Reno’s fish stories
True tales of seafood markets. ’Tis the season of traditions: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and fish. Fish? In many countries, eating fish at Christmas is a beloved custom. Italy’s Feast of the Seven Fishes may be the most famous, but the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Finland, and Fiji, among others, have similar rituals. Absent from […]
Staying power
Recipes for success at longtime local restaurants. This is a story about successful restaurants that have endured through changing tastes, changing economics, and even a pandemic. Our region is rich with restaurants that have persisted for generations. Call them landmark restaurants, iconic restaurants. Call this story the Good News Express. These icons are spread throughout […]
Changing Tastes
Vintage menus offer blueprint to popular dishes of yore. This column always requires detective work, but this one took the art of deduction to a new level. Inspired by local publisher Jack Bacon’s colorful collection of menus (see sidebar), I explored them to learn about food trends and changing tastes over the years. It was […]
Gourmet Dude-Ranch Cook
Edith Crook was a legend in her own time. Edith Crook was a legend in her own time and remains so today. She was a remarkable woman who took on many roles over 30 years: successful truck farmer, source of refuge for Japanese families during World War II, inventive cook during the divorce ranch years […]
Slot History
Fruits, bars, and the Liberty Belle, oh my! Did you ever wonder why slot machines, the quintessential symbol of Nevada, feature fruits and bars? If you, like me, write about local food history, this question is inevitable. The answer is buried in slot history and ultimately is connected to a long-popular restaurant in Reno, the […]
A Victorian Melodrama
The Comstock’s first coffee roaster. The story has all the makings of a melodrama: kidnapping, seduction, mistaken identity, murder, hanging, coffee. Coffee, you wonder? How does this perennially popular drink get tied up with a lurid story of the early days in Virginia City? It all goes back to Abel Laigneau, the first coffee roaster […]
It’s in the Sauce
A look back at the Wigwam Coffee Shop and its acclaimed apple pie. Reputations have been built on “secret sauce” — as evidenced by the creamy mixture in the McDonald’s Big Mac. Northern Nevada’s claim to fame may have been the buttery sauce served over hot apple pie at Les Lerude’s Wigwam Coffee Shop. Reno […]
Meals on Wheels
Drive-in restaurants roll into Northern Nevada. Drive-in, drive-through, curbside pickup — common terms as restaurants have struggled to meet the demands associated with coronavirus. But it was the 1940s and ’50s when drive-in dining first blasted onto the local food scene. It was bound to happen. Following World War II, the interstate highway system and […]
Hitting the Sweet Spot
Forty years with the Dainty Cake Shoppe. Maybe the only thing Americans like more than a good success story is a good slice of homemade cake. For four decades, Reno had them both, in a downtown bakery called Dainty Cake Shoppe, run by two Italian-American sisters, Virginia Pizorno and Mary Romano. A Tale of Two […]
Derailed Eatery
A V&T train becomes a diner. What happens when you cross Jules Verne, Steampunk, and food? It sounds like a Burning Man installation, but it also describes a diner that had a short life in Carson City. First known as Denny’s Diner and then renamed the V&T Super Chief Diner, it was housed in a […]