part 1

photo courtesy www.flickr.com/photos/suomynona/​ With the end of the year fast approaching and this week's review of Chipotle already lighting up the internets with no help required, we've decided to take a step back this Friday and start collecting the best of the best Food Porn of the past ... More >>

Friday Food Porn: The Best of 2010, Part 2

Photo courtesy Joshua Huston​ On Friday of last week, we had part 1 of the Friday Food Porn Best of 2010 collection of truly awesome food photography--10 snaps which covered the best of the first six months (or so) of this soon-to-be-concluded year. And today, we're continuing on with a Wedn ... More >>

E-Verify Bill Is Potential "Disaster," Washington Fruit Industry Says

photo by Peter Mumford​Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, believes every employer in America ought to be required to check their workers' social security numbers against a federal electronic database, a system called E-Verify, to weed out illegal immigrants from the nation's workf ... More >>