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What defines barbecue? And what is the difference between barbecue and grilling? Though the terms are frequently used interchangeably and the results (usually) delectable, they mean very different procedures and end results. As Chris Schlesinger explains in his 1990 book The Thrill of the Grill, grilling is placing food near a heat source and cooking by conduction, searing the exterior and concentrating juices on the interior while browning the outside (the Maillard effect). Barbecuing, on the other hand, means placing a large quantity of food (usually meat) within a pit or other closed chamber and letting it cook very slowly by indirect heat and smoke from a hardwood fire.

Grilling is fun, fast, and convenient. Barbecuing is not fast, easy, or cheap, but it is an obsession. Barbecue masters – nearly all men – might not sneer at a grilled steaks, but they won’t give you quarter if you try to usurp their title and skill. Writer Calvin Trillin noted that Henry Perry, who began the business that evolved into the legendary Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue in Kansas City, enjoyed seeing customers suffer when they sampled his incendiary sauce. Trillin explained that a man who spent all night tending a hardwood fire could be excused for developing some dark and malevolent tendencies. (Arthur Bryant himself later tamed the sauce down since he appreciated the sight of a returning customer more than a screaming customer.)

All this to say: most barbecue is not barbecue. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste good, or isn’t fun to share with all the family and college buddies, but don’t confuse it with the real deal. If in doubt, New Orleans-based food writer/barbecue cookbook author Colleen Rush helpfully compiled a list of 7 Foolproof Ways to Spot a Fake BBQ Joint.

For a couple of years, barbecue restaurants popped up all over the greater Redding area – Palo Cedro, Cypress Avenue, Shasta Lake – and one by one they disappeared into the gloaming. Fat Daddy’s Gourmet BBQ is one of, if not the, longest running barbecue restaurants in Redding. Located in an old A&W Stand (who else remembers those frosty mugs of root beer with the ice shards that slid into the drink?), Fat Daddy’s has been serving for over ten years and seems to still be going strong. Inside are easy-clean Formica tables and easy-mop flooring, with dollar bills tacked to the ceiling. Order at the counter and they’ll call your name when your food is ready. There’s a small condiment table stocked with extra sauce, pickles, and small semi-hot pickled peppers.

Tri-tip sandwich with macaroni salad, $8.25

Tri-tip is a notoriously tough but flavorful cut of meat that is popular with barbecue enthusiasts. It’s been Femme de Joie’s experience that barbecued tri-tip is nearly always dried out and exceedingly chewy, not unlike chewing on a baseball mitt or a pit bull’s tail. Since this tri-tip had never seen a barbecue, it didn’t suffer from toughness, though it was a bit fibrous. The meat itself was on the bland unseasoned side, but was slathered with copious amounts of barbecue sauce, as is all the meat served at Fat Daddy’s. The sauce was not as sweet as some commercial sauces, which Femme de Joie appreciates, and owed some of its flavor to molasses (as opposed to tomato and/or ketchup). The sandwiches came on rolls that were a bit better than the average roll and did not fall apart into a soggy mess. To be sure it was a generous serving and fair for the price. Macaroni salad was a deli standard with little to distinguish it.

Pulled beef sandwich with potato salad, $8.25

A variation on pulled pork, shredded beef was doused heavily with barbecue sauce. The meat itself was more tender than the tri-tip – not too surprising – and maybe more flavorful, though it was hard to tell since all Femme de Joie could really taste was the sauce. Potato salad on the side seemed to have come from the same place as the macaroni salad: nothing bad about it but neither was there anything special.

Chicken meal with cole slaw and Caesar salad, $10.25

Femme de Joie could not fault the tenderness and moistness of the chicken. Three pieces (a leg and two thighs) were fall-apart tender and juicy, but again, these were not cooked on a barbecue or a grill since the skin was flabby without any crust, and again, absolutely soaked in sauce. Caesar salad (Caesar salad at a BBQ place?) was deliciously crunchy and tart. Cole slaw was fresh and likewise crunchy. Both salads were big improvements over the very average potato and macaroni salads.

Obviously Fat Daddy’s knows their target audience since they’ve been in business eleven years (an eternity in the restaurant industry and especially in Redding). Portions are fair for the money and customers seem to love the barbecue sauce (for sale on site). It isn’t real barbecue, but then they don’t claim to be (despite the giant portable grill chained outside). Femme de Joie doesn’t crave sweet goopy barbecue sauces much – a little goes a very long way in her estimation – so while she wouldn’t make a special trip to Four Corners for Fat Daddy’s, if she wound up dining there she wouldn’t kick too much. But she would definitely ask for sauce on the side.

Fat Daddy’s Gourmet BBQ, 942 Hartnell Avenue, Redding CA 96002. 530-221-8270. Open Monday through Friday, 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Closed weekends. No checks. Parking lot. Not much for vegetarians to see here except salad. Website at http://www.fatdaddysredding.com/
or follow them on Facebook.

If you are of a certain age and grew up in the North Valley, you probably have some indelible memories of summer. Your family car might have been a Ford Falcon or a Rambler with vinyl bench seats (sans seat belts) that got hot enough to leave burn marks on bare legs. There were no shopping malls; all stores faced a street and you walked outside regardless of weather. You might have attended a school that didn’t have air conditioning. And the summer light was intensely, squint-inducingly bright. As we now look through a glass darkly, idyllic long hot summer days of yore have turned in adulthood into an endless string of days to slog through the best we can.

And yet now and then, Femme de Joie yearns for a bit of a return to those old days, to revisit that place and time before satellite radio, factory outlet shopping centers, and drive-through coffee floggers made every freeway exit exactly like every other one. There are places that resist the urge to tear it all down and build nice new uniformly sterile business districts, instead reveling in their past and refusing to share in the growing sameness of America.

One such place is Cottonwood. In the heat of the day Main Street has a starkness and silence that might be one person’s post-apocalyptic vision, but to Femme de Joie it’s a slice of North Valley summers past. No doubt there are longtime residents who will protest that sentiment – “You shoulda seen it before I-5!” – but downtown seems to have retained much of its historic flavor. No refrigerated air between shops. No franchise Crate-and-Barn. No chain restaurants. And what’s there isn’t prettied-up much for the tourist trade: it’s what it is, take it or leave it. Femme de Joie kind of likes that.

Macias el Michoacano looks a great deal like the diners and coffee shops M. de Joie recalls from childhood-era road trips. She guesses it was built about the same time as the motel-slash-RV-park right next to it, probably in the early 1960s. Set off Main Street on a sort of frontage road/circle, It’s easy to drive right past (which she did). The building hasn’t been updated in years except for a new exterior coat of paint now and then and strings of Christmas lights around the windows. The interior is, for lack of a better word, shabby, with a lot of red duct tape holding upholstery together, some posters curling off the wall, and an evaporative cooler struggling to keep up. It isn’t retro-inspired: it IS retro.

Cooking was done by a young man and service by a friendly woman who didn’t speak a lot of English. Food is cooked to order so expect to wait about 15 minutes or longer. House-made chips were fresh and hot. The table salsa was very mild; another salsa, a puree of dried chiles is available on request and it is quite hot – mix it with the mild for a good compromise.

Huevos rancheros, $6.99

When you order Huevos Rancheros, you never really know how it will be presented, but most often it’s fried eggs smothered in tomato-based salsa. The tomato-and-chile salsa was there but only a light covering along with an equally light pour of crema, with eggs fried well done on corn tortillas. Accompanying it was really wonderful homemade refried pinto beans – definitely not out of a can, these were about half mashed and half left whole, slightly smoky, with a scattering of cheese. One of the better renditions of this dish to be found in the area.

Chile verde burrito, $7.99

Surprisingly plain in appearance, the filling was tangy and tart with tomatillo-and-chile sauce and pot-roasted shreds of pork. No attempt was made to dress this up just for looks, but after tasting it, M. de Joie didn’t mind the starkness of the plate. Savory and not spicy-hot, the simplicity of well-made chile verde didn’t need a garnish on the side.

Tripas (tripe) taco, $2.59

The mere thought of tripe makes most people retch, but M. de Joie enjoys the pungent flavor against simple corn tortillas. If not cooked properly, tripe is extremely tough, but these niblets were only slightly chewy; the contrasting garnishes of onion, cilantro, and lime enhanced the flavor without covering it up.

Chile rellano and cheese enchilada lunch combination, $7.99

A chile rellano was the only disappointment. There was far too much gloppy semi-melted cheese on top; the filling was a mass of unpleasantly chewy, stringy cheese. Too bad, because the fresh chile (instead of canned) was nicely cooked and non-greasy, but the excess of unpalatable cheese ruined it. Cheese enchiladas weren’t nearly as gummy as the rellano, with a stronger-flavored sauce made of a puree of dried chiles. Mexican sour cream topped the dish, which is noticeably runnier and more sour than American-style sour cream.

Macias el Michoacano isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re put off by a somewhat dive-y cafe that has seen far better days, steer clear. It won’t win any awards for looks and the upkeep is minimal. But there were steady streams of locals coming in for to-go orders and more than a few repeat customers, enjoying the rock-bottom prices and unpretentious simple food. It might not be worth a special trip to Cottonwood, but if you’re in Cottonwood shopping for antiques or Christmas ornaments, give it a try.

Macias el Michoacano, 3800 Main Street, Cottonwood, CA 96022. 530- 347-6036. Open daily, 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Beer and wine. Cards and cash, no checks. Parking lot. Vegetarian options. Follow them on Facebook.

The term “Mongolian barbecue” was first used by Chinese actor Wu Jau-nan when he opened a restaurant in Taipei in 1951. In “Unmentionable Cuisine,” the late Calvin Schwabe described Mongolian barbecue as being Taiwanese and similar to certain cookery from Korea (bul-gogi) and Japan (teppanyaki and jingisukan). The “legend” about Genghis Khan’s soldiers cooking their meals on their shields or helmets are amusing, but Femme de Joie finds it unlikely that entire armies would be sent out on lengthy campaigns with no thought to who was going to feed all those men and instead decide that they should just rustle up some grub on their own.

The building at 2151 Market Street in Redding has been a Bermuda Triangle of bars and restaurants, some good (River City Bar & Grill), some bad (a bar M. de Joie visited long ago to hear an astonishingly loud and spectacularly awful band; she has forgotten both the name of the bar and the band), and the neither here nor there (Zippers, Rainbow Lounge, Eddy’s Grill, et al). To stretch a metaphor beyond all reason, businesses in that spot became a Flying Dutchman of doom. Femme de Joie thinks this may be because the location is apparently invisible; when she tries to describe it to someone (“South of Jiffy Lube. Kind of across from Mallory’s Florist”), the response is invariably furrowed brows and puzzled expressions.

Succeeding where its predecessors have failed is Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ. Though kahuna is a Hawaiian word and Mongolian is, well, Mongolian, the name seems appropriate for a Pan-Asian restaurant concept. It’s been packing them in for over a year and is one of the few downtown restaurants open every day for both lunch and dinner.

The interior has a tiki-bar kind of feel with a lot of fake orchids and wood paneling. When a customer is seated, waitstaff asks if they have ever been there before. If this is the first visit, the procedure is explained and your order for white or brown rice is taken. Ramps and steps lead customers down to salad bar tables filled with a selection of thinly sliced meats, raw shrimp, parboiled noodles, vegetables, tofu, and eggs.

Diners fill a bowl with their choice of ingredients and then move to a sauce bar, where they choose as many sauces as they like (Thai chili sauce, beer, garlic oil, teriyaki ,and so forth) to ladle over the filled bowls. Just to the left of the sauce bar is a shelf with shakers of seasonings (thyme, chipotle, sesame oil, lime juice, etc.). Moving to the left is an open window to the grill itself, a small selection of last-minute additions (peanuts, coconut, sesame seeds) to toss onto the now-brimming bowl before handing off the food to one of the cooks.

The cooks do a sort of ballet around the grill, maneuvering the food with a long pair of “swords.” When it’s cooked, the food is slid off the grill into a fresh bowl and handed back to the diner.

There is a certain sameness to what all the food looks like when it’s come off the grill, a sort of swirly brownness. The end result is really up to the diner and their wise (or not) choice of ingredients and sauces. It might be tempting, for instance, to load the bowl entirely with shrimp, and some people probably do that, but it’s more fun and interesting to combine a variety of vegetables and meat with different sauces. In theory you could eat at Kahuna several times a week and never have the same flavors, textures, or ingredients repeated.

Since Asian food is chockablock with allergens – soy, peanuts, gluten – a sign says that if you tell the cooks about your sensitivity they will clean the grill before cooking your food. Femme de Joie did not witness this happening on her visits so she cannot say exactly how they clean the grill – whether that means only scraping the top of all detritus or actually scrubbing the surface to remove trace amounts. This may seem frivolous to non-allergy sufferers, but a person with a peanut allergy could die if they ate a meal cooked on the same grill that previously had peanuts on it – so ask, ask, ask.

But there are a couple of things newbie diners ought to be aware of. From Kahuna’s website:

Lunch includes one bowl of stir-fry and rice, $10.99 (you may take your leftovers home).

Dinner is TWO times through buffet line maximum, including our steamed white rice, and flour tortillas $14.99 (If you do not finish your first bowl you make take that home, but if you do get a second there will be no to go boxes

Seniors (65 and older) and children (5-10) – Lunch $10.49 – Dinner $12.99 (same as Dinner explanation)

So if Femme de Joie understand this correctly: you may buy dinner for $14.99, for which you are entitled to two trips through the buffet line. If you do not finish your second bowl of food – which you own, since the understood contract between a diner and a restaurant is that the customer pays for their food – you cannot keep it. The restaurant will throw your food away. Bad customer! At lunch, it turns out, you get one trip through the buffet line BUT (what the website does not tell you) is that if you want shrimp or lamb (which are included on the dinner buffet), that is $3.00 extra – making the lunch buffet cost as much as dinner, but you get half as much.

Femme de Joie must be missing something here. Such a policy can only result in arguments between customers and waitstaff, who will suffer the brunt of righteous anger, and waste of perfectly good food. However, the website does not say that a customer cannot place the leftover food in their own to-go box (which are available in bulk at Cash and Carry) or a piece of aluminum foil, thoughtfully folded and tucked into a pocket before entering the restaurant. And really: $12.99 for a five-year-old’s dinner? If management is afraid of grifter children and seniors defrauding them left and right, perhaps a look at “small” meal option is in order.

Other than that, Femme de Joie likes Kahuna’s. It’s rather fun, you know exactly what you’re getting, and staff is friendly and helpful (though they do tend to disappear after they’ve delivered your drink and rice). It does get crowded with long lines, so visiting before or after peak dining hours is suggested.

Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ, 2151 Market Street, Redding, CA 96001. 530-244-4200. Open daily, 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Cash and cards. Beer, wine, low-alcohol cocktails. Vegan and vegetarian options. Gluten-free and other special diets accommodated (but ask about how the grill is cleaned). Parking lot. Outdoor seating available. Website at http://kahunasmongolianbbq.com/

Not everyone loved the old Hatch Cover Restaurant, but it held a warm place in Femme de Joie’s heart from many get-togethers with family and friends over the years. She loved the retro-70s vibe with the piped-in Pablo Cruise-y music, the cozy sofa nook in the lounge, that weird painting of the man in black heading down the stairs in the lighthouse, the cute waiters in Hawaiian shirts, even the cherry-scented liquid soap in the ladies’ room. The food wasn’t haute cuisine, to be sure, but it was competently prepared and great value for money. (There was a Chico branch of the Hatch Cover too, set so far back from the Esplanade that it was barely noticeable under the trees.) It just about broke M. de Joie’s heart ten years ago when she drove past the old Hatch Cover and saw all that lovely wood from the interior broken and tossed into dumpsters like worn-out holey socks. After a series of unfortunate and untoward events, the late Rivers opened and closed two years later; in 2012, Redding restaurant empresario Joe Wong opened View 202 on that spot.

Clearie’s, Moonstone Bistro, Nello’s Place, Cafe Paradisio, Market Street Steakhouse, Peter Chu’s, Gironda’s, and View 202, among others, all compete for the diner looking for that special occasion restaurant. What is that special something, that je ne sais quoi, that makes the consumer choose one place over another? Is it the buzz, the bartender who knows your special drink, the dark corner where a discreet affair can be carried out, the salad dressing? With the demographics and population of Redding, a place like View 202 needs to set itself apart from the others, to court consumers seeking white-tablecloth occasion dining. But are they getting their money’s worth?

Femme de Joie enjoys a well-appointed restaurant interior as well as a kitschy one, but she can’t figure out what’s going on at View 202. It was as if three or four decorators were each given a section to work on – a white wall splashed with big blowsy flowers befitting a ladies’ tearoom; the patio’s mishmash of black wicker chairs, white plastic chairs, and red and purple sofas; an ultra-modern exterior; plain faux-granite tabletops, concrete floors, and Ikea-inspired hanging lights. It appears to have been inspired by Carnival Cruise Line ships, not to dis Carnival.

Ahi avocado burger and cup of Pismo Beach clam chowder, $15.00

When Femme de Joie orders a burger, she expects to get, you know, a burger. She would not have described this as a burger. Four thin slices of ahi – a meaty-textured fish – were seared rare and placed on a rather good brioche bun along with an extremely small fan of thin avocado slices. The wasabi-lime slaw was overwhelmingly bitter; a couple of black soy beans does not an aioli make. Other than the bitter slaw and the buttery brioche, this was one bland sandwich.

Femme de Joie doesn’t know what distinguishes Pismo Beach clam chowder from any other creamy clam chowder, though perhaps it was the lump of melted cheese she found glommed onto the bottom of the soup cup. The soup was on the thin side but the cheese was on the thick side, so it balanced out.

Cherry Tart, $5.00

On a visit for dinner, M. de Joie asked if she could sit and have a drink before dinner. The hostess offered her “the couch.” Where couch? Outside, inside? It turned out to be on the patio, as there were Happy Hour specials “on the couch,” though it wasn’t clear if those specials could be had not on the couch. The hostess seemed determined that the couch should be occupied.

Once M. de Joie had her Cherry Tart, described as a whiskey sour with fresh cherries (the Maraschino cherry didn’t qualify as fresh and there weren’t any other cherries in the glass), she became invisible for an hour. Other than one waitress asking if she would like to order a bar snack, M. de Joie was completely ignored. While Femme de Joie is of that age where she is passed over in favor of younger and hotter women, it seemed a bit remarkable how completely she was forgotten. Eventually she had to get up and go find the hostess to ask to be seated for dinner, who began preparing a place for her on the by-then chilly patio- which M. de Joie demurred in favor of a table indoors.

Warm bread came with herb olive oil made with celery, basil, parsley, and capers as described by the female waitstaff who filled water glasses- she said she made it. The oil was delicious, the bread average.

Maseca calamari, $13

Spicy Fresno chilies and the medium-hot sauce were the best things about this appetizer. While the breading was evenly cooked, the calamari strips were floppy, not crisp, and on the oily side.

Steak frites, $19.00

When food processors became popular in the late 1970s, purees suddenly appeared on every plate. Purees of turnips and zucchini, carrot and beet, potatoes and apple. It was part of the nouvelle cuisine movement, which happily disappeared quickly as diners realized they didn’t particularly care for baby food on their plates. Remember Nora Ephron’s great line, “Pesto is the quiche of the ’80’s”? Sous-vide appears to be the food processor of the 2010s. Sous-vide is translated as “under vacuum” but might be better described as “in a boiling bag.” It’s the darling of certain modernist chefs but to Femme de Joie, it’s an annoying fad that will eventually wind up on garage sale tables alongside Bacon Bowl makers, Taco Salad Shell makers, and Salad Shooters.

So: The steak did not appear to be grilled; it appeared to be cooked sous-vide with grill marks added later. While sous-vide ensures an extremely tender steak, it also eliminates the flavorful crisp and seasoned browned exterior – the Maillard reaction. The interior is one uniform color – here, pink (M. de Joie ordered it cooked rare) – and one uniform mouthfeel (soft). However, with the fatty, enveloping coat of butter – not just a melting pat, but a cold cream-like swath – any exterior browning was completely smothered. Limp shoestring potatoes were so salty with Parmesan and bacon that even a salty-food addict such as M. de Joie couldn’t get through them. Described on the menu as “grilled bistro fillet, crispy pancetta and brown butter sauce atop a mountain of Parmesan shoestring fries,” this was a far cry from the simple and superb steak frites served in even the meanest French bistro.

Smoked corned beef sandwich with chopped starter salad, $13.00

House-smoked corned beef was smoky but also very dry and fibrous. Combined with bacon-braised sauerkraut and aged white cheddar, it made for an unpleasantly salty sandwich. A very small chopped starter salad served in an even smaller bowl was awkward to stab with a fork but freshly made and crisp.

Side of macaroni and cheese, $6.00

M. de Joie liked the intense Cheddar taste of the macaroni and cheese; though it was a little watery when first served, the sauce thickened upon standing to cling to al dente pasta.

What to say about View 202? The view is nice from the patio. Waitstaff was mostly helpful and friendly (though it bugs M. de Joie when she asks a question and gets, “Uhhhh, I’m not really sure….” Just say you don’t know, then go find out). But the food misses the mark – so much and so often so that she felt it was a waste of good ingredients as well as overpriced for the end result.

Speaking of overpriced: an uninspired glass of Markham Sauvignon Blanc (year unknown; why isn’t the year on the wine list?) cost $9/ $32 for a bottle, yet BevMo sells it for $10.99. Alexander Valley’s Redemption Zinfandel was a much better wine but View 202 priced it the same as the Markham; Wine.com sells the 2012 for $12.99. Even more shocking, $14 a glass for Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling, available at BevMo for $6.99 a bottle. If you want to bring your own wine, View 202 charges $18 corkage (compared to $12 at Nello’s Place and $15 at Clearie’s and Moonstone Bistro). Femme de Joie has nothing against restaurants making a profit – that is why they’re in business – but she does object to blatant gouging.

Obviously Femme de Joie is missing whatever View 202’s fans see in it. She has no problem with spending money in high-end restaurants if the product is worth the price, but she doesn’t see that value at View 202. She might have a glass of iced tea on the patio, but she’ll eat elsewhere.

View 202, 202 Hemsted Drive, Redding, CA 96002. 530-226-8439. Serving lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch. Open Monday through Thursday, 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM, Friday and Saturday, 11:00 AM to midnight, Sunday 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Cash and cards. Parking lot. Vegetarian and vegan options. Full bar. Website at http://view202redding.com/

Pity the poor cilantro hater. Genetically disposed to loathe the pungent herb ubiquitous to Latin and Asian cooking, they find themselves the object of disbelief, mockery, and repeated attempts to recruit them to the legions of cilantro lovers. There are online support groups via Facebook,
communities such as I Hate Cilantro (“The most offensive food known to man”), blog posts (“I just thought somebody had emptied a bottle of Old Spice on my pizza”), and haikus (“Evil leaf from hell/ go back to where you came from/ you are not wanted”). Julia Child claimed she would pick cilantro out of any dish and throw it on the floor.

Femme de Joie has to admit that her first encounter with cilantro was not a pleasant one. Inspired as a teenager by Elena Zelayeta’s cookbook “Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking,” she optimistically planted some and was horrified at the stinky, nasty herb that resulted; she had thought it would be more like parsley. A few years later at the dearly departed Sam Wo’s Restaurant in San Francisco, she encountered some cilantro in a bowl of won ton soup and had to pick it out carefully (she had already encountered the legendary Edsel Ford Fung and did not wish to draw any more attention to herself).

M. de Joie can’t remember when she eventually succumbed to the charms of this lovely herb, but she thinks it must have been a gradual adjustment similar to what Dr. Jay Gottfried of Northwestern University suggests. A life without cilantro would certainly limit one’s ability to enjoy certain cuisines. And that brings us to Thai Hut in Redding. It surely would be hell on earth for someone who hates cilantro but a tiny slice of heaven for everyone else. Situated in the old Wall Street Pizza building, there are perhaps eight tables inside and half a dozen outside in front. Cheerful and helpful waitresses do their best to keep up with the lunchtime crowd – and it does get crowded.

Nam Koaw, fried crispy rice salad, $8.49

This dish goes by half a dozen other names and spellings.Similar to the minced duck lettuce wraps served in Chinese restaurants, this version is so much more complex. A fine mince of crispy rice, preserved pork, coconut flakes, green onions, cilantro, and peanuts, you scoop it onto a lettuce leaf, wrap it up as best you can, and attempt to pop it into your mouth without spilling any; if that fails, just use a fork. This was wildly delicious. Listed as an appetizer, it was enough for lunch.

Lunch specials all come with a salad with a sweet mustardy dressing, light and refreshing.

Curry of your day, $7.99 as lunch special

During an extremely busy lunch hour M. de Joie ordered pork in yellow curry and got chicken instead. Since it had taken 50 minutes to get that, she didn’t feel up to returning it. However, it was not a disappointment: chicken breast strips with assorted strips of vegetables in medium heat yellow curry were all cooked perfectly. The savory sauce was good enough to lick the bowl clean. She was less crazy about the sweet and sour sauce that accompanied the egg roll, as it was overwhelmingly vinegary.

Bean sprouts, Jalapenos, cilantro, basil

Small beef pho, $6.75

It wasn’t that many years ago that pho was an unknown in Redding’s Asian restaurants; fortunately it’s now served in at least half a dozen places. Thai Hut’s version used a lighter beef broth than M. de Joie has tasted elsewhere, and there didn’t seem to be as much beef in the bowl in other places, which is probably a reflection of the bargain price. Plenty of noodles, though, and a generous plate of the standard fresh add-ons helped make up for that.

Chicken wings, $7.49

These were by far the best chicken wings Femme de Joie has ever had in a restaurant: very flavorful, crisp, non-greasy, and a generous serving. They were wonderful eaten as is, though she mixed some incendiary chili-garlic paste into the sweet and sour sauce to pour over, and that was delightful too.

M. de Joie likes Thai Hut very much and will definitely return. The prices are low ($7.99 lunch specials) and the generous servings of well-prepared food have produced a loyal fan base. It can be agonizingly slow at lunchtime, so try to schedule a visit outside of peak hours. Be advised: cilantro is served.

Thai Hut, 1165 Hartnell Avenue, Redding CA 96002. 530-222-8405. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM, Sunday 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Closed Monday. Cash and cards; no checks. Beer and wine. Small parking lot. Vegan and vegetarian options.

In his 1983 book “Third Helpings,” journalist Calvin Trillin investigated the infamous Fried Chicken Wars of Crawford County, Kansas. It seems that Chicken Annie had made a name for herself in the 1930s until 1943, when Chicken Mary opened up her fried chicken palace at the corner where customers turned off the main road to get to Annie’s. There was subtle guerrilla warfare between the two restaurants – little digs, “accidentally” directing drivers to the wrong restaurant – that finally came to a head in the 1970s, when a road may or may not have been named in honor of Chicken Annie. Chicken Mary partisans denied involvement with the sign being torn down. Eventually Chicken Annie’s grandson and Chicken Mary’s granddaughter married and opened their own chicken restaurant.

Femme de Joie isn’t sure who brought the first wood-fired pizza oven to Redding, but so far there have been no squabbles, no shots fired, no attempts to sabotage the mozzarella. As far as M. de Joie can tell, the proprietors like each other. Cinders was the first to jump through the building code hoops to bring their pizza indoors – it took an eternity – but now they have set up a successful shop in Market Square. A varnished wood counter with red plastic stools allows diners to watch pizza being made; or sit at wooden tables inside or outside the shop. Service is friendly; if they’re busy expect to wait about 20 minutes for your order.

Half Caesar salad, $5.00

M. de Joie isn’t sure about those asymmetrical bowls – they tip, and one side lower than the other makes it hard to mix with a fork – but she did like the crunchy Romaine and shards of Parmesan cheese in the Caesar. She’s given up expecting real Caesar dressing in restaurants (it involves a raw or coddled egg) but this lemony dressing was pleasant in its place.

Greek pizza, $10.00

Greek pizza included feta, mozzarella, fresh basil, olive oil, Kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and balsamic reduction. Femme de Joie liked the toppings, especially the balsamic reduction contrasting with salty olives and feta, but thought the crust was undercooked and a bit doughy.

Half Greek salad, $5.00

Spinach and spring mix, sun-dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and feta with balsamic reduction and olive oil

Again, the odd bowls made this difficult to eat. Sweet-tangy balsamic reduction and olive oil against the salty mixture of Mediterranean ingredients made for a light and refreshing salad, though the sun-dried tomatoes were in unwieldy hunks that couldn’t be cut into manageable pieces with a fork.

Margherita pizza, $8.00

Margherita is the Little Black Dress of pizza. It has nothing to do with the tequila drink, and doubt has been cast about whether it was really named for Queen Margherita, but it’s the Pizza Standard. The fresh basil was the best thing on this pizza: it was underbaked, leaving a globby morass of mozzarella and much too much sauce floating on top, never adhering to the crust.

Pepperoni pizza, $8.00

This was a wonderful pizza, Though there was a lot of oil – hard to avoid that with pepperoni – the sausage was spicy with crisp edges and the crust was baked so that the bottom was slightly crisp, the interior chewy, soft and naan-like.

Cinders have wisely limited their menu by not including sandwiches and lasagna and bread sticks at the restaurant; they normally offer about six pizzas at any one time along with specials. Ingredients are high-quality and fresh. The prices are right for individual pizzas and salads. Femme de Joie would like to see the pizzas baked longer to become a fusion of topping/crust rather than separate goopy sliding elements. Don’t fear that random blackened bubble – that’s going to happen with the unpredictable temperature fluctuations in wood-fired ovens. There are good things going on here and M. de Joie hopes they get better,

Cinders Wood Fired Pizza, 1415 Market Street, Redding, CA 96001 (in Market Square at the north end of the mall). 530-605-0665. Open Monday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM (though they may run out of dough and close early). Cash, cards. No alcohol. Parking lot. Vegan and vegetarian options; gluten-free crust offered. Website at http://cinderspizza.com/ or follow them on Facebook.

Jane and Michael Stern, those chroniclers of true American food, wrote in their 1986 travelogue-cum-cookbook “Real American Food” of the Southern phenomena of combining food and unrelated commerce: “Drive along a country road in the Mississippi Delta and you will come across Upholstery Repair-Catfish Parlors, Flats Fixed-Barbecues, and Seamstress-Tamale Stands.” In “American Fried,” journalist Calvin Trillin described interrogating a Muskogee, Oklahoma resident about a local barbecue joint – “They have plates there?” Trillin asked suspiciously. In the end he wrangled directions to a highway diner where the proprietor flapped down butcher paper topped with wax paper topped with first-rate barbecue.

Somewhere along the way west, cuisine became sanitized. Not to mock food safety laws (well, perhaps a little), but we do tend to fear food that isn’t served in a regulation restaurant setting. Whether it’s a Roach Coach or Pilot Death Dogs or a Gut Bomb, people seem to get a little nervous about eating food served in unfamiliar territory.

There’s probably no business more ubiquitous to California than gas stations, almost all of which now have some form of mini-mart inside. Suppose all that room devoted to prepackaged junk food was converted into small cafes?

That’s what happened at the Valero Station on Churn Creek Road, where El Delicioso Burrito lives. Yes, you can still get your candy bars and Zig-Zag papers at the cashier, but look just a little further back and you’ll see a small dining room. Walk back and you’ll see the menu above the counter. Order and have a seat – it never takes very long. Service is friendly and fast.

Carne asada burrito. $5.99

The first time Femme de Joie visited, she went through the drive-though. There was a bit of confusion and she wasn’t sure what she would wind up actually getting, since the disembodied speaker voice doesn’t seem to have a firm command of English, and M. de Joie’s Spanish is limited to “comer el lapiz” and “es muy puerta.” It was confusing, and not in a hilarity-ensues kind of way.

But the burrito delivered was a good one; filled with a generous scoop of slightly crispy beef kernels mixed with tomato, onion, guacamole, and cilantro, it was savory, not greasy, and a good value. Salsa verde on the side was indifferent.

Fish tacos with rice and beans, $7.99

Fish tacos are one of those items on a menu that could go either way – like the little girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead, when they’re good they are very very good, but when they are bad they are horrid. Fortunately, these were the good ones, crunchy and fresh out of the deep fryer, each wrapped in two corn tortillas in a futile attempt to keep the taco from splitting and the filling tumbling out. Toppings were fresh as well; the pico de gallo available at the serve-yourself salsa bar was particularly good on these. Femme de Joie was less crazy about the rice and beans on the side, dry and tired; M. de Joie couldn’t bring herself to finish either one.

Beef enchiladas, $7.99

Enchiladas were surprisingly light and non-greasy, filled with cubelets of braised beef and topped very lightly with cheese and shredded lettuce. The hot salsa at the salsa bar was not flamethrower hot and worked well on these. The refried beans and rice were much improved with this combo plate.

If you’re feeling peckish out in Big Box Land, it isn’t always easy to find something to eat. El Delicioso Burrito isn’t a place to sit for hours savoring your meal, nor is it comparable to a place like La Cabana, but that isn’t really its goal. It’s fast food – but it didn’t come packaged frozen in a corporate portion-controlled box from Cleveland. It’s all prepared to order in the tiny kitchen. While Femme de Joie wouldn’t make a special trip to eat there, she certainly wouldn’t spurn it if she was out shopping for a solar-powered hairbrush at Megastore R Us and needed some lunch. Inexpensive, quick, flavorful, open early to late – consider stopping in.

El Delicioso Burrito, 1275 Churn Creek Road inside the Valero gas station (at Old Alturas), Redding, CA 96003. 530-222-2921. Open daily, 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM. Small dining room and drive-though. No alcohol. Vegetarian and vegan options. Parking lot. Cash and cards; no checks. Follow them on Facebook.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scot who emigrated to America and made an enormous fortune in steel. In 1889 he wrote an article titled Wealth, promoting his view that with great wealth came great responsibility. When he turned 65 in 1900, he began philanthropic works with his amassed millions, including funding the construction of 1,679 libraries in the United States. One of those was built in Redding in 1904 where Library Park now lies. It was demolished in 1962.

Just west of that long-gone brick edifice, on the southwest corner of Yuba and Oregon, was the old three-story Western Hotel. (In those days West Redding was chockablock with hotels and boarding houses.) The third floor was removed after a fire and the hotel apparently continues as residence rentals to this day. The ground floor hosted some offices; a place called Cafe Filosophy briefly occupied 1600 Oregon Street before the Carnegie name came around again.

When Carnegie’s opened in 1998, there weren’t many places for lunch within walking distance of the courthouse or the many associated offices nearby. Though more restaurants have opened up since then, it’s still very popular and usually fills up during the noon hour. Service is friendly and efficient.

Cashew chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat rye bread with tomato basil soup, $11.99

The menu says the cashew chicken salad consists of chicken, celery, green onions, cashews, raisins, and mayonnaise, but all Femme de Joie could taste was raisins. She likes raisins to a point, but this was overwhelming. Maybe she got the scoop of salad where all the raisins were hiding. Maybe whoever made the salad went bonkers with the measuring cup. It was impossible to taste chicken or cashews or anything but raisins. She did pull out a small pale green square of vegetation that at first seemed to be cucumber; on closer inspection it proved to be celery which was a bit squidgy and past its expiration date – leading M. de Joie to feel that the day’s chicken salad had been mixed with some older chicken salad. And raisins.

Carnegie’s is justifiably famous for their tomato-basil soup, a lightly creamy tomatoey blend with an herbal hint. It would have been even more delightful if it had been hot.

Half order of chicken Caesar salad, $8.99, with Cheddar ale soup, $3.49

A half-salad was a generous portion, quite enough for lunch. Chopped Romaine and tender bitelets of moist chicken were tossed with a lemony dressing and showered with feathery shards of Parmesan cheese, making a light meal feel as hearty as if it had bits of steak in it. Cheddar ale soup tasted like exactly both – the salty mineral graininess of Cheddar as well as the bitter bite of ale. It might appeal to adults more than children with those grown-up strong flavors. If it had been hot, it would have been excellent.

Reuben sandwich on whole wheat rye with potato salad, $11.99

One of the few grilled sandwiches on the Carnegie’s menu, the Reuben was packed with mild and lean pastrami and a nice icing of melted cheese. However, Femme de Joie noticed something was not quite right. Prodding around with her fork, she deconstructed the sandwich and eventually found what she was looking for: an extremely thin scatter of sauerkraut threads mashed into the mustard. Perhaps Carnegie’s customers leave most of the sauerkraut behind and so they’ve decided to tone it down, but a Reuben without sauerkraut, or with virtually none, is an ordinary pastrami sandwich. Potato salad on the side was delicious, made with red-skinned new potatoes, slightly sweet and freshly made.

Carnegie’s is in an appealing casual space with lots of light from tall and wide windows as well as a more intimate upstairs seating area. The menu is kept simple so that service is fairly fast even when it’s busy; portions are fair for the price. But there are some problems in execution – lukewarm soups and sandwich fillings that miss the mark. Those aren’t big things individually, but after three consecutive meals with a noticeable flaw in each, Femme de Joie wonders if anyone in the kitchen is getting feedback from customers or if people are just eating and silently acquiescing. It wouldn’t take much to straighten the problems out – a little attention to detail and voila! Really good food.

Carnegie’s, 1600 Oregon Street, Redding, California 96001. 530-246-2926. Open Monday & Tuesday, 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Wednesday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM with limited menu. Cards and cash; no checks. Vegetarian and vegan options. Beer and wine. Street parking.

It was during the 1970s and early 1980s when a predilection took hold for restaurants to be named after a fictional person, names with little or no association to the actual owners and operators: Ruby Tuesday’s, Tia’s Tex-Mex, R.J. Monkeyshines, Applebee’s, and so forth. These sorts of restaurants usually sported a certain sameness – bar with shiny fixtures, high alcohol cocktails, and main courses that absorbed alcohol, or at least gave the impression of absorption. There were a few in Redding,.all of which seemed to be located at the spot now occupied by Cool Hand Luke’s (now closed).

Shameless O’Leery’s has one of those goofy names but breaks some of the rest of that same-old same-old pattern. Run by the team known for Market Street Steakhouse, Shameless O’Leery’s is quite popular; depending on when you time your visit, the atmosphere might be relatively sedate (early evening) to very lively (during any televised major sporting event). The first time Femme de Joie visited, a sign outside proclaimed the soup of the day was Whiskey. It took her a while to realize they don’t serve soup. The Jameson barrels stacked on one wall, with the names of advertisers inscribed across them, gave credence to their claim of Jameson on tap.

Shepherd Burger, $13.00, with garlic fries, $1.00 extra

The menu describes the Shepherd Burger as a lamb patty with Swiss cheese, sauteed mushrooms and rosemary aioli. Femme de Joie loves lamb, but unfortunately she didn’t love this one. How to describe it? You know how cheese drips out of your grilled cheese sandwich and cooks by itself in the skillet? That fried cheese is righteous. But if the cheese cooks in a large amount of grease, it is greasy cooked cheese. That was the overwhelming taste. The rosemary aioli was nowhere to be found. And the French fries had been fried a good 20 minutes or more before they arrived at M. de Joie’s table. They were warm, but had lost their crispness and were starting to get a bit floppy.

Corned beef and cabbage Reuben, $11.00

The Reuben was a huge improvement over the lamb burger. M. de Joie was dubious about the substitution of shredded white cabbage for the customary sauerkraut, but it worked nicely to add crunch (though perhaps not flavor). Piled high with lean corned beef, the Reuben made for a very satisfying lunch. A side of green salad was fresh and crisp but unexceptional.

Black and Tan Onion Rings, $7.00

When you order onion rings in most restaurants, they are tumbled out of a freezer bag into the deep fryer. Shameless O’Leery’s gets big points for making their own in-house and frying them in a beery batter – beery enough that you realize most frozen onion rings are coated in a sweet batter. The bitter edge contrasted nicely with the sweetness of the onions.

Guinness Beef Pie, $12.00

When waitstaff tells you, “Be careful, the plate is really hot,” usually it’s not. This time, the waitress wasn’t kidding. The crock containing the beef stew was sizzling and held its heat for a good 25 minutes. That meant the stew was also very hot – too hot to eat right away. To while away the time, M. de Joie tasted the Irish soda bread (made in-house) served on the side. At first it seems too plain to bother with, but then the sweetness of the currants kicks in, and before you know it, you’ve eaten all of it. Guinness beef stew was more like a thick soup of shredded beef and carrots in a very rich gravy with that distinctive Guinness taste. Again, the beer lent a bitter edge that was a pleasing change from the customary canned broth taste you’ll find in most similar restaurant renditions. The puff pastry didn’t survive being over that steamy hot stew and collapsed into a stretchy pull-apart topping.

If you’ve ever been to Ireland or England and visited an Irish pub, you know that this isn’t an “authentic” Irish pub. It’s the prettied-up, cleaned-up Americanized version. Nothing wrong with that, of course – hanging some Guinness ads on the wall is a nice touch – but this is mainly a sports bar-cum-gastropub. Shameless O’Leery’s is a big hit with the downtown lunch crowd as well as sports fans on weekends. While their predominant demographic isn’t families, Femme de Joie saw several parents with children having lunch during football telecasts, tiny tots futilely trying to get dad’s attention away from the TV (there are at least six televisions). Service is friendly, helpful, and reasonably quick. Femme de Joie would definitely go back.

Shameless O’Leery’s, 1701 California Street, Redding, CA 96001.530-246-4765. Open Monday through Wednesday, 11:00 AM – 11:00 PM, Thursday throughSaturday, 11:00 AM – 2:00 AM, Sunday 9:00 AM – 11:00 PM. Cards, cash; no checks. Full bar. Street parking or park in the mall parking lot. Vegetarian options. Website at http://www.shamelessoleerys.com/#about

Practice a little moderation now and then to increase the pleasure of the blow-outs. – advice given to writer Adair Lara by her father

Since August:

It took 45 minutes for Olive Garden to sell out of their promotional $100 for 49 days of The Never Ending Pasta Bowl.

The lucky winners paid a hundred bucks and get to eat as much pasta, salad, bread, and Coca-Cola branded soft drinks as they want for seven weeks.

Red Lobster brought back their Endless Shrimp promotion. $15.99 gets diners all the shrimp, salad, and Cheddar Bay Biscuits they could eat.

Jack in the Box began offering The Grande Sausage burrito for breakfast, clocking in at 1044 calories, 2131 mg sodium, and 391 mg cholesterol.

Applebee’s introduced an all-you-can-eat ribs special for $11.99 including fries and coleslaw.

Unsold Halloween candy is marked down 50% and the endcaps in supermarkets boast gift canisters pyramids of tri-flavored popcorn and gingerbread house kits.

The November – December issues of health and fitness magazines have hit the shelves. The overriding message on the covers: How to not gain weight over the holidays.

In a whiplash-inducing 180 degree turnabout, there’s a new mantra: eating between November 1 and January 6 is unhealthy and will make you gain weight. From 60 to zero overnight.

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Google “How to not gain weight at holiday season” and get 47 million results. The average weight gain ranges from “a pound or two” (Web MD) to five pounds (The Telegraph UK) to seven pounds (Meltdown.com). Advice varies from drinking water and eating slowly (Reader’s Digest) to “snaffling some cocoa-rich slabs for a Christmas day elevenses” (menshealth.uk). Health.com compiled a slide show of “50 Holiday Foods You Shouldn’t Eat” (if you’re feeling masochistic, it’s here ).

(Disclaimer: For people with eating disorders or chronic health conditions, the burst of rich foods that appears at this time of year can be a complication. This is not for or about them; they should follow whatever program they need to maintain stability. Nor does this apply to such religious rituals such as the Nativity Fast.)

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, chef Shelley Handler (a veteran of Chez Panisse Cafe) asked why we cannot trust ourselves to return to regular eating habits after the indulgence of the holidays is over. Why do the once-a-year treats bring on admonishments and finger-wagging for enjoying Aunt Frieda’s rosette cookies and some crisp turkey skin? What is wrong with us that one of the elements that binds us together – the sharing of food – has become a moral failing, shameful, toxic and fear-inducing?

This scorn of holiday foods is not without precedence. 1664 saw Puritan-dominated Parliament banning Christmas pudding as “a lewd custom… not fit for God-fearing people,” as well as mince pies and Christmas celebrations in general. (This has never been rescinded, so the consumption of mince pies in England is technically illegal.) And in an excellent example of hyperbole, the Quakers went so far as to call Christmas pudding “the invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon.”

Either because they are associated with specific legends, rituals, or religious festivals, or because they’ve achieved what Karl Marx labeled “commodity fetishization,” many holiday indulgences are meaningful because of their special occasion status or because of their links to memory, family, and history. Celebratory dishes such as prime rib or oil-fried latkes, caramel popcorn balls or eggnog with a tot of Jack Daniels – those are not going to kill you on an infrequent basis. No one’s going to say they’re as healthy as steamed organic broccoli, but the healthy factor isn’t the criteria when choosing what to serve on the Eight Nights of Hannukah or at the school Christmas pageant.

Self-denial may be healthy in many instances, but fretting about the lack of nutrients in a candy cane is obsessive and neurotic. Perhaps the burden of excess has rendered us insensate or even fearful toward that which is truly special.

In Marcella Hazen’s essay, “Christmas in Cesenatico, 1945,” she described her family’s return to their nearly destroyed home in Emilia-Romagna after the end of WWII. Their house was stripped of furniture, radiators, and pipes, but Hazan’s father – who had lost eighty pounds in the five years of war – managed to acquire a terra-cotta kitchen stove, wood-fired range, and a dining table and chairs. Christmas dawned, “a morning such as we had doubted… we could ever live again… I had never before, nor perhaps since, experienced such a sense of life being full and right and wholly unblemished.”

She detailed the menu cooked that morning from fowl, flour, and produce that was the gift of a tenant farmer: stuffed pasta in broth, broiled capon, chicken fricasee, cardoons, and bread pudding, plus dried fruit, nuts and homemade Albana wine. “This was the greatest Christmas I would ever know… through the recaptured flavors of our cooking… the gift of life regained.”

Memory is a tricky thing: what one remembers as absolutely true and without question is often disputed by another person who claims that their memory is the accurate one and that you’ve got it all wrong.

A lengthy discussion follows about what actually happened, and each person walks away thinking, “Gee, it’s so sad to see whatizname losing it like that.” Even sadder is when one realizes there’s no one left to ask who might remember the exact thing you’re talking about.

And so it is with the corner of Placer and California Streets. Circa 1960, Femme de Joie remembers the Griffin Club on the corner now taken up by a two-level parking lot.

Catty-corner from it where the now-closed Vintner’s Cellars sits was a garage or gas station/garage. But she might have that entirely wrong and if anyone remembers, kindly set her straight.

What M. de Joie does remember for certain is that Redding wasn’t known for its restaurants. Jack’s, Ramona’s, Lim’s, Doc Clearie’s Skyroom, Tubby and Ann’s, and a host of lesser-known cafes that came and went. Say what you will about the state of downtown now, the state of dining in Redding has expanded in ways no one 50+ years ago could have foreseen.

Just a few feet from Placer/California in the space most recently vacated by Fuji is Yaadgar Restaurant. High ceilings, wide windows, and an attractive buttermilk paint make the dining room seem spacious and airy. Run by the Hussein family for just over a year, Yaadgar got off to a slow start but seems to be picking up in popularity rapidly.

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Naan ($1.50) is as much a staple of Indian food as tortillas are to Mexican food. Often cooked to toughness or scorched, these were light and tender, buttery-soft and airy, definitely the best we’ve tasted in Redding.

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Eggplant Bharta, $8.99

One thing you might notice right away about Indian food: it often looks actively unattractive, and this eggplant mash is a good example of that. A few slivers of raw ginger and some cilantro leaves strewn about didn’t help much. But the taste was amazing – a smooth, creamy puree of smoky roasted aubergine with cumin and garam masala that will in no way remind you of soggy fried eggplant. A winner.

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Lamb biryani, $10.99

If Femme de Joie hadn’t tasted the lamb biryani at another Redding restaurant a few months ago, she probably would have thought Yaadgar’s version to be very good, but it just didn’t have the same sparkle and intricacy of spice and herb mixtures. The basmati rice was cooked perfectly and there were chunks of lamb throughout, but it just didn’t have that Zsa Zsa Zu.

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Raita, $1.99

Raita (yogurt with spices and cucumbers) – is more than the sum of those ingredients, a tempering to excess spice and a palate cleanser when your taste buds are overwhelmed. But it’s also delicious on its own as a kind of soupy salad.

When we ordered dinner, we were confused by small plates – small as in approximately 6-inch – set before us. We were unsure if we were meant to put the naan on them, or share/mix foods with the naan, which is what we wound up doing, but the small size made maneuvering awkward.

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Sweet lassi, $1.99

While the mango lassi is probably more popular, this mixture of plain yogurt and sugar served over ice is a simpler version that is just as delicious and useful to sooth too much heat in your mouth. Femme de Joie thinks this might be attractive to an adventurous child as well.

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Lunch special: lamb curry, chicken curry, zeera rice, naan, $9.99

Yaadgar’s lunch specials are a good value and allow a timid diner the chance to taste Indian food and see if they like it. Femme de Joie did like this special very much – the lamb curry was plentiful as well as bolder and smokier than the relatively mild chicken. Zeera rice (basmati rice cooked with cumin seeds) isn’t spicy-hot, just flavorful enough to stand up to curries.

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Lunch special: chicken kofta, channa masala, zeera rice, $9.99

Chicken kofta is essentially chicken meatballs, very soft and mild in a likewise mild sauce that won’t scare off curryphobes, though a bit short on actual meatballs. Channa masala – garbanzos in a very mild sauce – is one of those dishes M. de Joie has never been able to work up any enthusiasm for, no matter who prepares it, so she can’t say if it was good or bad. It tasted like all the other versions she’s had, starchy and bland. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, in which case she won’t ever need to try it again.

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Veggie pakoras ($3.99), broccoli and cauliflower bites coated in chick-pea (garbanzo) flour and deep fried. M. de Joie much preferred the cauliflower, which is enhanced by this treatment. Stronger broccoli doesn’t seem to benefit as much and indeed tasted a little bitter. They came with two chutneys in squeeze bottles, a lusciously thick, tart purple tamarind and a very watery green herb chutney that didn’t have much going for it.

Overall, Yaadgar’s cooking is consistent, nongreasy, and carefully spiced, with service that is courteous but a bit indifferent (not that M. de Joie believes customers need to be besties with waitstaff). This is the third Indian restaurant to open concurrently in Redding. Is that oversaturation of a market? Even ten years ago, Femme de Joie wouldn’t have believed Redding would support more than one, but as spread out as the three are, perhaps there’s room for all. Each is a little different and will surely have different fan clubs.

Yaadgar – Urdu for “memory” – replaces that old garage of the 1950s and 60s in a much more stylish way. Its presence is a hopeful sign of the continued revitalization of downtown.

Yaadgar Restaurant, 1545 Placer Street, Redding, CA 96001. 530-242-1545. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM for lunch, 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM for dinner. Closed Monday. Cards, cash; no checks. Free chai tea with meal orders. Vegetarian, vegan, and Halal options available. Street parking or parking lot at California and Placer.

“Jiro Ono serves Edo-style traditional sushi, the same 20 or 30 pieces he’s been making his whole life, and he’s still unsatisfied with the quality and every day wakes up and trains to make the best. And that is as close to a religious experience in food as one is likely to get.” – Anthony Bourdain

“Omakase, I am in your hands.” A broad smile moved across his face. I had found the code. He spread the bamboo leaf in front of me and, leaning forward, said softly, “Sashimi first?” – Ruth Reichl, Looking for Umani, “Garlic and Sapphires”

Depending on which source you consult, sushi had its beginnings in the 8th century, or the 7th, or the 2nd. It appeared in China as a means to preserve fish before spreading to Japan over a period of several hundred years. The earliest forms would be repulsive to most modern Western sushi fans – fish packed in rice and allowed to percolate for months before discarding the rice, wiping away the slime, and eating what must have been a highly pungent and odorous dish. (This process was also the beginning of the Southeast Asian condiment known as nam pla or fish sauce.) Perhaps because 21st century diners don’t care to be reminded of the primitive origins of their favorite foods, great creativity goes into disguising what started out as fermented fish with rice as evidenced by these designer rolls served in Miami sushi palaces.

If Femme de Joie’s memory serves, Sakura Sushi was the first sushi restaurant in Redding (if anyone remembers differently, please advise). The nondescript standalone building in a slightly dodgy area doesn’t look particularly inviting, but step inside and transition from the graffiti-smeared parking lot to a Zen oasis of a dining room – a far cry from sushi-to-go in supermarkets or a high turnover Japanese something-for-everyone chain.

Owner and sushi chef Kenji Tanaka makes sushi as it’s ordered. You won’t see a team of two or three apprentices behind the sushi bar, so it will take longer to get food to the table than in some other restaurants. And you won’t see an extensive menu including noodles, sukiyaki, tonkatsu, salmon teriyaki, and so forth: the limited menu centers on sashimi and sushi. Simplicity and immediacy of preparation is a rarity in the restaurant business.

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Cucumber salad, $3.00

Our relationship with Sakura didn’t get off to a promising start. On each visit we were told that miso soup was unavailable – first because they were out, then later because there was no demand and because it was too hot and it wouldn’t be available until fall. Femme de Joie instead ordered cucumber salad and was sorry she did – bitter dry cucumbers bathed in a dressing tasting of soy sauce and little else.

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From left, California roll, $4.00 (imitation crab, cucumber, and avocado) and Crunchy roll, $5.00 (shrimp tempura, crab and lettuce with crispy tempura flakes)

The sushi rolls were a great improvement. In particular the Crunchy roll with still-warm tempura shrimp encased in the soft vinegary rice with teeny bits of crunchy deep-fried batter was a pleasure to eat, though the very fresh buttery avocado in the California roll was a close second. Amico del Signore liked the Crunchy roll enough to order a second round.

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Clockwise from top left, negihama roll (yellowtail and green onions), $4.00; nigiri tobiko (flying fish roe), $3.50; Hot Rod Roll, $5.00 (spicy tuna).

Femme de Joie enjoys spicy hot food; the red, meaty tuna stood up to the heat level. Yellowtail (which could be one of a variety of amberjack fish) was a nice mix with green onions as a piquant contrast to its smooth texture. But the standout on this assortment was the tobiko – this was by far the freshest flying fish roe M. de Joie has ever had the pleasure to eat. Very often the container has been open for some time before using and the eggs do not improve with age. But tiny pearls, lightly salty, that popped gently when pressed on the tongue were a textural delight and not at all fishy.

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Vegetable tempura appetizer, $6.00

Not the big blowsy puffs of batter as delivered in most restaurants, this tempura was simple and exemplified the notion of “appetizer” – something to whet the appetite, not appease it. A combination of green beans, onion slices, carrot strips, sweet potato slices, broccoli florets, freshly deep-fried and barely tender, made a good substitute for a salad.

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Clockwise from top left: California roll, Crunchy roll, Sabakyu roll (mackerel and cucumber), $3.50; Kamakazi roll (spicy fried oyster and avocado), $4.50.

We went for a repeat of California roll and Crunchy roll – both of which would make excellent introductions to sushi for those not sure about it. The Sabakyu might be too scary for a novice, as mackerel is a strongly-flavored fish. It is one fish that is not strictly raw for sushi, as it spoils quickly and is therefore cured for a few hours in salt or vinegar. While M. de Joie enjoyed the gamy, oily taste, it isn’t for everyone – Amico del Signore felt he could live without it. The oyster taste in the Kamakazi roll was quite subtle and the texture softly blending with avocado for a roll that didn’t quite have the salty ocean taste one associates with oysters.

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Left to right, Philadelphia roll (salmon and cream cheese), $4.00; Dynamite roll (spicy albacore and avocado), $4.50.

Definitely an American invention, the Philadelphia roll’s blend of cream cheese and salmon was not unlike a spread you might find at a cocktail party to smear on a cracker. Though tasty, the cream cheese leaves a bit of a gummy mouthfeel. Spicy tuna and avocado was a better combination with smooth avocado tempering the heat and complimenting the firm-textured tuna.

It was never crowded or even almost full on our visits, but we did notice a lot of takeaway orders being picked up. The dining room is quite small – no more than ten tables plus a small sushi bar – and the atmosphere is peaceful and quiet. Seats have thin cushions and a bar that runs along the seat back which unfortunately prevents you from getting too comfortable. Prices are extremely reasonable and service is friendly, though as mentioned above, this is not fast food for people in a hurry. Tame the monkey mind and savor the experience.

Sakura Sushi, 2130 East Street, Redding, CA 96001. 530-244-0201. Open Monday-Saturday for dinner only, 5:00 PM to 8:30 PM. Cards and cash; no checks. Vegan and vegetarian options. Beer and wine. Parking lot. Follow Sakura Sushi on Facebook.

Compiling a list of all the owners and operators of the French Gulch Hotel would take more time and patience than Femme de Joie possesses, though possibly the Shasta Historical Society may have much of that information at their fingertips.

The hotel will turn 130 next year and looks remarkably well for someone of its age. M. de Joie dined there when she was a mere slip of a girl; while she doesn’t remember the surroundings, she does recall clearly that what the menu called fried chicken would more accurately have been called soggy chicken.

In more modern times – i.e. since the millennium – Andrew Bouchard and Carol Jandrall took over the hotel for a few years, followed by Michael Smith and John Pearson. Purchased earlier this year by Jack and Eric Jue, the hotel is popular with local residents who stop in for a cold one and maybe stay for a meal. Saturday nights the hotel features live music and prime rib.

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A nice improvement is the addition of a counter and chairs along the front porch. It’s pleasant to sit outside in fine weather and watch the “No Parking Any Time” sign be completely disregarded.

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A simple dinner salad was better than expected with a mix of fresh greens – not just iceberg lettuce – and good-quality tomatoes (M. de Joie often wonders why it is that in the midst of summer so many restaurants serve mealy pinkish tomatoes trucked in from who know where when really excellent homegrown ones are available right here in Shasta County).

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Southwestern Hot and Spicy Burger with Jalapenos, Pepper Jack Cheese, and hot sauce

Burgers seem to be the house specialty and they prepare them well. While this wasn’t the spiciest burger M. de Joie’s ever eaten, it would probably be hot enough for most tastes (more hot sauce available upon request). She liked that the burger was sizzling hot off the grill and cooked to order (not every cafe does this). The crinkle-cut French fries surprised her, though perhaps there isn’t a lot of demand in French Gulch all week long for potatoes, so to avoid spoilage they rely on frozen. While frozen fries aren’t going to ever match fresh for taste and texture, these weren’t bad and there was a generous portion.

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Appetizer order of sauteed garlic mushrooms

While these sauteed mushrooms made a nice appetizer to share, they would have been much better cooked with fresh garlic in place of dried chopped garlic bits, which leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. Still, they went well with a beer.

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Veggie burger with avocado

Amico del Signore ordered the vegetarian burger with sliced avocado (which is peeking out from under the bun). It was a premade frozen patty but the fresh bun and vegetable toppings were redeeming features, as well as the large serving.

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Garlic mushroom chicken with homemade onion rings

The last time Femme de Joie ate onion rings at the French Gulch Hotel, they had been fried in the same oil that fish had previously been fried in. She was relieved that the oil has been changed since then; these were delicious and crisp, if somewhat greasy. There was a rather small portion of tender chicken breast concealed under the mushroom and onion topping, which seemed incongruously out of place with the chicken and would have been better served with a steak. Frozen green beans took up the rest of the plate.

The French Gulch Hotel isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but then it’s not trying to be. Situated a good half-hour drive west of Redding, it’s primarily a place for locals, a bar-cum-music venue that serves food in a historic location (French Gulch was designated a California Historic Landmark in 1935). Some of the food was good and some was underwhelming, but food isn’t really the point here. Stick with the basics here, perch on a bar stool and listen to a band play covers.

French Gulch Hotel & Saloon, 14138 Trinity Mountain Road, French Gulch, CA 96033. 530-359-2045. Open Monday, 5:00 PM – 10:00 PM, Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 10:00 PM, Sunday 12:00 – 5:00 PM. Beer and wine. Vegetarian options. Small parking lot or street parking. No checks.

Okay, a show of hands, please: who remembers the Cypress Street Bridge construction? Whoa! A LOT of you. Wasn’t that fun? Trying to figure out where the stop lights were, which lane was which, and God help you if you had to cross the bridge during the noon hour. It’s been completed for a few years now, though when Femme de Joie crosses it she can’t help but wonder when they’re going to replace those concrete pouring tubes with some actual street lights.

What you might not remember is that the construction and accompanying traffic jams were enough to contribute to the demise of at least two restaurants – Pellegrini’s Brazilian Steakhouse and Taj Mahal. It would seem that Pellegrini’s, that bastion of all things meat, is gone for good. However, Taj Mahal has risen from the ashes and reopened in the strip mall by PetCo just off Hilltop Drive.

The space is much smaller than the old restaurant, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Anchored with a sleek bar in the center, the dining room features tomato red walls and simple polished wood tables. Five televisions near the ceiling are always on but not obnoxiously loud, tuned to either CNN or a Bollywood movie.

Taj Mahal serves a buffet lunch for a bargain price of $9.99. It’s a good way to find out if you like Indian food.

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Clockwise from top: aloo gobi, samosa, pakora, saag paneer, navratan korma, (in center) gheera rice.

Aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) wasn’t M. de Joie’s favorite item – though the spicing was pleasing, the textures seemed to be identical and it was hard to say if one had a bite of aloo or gobi. The samosa and pakora were better; there was a nice crunchy coating on the potato-filled samosa pastry and the herby pakoras (fritters) would make a nice snack with a cold beer.

Saag paneer (spinach with homemade cheese), was like an Indian creamed spinach with mild heat level, a mineral-grassy spinach taste smoothed out with cheese. It contrasted on the plate with the tomato cream sauce of navratan korma, making a wonderful vegetarian pairing. Centering the plate was gheera rice – basmati rice cooked with cumin seeds, which makes a great variation from plain steamed rice.

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Mango lassi, $2.99

If you don’t want beer to go with Indian food, a sweet, creamy mango lassi (made with yogurt, mangoes and water) is a great alternative. Not sticky-sweet like a milkshake, the fruity-tart drink is refreshing and cooling if the heat level seems to be too much.

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Naan – a fluffy, tender bread – comes with the buffet as well as most menu items. Tear it apart to eat, or use it to scoop up chutneys.

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Clockwise from top: chicken curry, beef curry, tandoori chicken.

Femme de Joie preferred the spicier beef curry over the somewhat blander chicken curry; the chicken itself seemed spongy and unappealing. However, the tandoori chicken was a winner. It’s one of those dishes that looks good and smells good but is nearly always dried out and tough. Here it was juicy with good smoky flavor and aromas.

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Lamb biriyani, $13.99

This was just amazingly, wildly delicious. Spiced, tender lamb chunks were scattered throughout perfectly cooked basmati rice, skillfully seasoned and garnished with cilantro and coconut. M. de Joie ordered medium heat, but thinks she could have taken it up a notch, as the heat was not overwhelming or burning – just a pleasant level of warmth.

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Bhindi masala, $10.99

You don’t see okra on many North State menus and more’s the pity, as it is delicious and adaptable to a variety of cuisines. Here it was browned first, then combined with onions and peppers and a generous amount of ginger. A sour tang came through now and then – M. de Joie thinks that was aamchur (dry mango powder). Not at all slimy as many people think, this had a much firmer texture than stewed okra and made an unusual vegetarian meal.

While Femme de Joie enjoyed the food and the surroundings at Taj Mahal, she does have one complaint. There is a difference between attentive service and annoying service. Waitstaff went rapidly from friendly and helpful to creepily invasive and ridiculously servile. In one 50-minute lunch, M. de Joie was asked no fewer than fourteen times if everything was all right or if she needed anything else. At one point she looked up to see the waitress staring at her – presumably to detect any signs of distress. M. de Joie started to wonder if perhaps she had something in her teeth or if one of her eyebrows had suddenly and without warning rearranged itself onto her forehead. Of course this overeagerness to serve comes from management’s orders, so Femme de Joie will take it upon herself right now to instruct Taj Mahal’s management: leave the diners alone and let them eat.

Other than that, the food at Taj Mahal is delicious and worth trying.

P.S. You can put your hands down now.

Taj Mahal, 1619 Hilltop Drive, Suite C, Redding, CA 96002. 530-722-9551, fax 530-722-9553. Open daily, 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM, Friday and Saturdays open until 11:00 PM. Lunch buffet, $9.99. Full bar. Parking lot. Vegetarian and vegan options. Cash and cards. Website at tajmahalredding.com

It just occurred to Femme de Joie that someone who works in the area of Market and Tehama is spoiled for choice at lunchtime. Within a block each way lie two sandwich shops, two Mexican restaurants, one pizza place, one pub, a Japanese restaurant, and probably another place or two that escape her just now. If what you're actually craving is none of the above, well then, you're probably outta luck.

So after Village Delicatessen closed last autumn, Premier Solutions of Shasta Lake took over that spot to use as an work experience site for disabled adults, helping them to integrate into the community and learn skills that will enable them to become independent as well as earn their own paycheck. There was already a Turbo'z Deli on Airport Road; this is branch #2 with the same menu and also run by Premier Solutions.

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This is likely the first job for the people behind the counter, but you wouldn't know that. Customers are greeted with cheerfulness and enthusiasm. You aren't the next order in line; you're a real person and staff is very eager to please. Service is speedy (though there seem to be a hiccup or two with the POS device at the counter). M. de Joie noted all employees wear plastic gloves when preparing the food. Prices are proportionate to the serving size.

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High Octane, $6.89, with side of potato salad, 99 cents

The classic Reuben sandwich gets a new name at Turbo'z but is otherwise the same, corned beef-Swiss-sauerkraut. The menu says it's grilled on marble rye, but there was no grill in evidence. It seems more likely that the corned beef was given a couple of minutes on high in a microwave to give it that frizzled crackly taste and texture. It would have been nice to have the entire sandwich grilled, and Femme de Joie wished for a kosher pickle on the side, but she really has no complaints, Note: this sandwich is very juicy and you'll need a handful of napkins.

Potato salad is one of those things you never know about when you order it. Will it be house-made or will it be out of one of those plastic tubs packed in Eden Prairie, Minnesota - slippery lumpkins purported to be potato and saturated in a quicksand of gummy, sugary mayonnaise-like sauce? On her first visit, M. de Joie was delighted to find the potato salad made in-house of wedges of new potato in a mustardy dressing. It was so good that she ordered it again on a subsequent visit, when it was horribly oversalted and swimming in far too much sauce.

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The Burn Out, $5.89

AKA Buffalo chicken wrap, this was made to order with warm chicken breast slices, spicy Buffalo sauce and ranch dressing plus fresh vegetables (avocado on request) and enveloped in the tortilla of your choice. Overall Femme de Joie liked it, though there seemed to be a streak through the wrap where it had been salted too well - perhaps on the chicken itself. She liked the spicy Buffalo sauce tempered with the tart ranch dressing and the crunchy red onion, though the avocado got a bit lost in the mix.

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The Low Rider, $6.99, with side of macaroni salad, 99 cents

This was Femme de Joie's favorite sandwich at Turbo'z, pulled pork smeared with barbecue sauce, then topped with pepper jack cheese and cole slaw on a crunchy roll. Unbelievably messy to eat, it was nevertheless a delight. The cole slaw was meant to go on the side but the counter staff asked if it should be placed on top, which was a very good idea. The celery seed-flecked slaw itself was very fresh and crunchy, a cool contrast to the kiblets of pork and sauce. Macaroni salad was on the bland side.

Overall, M. de Joie liked Turbo'z. They offer salads, hot dogs, and pizza along with the deli sandwiches, so there is a little something for everyone. Service is fast and very friendly, and while this isn't breaking new culinary ground, it's a good stop for a quick lunch downtown to grab a bite from someone who is really glad to see you.

Turbo'z Deli, 1300 Market Street (at Shasta), Suite 102, Redding, CA 96001. 530-241-1600, fax 530-241-1604. Open Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Saturday 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Closed Sunday. Street parking. Cards, cash; no checks. No alcohol. Indoor and outside seating. Vegetarian and vegan options. Follow them on Facebook at Turbo'z Deli 2 or Turbo'z Deli 1

After Senor Rosa's upped sticks and moved into the old Leatherby's Family Creamery at the south end of the Downtown Mall (call it the Promenade all you like, it's still the old Downtown Mall) that funny little cinder block building set back from Eureka Way didn't sit vacant for long. Salvador Hernandez stepped up and opened El Rinconcito a few months ago, joining other locally-owned restaurants like Brick's and The Best Little Sandwich Shop as havens in a sea of chain fast food spots.

It looks pretty much the same - park next to the gas station and squeeze past some nasty-looking cactus to get inside, or share parking with the auto repair. The cinder blocks are painted blue, and the old green canopy is gone. Inside it's still fairly spartan. But Hernandez serves his food on actual ceramic plates with metal cutlery instead of wrapped in foil or in squeaky disposable boxes with plastic forks, which is a big improvement in Femme de Joie's eyes. The menu is typed on both sides of a single piece of paper and tucked inside plastic sleeve protectors. There are all the usual suspects plus a few less-common items. A few daily specials are written on a board above the cash register. Service is helpful and friendly.

Salsa - not the usual pico de gallo, but instead a smooth puree of chilis and tomatoes - and chips come with your meal.

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Tortilla soup, $5.95

Many Mexican restaurants offer tortilla soup; it's usually pleasant if undistinguished. This one was simply the best version Femme de Joie has ever had the pleasure to eat. A savory rich cilantro-spotted tomatoey chicken broth was topped with crisp tortilla ribbons and diced avocado. Underneath was what appeared to be fine noodles; on closer inspection the noodles turned out to be filament-fine shreds of poached chicken. That kind of attention to detail made M. de Joie realize the kitchen was run by serious cooks.

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Carnitas burrito, $9.95

Delicious niblets of carnitas pork were layered with house-made refried beans and rice. Instead of the usual practice of stuffing a flour tortilla with as much filler as possible, minimal was the word: when the ingredients are all beautifully seasoned and cooked, you don't need globs of cheese, salsa, tomatoes, onions, and so forth. Just a little crema drizzled decoratively over was the only concession to the usual restaurant burrito.

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Taco salad, $7.95

To the best of Femme de Joie's knowledge, taco salad is an unknown beast in Mexico; it appears to be a American hybrid creation of the 1960s when comida Mexicana began to creep into the American kitchen. Most versions involve a sizable mountain of iceberg lettuce centered inside a pre-made oversized fried taco shell and decorated with fried ground beef mixed with a packet of taco seasoning, some diced tomatoes, shredded cheese and sour cream - in other words, a lot of cheap lettuce with a modicum of toppings. El Rinconcito's taco salad started with a homemade shell and a modest amount of lettuce, went on with lightly seasoned morsels of steak, fresh tomatoes and olives, and finished with a generous scoop of house-made guacamole. That crisp shell was as different from pre-made shells as a homegrown tomato is from one of those miserable pinkish winter tomatoes. Instead of a scoop of made-ahead filling, the steak bits were cooked to order. Again, it's the best ingredients combined skillfully, sans fatty, creamy sauces, that distinguish this dish.

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Sope with chicken, $3.50

A sope is essentially a small, thick tortilla made of masa fried and served with some sort of savory topping, also known as huaraches, gorditas, and other names. House-prepared and freshly cooked revealed the delicate corn taste of the masa. Lightly grilled chicken cubes were sprinkled with cotija cheese and a thick wash of crema . There was a bit of oil oozing from the sope itself, so this was not as successful an execution as some of their other dishes.

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Al pastor taco and lengue taco, $2.50 each

"Regular" size tacos are made with house-made tortillas, and they are worth it. Puffy and tender, thicker than commercial tortillas, they're the perfect wrapping for the simple fillings of diced al pastor (spicy pork) and lengue (tongue) accented with cilantro, diced onion, and a fresh green salsa.

El Rinconcito is probably our new favorite Mexican restaurant. Everything is made in-house (with the exception of the chips, which appear to be commercial). As Femme de Joie stood waiting to pay, she observed a tiny woman behind the counter serenely turning fresh pasilla peppers on a gas flame, blackening and blistering them to make chile rellanos. That is the kind of time-consuming detail that makes this food so good. But let it be known: if you are expecting the servings to be the giant platefuls found at most Mexican restaurants, you will be sorely disappointed. Portions are modest. But this is carefully prepared food to be savored, not gobbled. Take your time and really taste it.

El Rinconcito, 2030 Eureka Way (behind the smoke shop and auto repair), Redding, CA 96001. 530-262-8646. Open daily, 11:00 AM - 8:00 PM. Parking lot. Cards, cash, no checks. Vegetarian and vegan options.

Back in the late 1970s there was a Maxwell's Restaurant in Redding. Femme de Joie's memory is a bit fuzzy on this, but she recalls it being on the corner of Market and Sacramento, where Vintage Wine Bar sits now. But she also seems to remember it on Market Street north of the mall, so perhaps it skated through town now and then. It was what current parlance calls "casual elegance" - that level between coffee shop and white tablecloths. They served a lovely Chicken Jerusalem. Versions of that restaurant came and went into the 1980s and perhaps into the 1990s if memory serves.

Maxwell's Downtown Eatery today seems to share little with that Maxwell's of old save the name and perhaps the address. From the outside it looks like a hipster's dive bar, and even on the inside you might get that impression. It looks to be decorated entirely in black at first glimpse until your eyes adjust to the light, when you can see the brick wall behind the bar and the dark olive green wall with paintings on the other side of the room. Tables and chairs are the elevated tall bar variety, though there are a couple of regular height tables as well. One room to the side is dedicated to occasional live music performances. The crowd is largely young-ish, though M. de Joie overheard a dedicated beerhound behind her speak the words, "Lew Alcindor," a name largely unknown to most 20-somethings. Music ranges from reggae to Robin Trower to 1970s staples.

There's no chicken Jerusalem on this menu and no pretense. All the offerings pair well with beer and are listed with a minimum of poetic descriptions. "Our hamburgers are made from cows who were lovingly hand-fed the finest hay and lulled to sleep by a Mozart Quartet" doesn't appear here.

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Buffalo Bacon Blue Pizza - "buffalo sauce," bacon, tomato, blue cheese $15.99

This is exactly the kind of pizza M. de Joie would want if she planned to down a few brews to go with. She ordered it sans chicken - chicken on pizza is a travesty - and while it was not the most incredible blow-your-skirt-up pizza she has ever eaten in her life, it had a lot going for it. A thin, airy crust supported a not-spicy "creamy buffalo sauce" with crisp, salty bacon and fresh tomatoes; there was a definite paucity of blue cheese, though. This was enough for one greedy diner or two restrained polite people.

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Spicy Jalapeno Burger with onion rings, $9.99

A fat, generous burger was tasty enough, but what really set this apart was the breaded and deep-fried Jalapenos. M. de Joie has seen both raw and pickled Jalapenos on burgers and loves those, but these were quite delightful and addictive. A bonus too was the hamburger bun: a Kaiser-type roll did not fall apart or get greasy and soggy.

A word about the onion rings: wonderful large rings with a thin, delicate shatteringly-crisp batter - definitely the best-cooked onion rings M. de Joie has ever had in Redding, but the batter badly needed some salt.

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Trout Slayer Chili, $3.50

On the bean/no bean chili discussion, Femme de Joie is Switzerland. She doesn't care. However, she is less forgiving on the tomato issue: they do not belong in chili. Now having said that, she found the Trout Slayer Chili really wonderful, meaty and well-seasoned, not so spicy that a chiliphobe would reject it; even the bits of tomato were not distracting. The name can't help but make her think that there's fish in it, though. (There isn't.)

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Maxwell's Club with salad, $8.99

Expecting a pile of shredded iceberg lettuce alongside the club sandwich, it was a pleasure to instead get an actual composed salad with Romaine, cheese, olives, pepperoncini, and tomatoes: the extra mile gone. The club was one layer instead of the usual triple-decker and stuffed with lots of ham, turkey, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce. However, the bacon was completely uncooked. It had apparently been placed on a heat source because it was warm, but all that did was bring the fat to the surface. Floppy and flabby bacon may have its fans, but M. de Joie is not one of them. After the care taken with the salad, it seemed sloppy or uncaring: it isn't as though a cook wouldn't notice that.

Overall, Femme de Joie liked Maxwell's. Service was friendly and efficient and the food was better than average pub-type food. While she's a bit older than its target audience, M. de Joie felt perfectly comfortable and wouldn't hesitate to go back. It's a local downtown enterprise providing a badly-needed venue for live music and the food, even with a couple of issues, is well-prepared and a good value. Try it out.

Maxwell's Downtown Eatery, 1344 Market Street, Redding, CA 96001. 530-247-7200. Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Friday, 11:00 AM - 11:00 PM; Saturday 12:00 PM to 11:30 PM; Sunday 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Occasional live music. Beer and wine. Street parking, Cards, cash. Website here.

Long ago - long ago being relative, of course - there was a Mexican restaurant in Hamilton City which was apparently the bee's knees to Hamilton City diners. The exact name of it escapes Femme de Joie just now, and after doing a brief search on the internet, apparently no one else remembers it either. But what M. de Joie does recall is that there was a fever upon the land when the word came down that this restaurant was going to expand to Redding. And so it came to pass; said restaurant built on East Cypress Avenue, not far from where the fabled and infamous El-Bo Room lived out its days. It opened and after a certain amount of time, shut the doors; M. de Joie seems to remember at least one other Mexican restaurant opened and closed in turn in the same location. For about the last 14 years, Guadalajara has held down the spot where others came and went.

Approaching Guadalajara is easiest if you're heading east on Cypress and can just swing right into the parking lot. It's trickier to slide in there from the westbound lanes, especially during the noon hour and around 5 PM, when the traffic is unforgiving and unrelenting. The interior is spacious and colorful with what appear to be large tin stars hanging from the ceiling and brightly painted chairs. Service is generally friendly and speedy.

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House salad, $5.29

The basic house salad was one of the better menu items at Guadalajara. Expecting just a bowl of iceberg lettuce, we were pleasantly surprised to get fresh Romaine with grated cheese, olives, tomatoes, avocados and onions, a definite step up from the side salad at most restaurants.

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Lunch special, enchilada and tamale, $8.29

A chicken tamale was quite doughy with a ponderosity of heavyweight masa corseting an shredded chicken filling. It was slow going through the doughy masa to get to the oily filling - the oil had already spread to the cornhusks, so it had plenty to spare - and the filling itself was surprisingly bland considering the oil was vividly red, presumably from chili powder. Sharing the plate was a chicken enchilada that was likewise bland and tired, like it had been up since 2 AM and just couldn't muster any enthusiasm. Refried beans were creamy but not especially flavorful; rice had odd crispy bits here and there, like it had been sitting uncovered and part had dried out while what lay beneath remained moist. It was salty.

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Cup of albondigas soup, $3.50

Though not stated on the menu, the soups can be ordered as a cup instead of a bowl (which is a quite large serving). Albondigas soup was apparently cooked to order and it was a winner. A more-than-generous cup with two large tender meatballs, freshly cooked carrots, zucchini, and potatoes in a really delicious savory tomato-tinged broth came with a dish of cilantro, chopped onion, and one very dry lime half on the side. Whoever is making the soup knows what they're doing in terms of seasoning and timing the doneness of each ingredient.

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Lunch special, chile verde burrito, $7.49

This lunch special was everything the others were not. Chile verde - tender pork cubes in a tart green tomatillo sauce - wrapped in a flour tortilla with a moderate amount of cheese melted on top was piquant and lively, as well as a bargain for the price.

Femme de Joie is of two minds about Guadalajara. Clearly it's quite popular, both with locals and with Interstate 5 travelers who rave about it in online reviews. You do get generous portions, the salsa is fresh and tasty, and it's a family-friendly place with a kiddie menu of under-$2 items. But they're missing the mark on preparations for some standard Mexican restaurant dishes. The care taken with the soup and the chile verde indicates the kitchen can deliver; M. de Joie hopes they can raise the bar and take steps to increase quality across the board.

Guadalajara Mexican Restaurant, 435 East Cypress Avenue, Redding, 96002. 530-223-2540. Open Monday-Thursday, 11:00 AM - 9:00 PM, Friday-Saturday 11:00 AM - 10:00 PM, Sunday 10:00 AM - 9:00 PM. Vegetarian and vegan options. Children's menu. No checks. Full bar. Parking lot. Website at http://www.guadalajararestaurant.net/

Ever since the Cascade Theater reopened gloriously in 2004 with that sublime Mark O'Connor concert, there's been a certain mumbling and rumbling from patrons: why isn't there anywhere to go downtown after a show? Well, there's Spoon Me... and... Bombay's.... aaaannnnd.... uh.... ummmm... well... let's go to Denny's. Or IHOP. Or home.

To that end, Cafe Paradiso opened in early 2013 to fill a need: a place to go late at night for a drink and a snack without going to a bar. Housed in the former Thai Bistro location on Yuba Street between Sally's (Salvation Army) and a florist, it's an unlikely bistro home of French cooking. A very small space of about a dozen tables seating two to four and a limited menu ensures service doesn't become overwhelmed. More importantly, the food is prepared to order, not defrosted or waiting on a steam table. The interior is painted olive green, gold, and orchid; bare-topped tables at lunch get the white cloth treatment in the evening.

Femme de Joie was interested in trying this new venture downtown. While the food is quite good, there were a few things that made her go, "Hmmmm...."

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Caesar salad, $5.00

This Caesar salad was lovely to look at and delicious to eat, once Femme de Joie located the part of the salad that had dressing on it. For reasons untold, the top inch or so of Romaine was sprinkled with Parmesan cheese but otherwise was naked as a jay bird. Once she prodded around in the dish, the dressed salad was located underneath the first layer of inexplicably plain lettuce.

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Fettucine with shrimp, scallops, and crab, $12.00

Let us be honest: this was the smallest serving of fettucine - nay, of any kind of pasta - ever placed before M. de Joie. Ever. She wondered if perhaps this was some kind of test to see if she would explode in righteous indignation, or if she would shut up and eat it. Not one to make a scene on most occasions, she ate it. Four large grilled shrimp were perfectly cooked with a slightly crisp exterior and tender meat. Two or three scallops had been sauteed to a light brown - not easy to do well - without being dried out. The crab was completely lost in the mixture of fettucine, cream, and cheese, though the fettucine was al dente and not gummy. However, the dish was on the dry side and needed more sauce.

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Cream of mushroom soup, $4.00

Creamed soups often remind one of Campbell's Cream of Mystery, but the version at Cafe Paradiso was excellent. Fresh sauteed mushrooms floated in a delicate creamy base of half-and-half tempered with broth so as not to feel fatty and globulous. One of the few versions that doesn't make the diner call out for a defibrillator afterwards.

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Large Southwestern Salad with avocado, $8.00

This started out as a $6.00 Southwestern Salad with an addition of avocado to make it an $8.00 Southwestern Salad. If you look closely, you can see four scalpel-cut slices of avocado on the upper left side. Crispy tortilla strips, diced tomato, corn kernels, and cotija cheese decorated a lovely stack of arugula-strong mesclun. Served with an addictively tart lime-chipotle aioli, this was a very good rendition of a salad that's become a staple on many menus. As Femme de Joie happily worked her way down through the salad, she discovered a stratum of chopped Romaine underneath the mesclun. Normally, all green leafy participants in a salad are tossed together like college youth of yore in a telephone booth, so she was bemused to find the Romaine looking like a poor relative of the privileged lettuces, hiding its head in embarrassment, Perhaps the person assembling the salad started to make a Caesar, then rather than toss out the Romaine, covered it up. Perhaps this is the Bump-it of salads - like Snooki wearing that plastic dome on her head, Romaine is used to artificially floof up the mesclun. Perhaps this is the new trend in salads - rather than mix all the greens, they will be layered like cakes. It's a mystery. The truth may never be known.

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Wine flight, $8.00 for one person, $15.00 for two people

A wine flight is a offering of several wines, usually (but not always) with a common theme - varietal, terroir, maker, and so on. This wine flight is served as an appetizer and seemed to not have anything binding them together. From left to right, a Ruffino white from Tuscany with Granny Smith apples, a Mouton-Cadet Bordeaux with aged Cheddar on a Carr's water cracker, and Chocolate Shop with a house-made brownie. By far the Ruffino and apple was the most successful pairing. Mineral and flinty, the cold Ruffino bounced off tart apples that was stimulating and exciting. Mouton-Cadet sounds prestigious but it is a brand - perhaps the first brand name of wines in France - and the wines are generic and inexpensive. Owned now by Constellation, it's a wine to not get one's hopes up over. After tasting the Ruffino, the blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc was disappointing and muddy. A flake of aged Cheddar needed a little stage to star on, but what it got was a Carr's Water Cracker. For a thankfully brief time, M. de Joie thought it was a sign of good taste and prestige to serve Carr's; she now knows that if you're going to serve crackers, be sure to get ones that don't taste like burned cardboard. Merlot infused with chocolate sounds like a dessert wine, and it is, but it went surprisingly well as part of this flight. The brownie was on the dry side but it made the chocolate wine sing.

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Ahi with lemon, garlic, butter, and capers ($19.00) and twice-baked potato ($4.00)

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Beet salad, $5.00

Ahi (tuna) resembles beef more than other fish; slices of prime ahi look very much like rare steak. The texture is firmer than many other fish and it lends itself well to strong seasonings and sauces. It is frequently served seared so the interior remains dark red and meaty. At Cafe Paradiso, it was served medium, meaning the narrow end of the steak as well at the edges were well-done - which is overdone. Coated with a lemon, garlic, butter, and caper sauce that seemed to be losing its emulsion rapidly, it was a disappointment compared to what it could have been. On the side, a twice-baked potato was leaking butter that mixed with the caper sauce, creating a lemony oleaginous puddle. In a separate bowl was beet salad - roasted cubed beets reclining on greens. It tasted like beets and nothing but beets - M. de Joie could not detect any flavorings, sauces, dressings or other garnishes. She likes beets quite a lot, and these were tasty enough, but there was nothing about it that made her want to order it again.

Femme de Joie would like to see Cafe Paradiso succeed. The food is quite good, though the preparation and presentation are uneven. She has a little laundry list of opinions, of course:

Every French restaurant in France - and every Italian restaurant in Italy - includes bread as part of the meal. The cost is worked into the price already. Why isn't it here?

Include one or two prix-fixe meals. A la carte is fine and dandy but the cost adds up faster than one imagines. Femme de Joie pictures a young couple out for a nice dinner who fall over in a dead faint when they get the bill at the end of the evening - and then have to call someone to come bail them out.

The premium wine list is delightful but if someone is paying $26.00 a glass or $95.00 for a bottle of wine, the year should be printed on the wine list. The not-premium wine list has some bright spots such as the Darcie Kent Zinfandel, but it would be lovely to see Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and/or Syrah offered by the glass.

Rethink the fettucine serving size. Really.

Cafe Paradiso, 1270 Yuba Street (between Pine and East), Redding, CA 96001. 530-215-3499. Open Monday through Saturday for lunch, 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, dinner 5:00 PM - 10:00 PM. Open late nights Thursday through Saturday for wine/beer/special menu, 10:00 PM - 1:00 AM. Closed Sunday. Beer and wine. Vegetarian and vegan options. Street parking. Website here or follow them on Facebook.

Long, long ago, in a space of time after dirt was discovered but before Interstate 5, there were only two-lane roads. Incredible, yes, yet it's true. Femme de Joie saw it with her own two eyes. She traveled those roads often whenever the de Joies went on a weekend trip . Mostly the trips were modest ventures, as the crow flies: Crater Lake, Lassen Park, Reno, Eureka. But if the crow is not flying, if the crow is driving a Ford Falcon on a two-lane blacktop with thousands of other travelers, in those days before roadside towing service and emergency phones, then it's a much different - and much longer trip - than it is now.

For one thing, cars overheated a lot more then than they do now. Auto air conditioning was in its infancy and it generally resulted in hoses bursting at very inconvenient places. The de Joies spent more than one hot Sunday afternoon in a very, very long line of cars crawling along what is now Interstate 5, creeping through the Sacramento River Canyon between Redding and Dunsmuir as we all slowly passed some unfortunate family and their sizzling car.

That's why the Giant Orange stands were very popular, not just in California, but anywhere it got miserably dog-tired hot in summer. They were absolutely everywhere along Highway 99 (I-5's predecessor). It was so wonderful to come across one of those funny round orange buildings as you drove along California's Central Valley, and go in and get a cold orange juice.

Times change, freeways and off-ramps and McDonald's came in, and nowadays if you're driving on an old highway, maybe you will see an occasional forlorn Giant Orange stand boarded up. There are still a few in business, resurrected as restaurants - there's one just north of Redding that is now serving Mexican food, and it must be a puzzler to younger folk who wonder why the place serving tacos looks like an orange. A green orange.

Joe's Giant Orange has been serving up breakfast and lunch since 2006. Colorfully painted booths and wall murals inform the diner that this place specializes in Mexican dishes - though there is plenty of American food available as well. Service is friendly and fast.

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Ham and cheese omelet, $8.99

Tender eggs folded squarely around generous portions of mild cheese and diced ham - not a breakfast that's breaking any new ground, but a constant favorite. Filling and non-greasy with crisp hash browns alongside, this was better than some more expensive versions.

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Arizona Enchilada Omelet, $9.99

While the name is a little confusing - nuthin' really screams enchilada about this - chile verde draped over a folded egg omelet does bring Tex-Mex to mind. Femme de Joie loved the verde's tartness and shreds of pork laced throughout. This is not a spicy-hot sauce so chiliphobes can enjoy it without fear.

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Tamales, $10.99

House-made beef tamales seemed on the dry side. While the filling was flavorful and abundant, it was also on the salty side; a bite of masa and filling together made us wish for some badly needed sauce. Fortunately, the house-made salsa is quite good and was necessary to resuscitate the tamales and give them a bit of oomph. Refried beans were also house-made, creamy and smoky. The rice was undistinguished.

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Enchiladas Colima Style, $9.99

The house-made enchilada sauce was evidently salted in the same way the tamale filling was. Femme de Joie admits to an unholy passion for salty foods, but this overdid it even for her. Too bad, because the rest of the dish - freshly prepared pork filling and not too much cheese - was really delicious.

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A side order of fresh green salad was crammed into a small soup bowl, a plating that makes M. de Joie start twitching: instead of forcing greenery into a too-small container, put that salad on a plate where it won't fall off.

We did love a vanilla milkshake ($3.99) made with real ice cream (that may sound obvious, but there's a reason McDonald's calls it a shake - so as not to imply anything by the title) with the metal can plopped onto the table alongside the glass for a second serving, as every devotee of Fifties-style diners knows it should be.

Overall, we enjoyed Joe's Giant Orange. It's a truly local place, mainly patronized by regulars who know each other and think nothing of sharing their opinions of the Raiders with you at length as your food gets cold. While we might not drive north every day to dine, if we were headed thataway and were feeling peckish, we'd stop in. Femme de Joie is curious, though: is the water in the first toilet in the women's restroom always heated, or was that just a temporary interesting feature?

For more on Giant Oranges or to buy one for your own front yard, see http://www.agilitynut.com/food/oranges.html

Joe's Giant Orange, 3104 Cascade Boulevard, Shasta Lake City, CA 530-275-9582. Breakfast and lunch. Open daily 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Vegetarian options. No alcohol. Parking lot. No checks.

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Page Summary

Sauce Is King at Fat Daddy’s Gourmet Bbq
Retro Relic Macias el Michoacano in Cottonwood
Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ Livens Up Downtown Redding Dining
View 202 – All That Glitters is not Gold
Delicious Bargains at Tiny Thai Hut
Fire and Pizza at Cinders
El Delicioso Burrito: Don’t Fear Gas Station Cuisine
Carnegie’s – The Devil is in the Details
Shameless O’Leery’s – Whiskey, Football, and Food
Visions of Sugar-free Sugarplums
Yaadgar Indian Restaurant Creates New Memories
Sushi and Serenity at Sakura
History, Food and Music at the French Gulch Hotel
Taj Mahal – Delicious Food, Incessant Service
Positive Affirmations and Sandwiches at Turbo’z Deli
El Rinconcito’s little corner of good food
Maxwell’s – food for the hip and not-so-hip downtown
Popular Guadalajara – No hay milpa sin cuitlacoche
Cafe Paradiso – French food in Redding? Mais oui!
Joe’s Giant Orange – Yesterday’s Kitsch Becomes Today’s Diner

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Where to Eat in Redding and Shasta County, California

Recent Entries

Sauce Is King at Fat Daddy’s Gourmet Bbq

Retro Relic Macias el Michoacano in Cottonwood

Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ Livens Up Downtown Redding Dining

View 202 – All That Glitters is not Gold

Delicious Bargains at Tiny Thai Hut

Fire and Pizza at Cinders

El Delicioso Burrito: Don’t Fear Gas Station Cuisine

Carnegie’s – The Devil is in the Details

Shameless O’Leery’s – Whiskey, Football, and Food

Visions of Sugar-free Sugarplums

Yaadgar Indian Restaurant Creates New Memories

Sushi and Serenity at Sakura

History, Food and Music at the French Gulch Hotel

Taj Mahal – Delicious Food, Incessant Service

Positive Affirmations and Sandwiches at Turbo’z Deli

El Rinconcito’s little corner of good food

Maxwell’s – food for the hip and not-so-hip downtown

Popular Guadalajara – No hay milpa sin cuitlacoche

Cafe Paradiso – French food in Redding? Mais oui!

Joe’s Giant Orange – Yesterday’s Kitsch Becomes Today’s Diner