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You would think a roadway as busy as Eureka Way would be lined with more and better restaurant options than having to order via a microphone and eat in your car, but most of the eateries are expressly designed to get you driving again as fast as possible. Maybe it has to do with the number of medical facilities and high schools on that street – necessary to be sure, but not really the sort of business zoning that attracts restaurants.

An oddly-shaped little plot at Eureka Way and 11th Street has been home to a series of sit-down restaurants. Back in the 1980s it housed a very good Italian restaurant, followed by (among others) the Donut Wheel, the ill-fated Avocado’s, Brick’s, and Uncle Mike’s Burgers. Uncle Mike’s had barely let the paint dry before Madayne took over, opening their second Redding location (the other on Hilltop Drive).

The dining room is relentlessly boxy, with small aqua wooden-topped tables and banquette seating along one wall and a lengthy counter on another, metal chairs to be moved around as needed. There’s a divided-off space in the center with picnic tables. When you walk in, order and pay at the counter (there is also another counter on the other side of the room which mainly serves coffee drinks), then take a seat and wait for your food to be delivered. While you wait, you can peruse the t-shirts, mugs, books, and coffee for sale.

On M. de Joie’s first visit, she ordered and then asked for a receipt but was abandoned by the cashier, so she never got it. She supposes the cashier had to confer with others in front of and behind the coffee bar who all seemed to be busily sending and receiving texts.

Trinami sandwich, 1/2 $8.50, plus hummus & veggies, $1.00 with meal, $1.50 a la carte

Trinami is the name given to a sandwich built with smoked tri-tip, pastrami, Swiss cheese, and chipotle sauce on what the paper menu described as a baggett. The menu also said it came with fries, which were nowhere to be seen. While the sandwich was delicious, this was by far the smallest half-sandwich M. de Joie has encountered in a very long time. It was a good thing she ordered the hummus & veggies on the side since that $8.50 half sandwich was terribly lonely all by itself. It would have been nice to have a spoon or some other implement to scoop up the hummus after running out of baby carrots, but waitstaff was nowhere to be seen – maybe involved in a texting scheme to take over the world. Actually the hummus was very good scooped up with fingers.

Black and blue salad, half $9.50

M. de Joie was surprised at the generous serving of salad, given the incident with the half-sandwich, and wonders if they got it right or she was given the wrong portion. No way to check now. At any rate, the salad was delicious, with thinly-sliced warmly grilled tri-tip and a generous amount of blue cheese.

It was while she was eating this salad that M. de Joie began musing about the wisdom of tipping. Now she is fully aware that the subject of tipping is a volatile minefield, but she’s going there anyway for the purpose of this story. Service/tipping is for, you know, service. You are seated in a restaurant, your waitperson brings you menus, takes your drink order, brings your drinks, takes your meal order, brings you your meal, checks back to see if you need anything, and in general makes sure you get everything you want/need. That fulfills the concept of service. Now at a place like Madayne, when you pay by card you are asked right away if you want to tip, and the options are spelled out on the automated screen (15%, 20%, etc.).

M. de Joie is a generous tipper in exchange for good service, knowing that waitstaff put up with a lot of abuse and are not paid well, but something stuck in her craw about this. How do you know what you want to tip for service when you haven’t had any service?

No one came to take Femme de Joie’s order: she gave it at the counter. No one checked to see if she had everything she needed. Someone did come around and plunk down the salad, but that was it. Since she’d had to get her own water, she could have easily gotten up to get her own salad too. Was delivery of a salad, a walk from the kitchen, worth a buck-fifty?

NorCal breakfast burrito, $6.99

The old smears on the tables had been wiped away and replaced with fresh smears. A burrito filled with breakfast staples – egg, potato, bacon, ham, Cheddar – then lightly grilled was really very good, with all the fillings hot and cooked just right, though it did scream out for some salsa. Reluctant to have to get up and go disturb the waitstaff, M. de Joie decided to take a chance on a bottle on the table labeled “Madayne Sauce – a fresh take on ketchup.” She had noticed it on her first visit, mainly because the bottles on the table were half empty and left uncapped. Not feeling impetuous, she poured some onto her plate and tasted it before saucing the burrito. It was sweet ketchup with a hint of heat and a decided moldy flavor, and not the delicious type of mold like Brie.

M. de Joie also ordered coffee since they flog it tirelessly ($2.25). She won’t make that mistake again, though she was impressed at how a cup of coffee can be bitter and watery at the same time.

What to say about Madayne? The food is pretty good but overpriced. You’re hit up for a tip for service before you even sit down. Staff is friendly but elusive: you’re pretty much on your own. There doesn’t seem to be any one person in charge and the staff seems lackadaisical about taking care of basic details. Femme de Joie only visited the Eureka Way location and it may be different at the Hilltop Drive branch, but she’s not really interested in spending more money there to find out.

Madayne Grill & Espresso, 1970 Eureka Way, Redding, CA 96001. 530-245-9160. Also Madayne Eatery & Espresso, 930 Hilltop Drive, Redding, CA 96003. 530-224-1111. Open Monday through Friday, 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM, Saturday 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM, Sunday 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM (Hilltop branch closes at 7 PM on Sunday). Cash and cards. Parking lot. Vegetarian and vegan options. Beer and wine. Website at http://madayne.com/

If you live in the US of A, chances are good that you own a grill – according to the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, 75% of Americans own a smoker or grill, and 61% of them use it year round. No statistics are known to exist on how many people refer to grilling as barbecuing, but it’s a safe bet that “most of them” is the right answer.

If you get home from work and start up the Char-Broil or set fire to some Kingsford Briquets to cook some tender steaks or burgers, that’s grilling. If you light a wood fire in a big ol’ half-barrel and pull up a cooler full of beer to while away some serious hours tending tough hunks of meat, you’re talking either barbecuing or smoking. It’s all in the technique and window-dressing won’t cut it: serious pitmasters know that anyone who talks extensively about their 50-ingredient secret barbecue sauce recipe is an unworthy poseur and amateur. Real barbecue is expensive and time-consuming; there are lots of restaurants with the barbecue name that just flood some cooked chicken with sweet gloppy sauce and assume you don’t know the difference, or care.

Femme de Joie had heard good things about Old Mill Eatery & Smokehouse in Shasta Lake and thought it was time to head north to check it out. It opened some ten years ago and was taken over by new owners in 2015. In a light-filled faux log cabin chalet on Shasta Dam Boulevard, they serve three meals a day to a variety of tourists and locals, grandpas in overalls and hipsters with flashy hair tints, business folk and families, all of whom come for the generous portions and real smoked barbecue. Service is helpful and friendly albeit sometimes a little leisurely.

House-made corned beef hash and eggs, $12.95

Canned corned beef hash isn’t worth the time and effort to make it attractive and palatable; you may as well serve a fry-up of Alpo. Homemade is a different story. Old Mill mixed pink shims of house-smoked corned beef mixed with hash browns and crisp-fried, a bit on the salty side but both crunchy and tender at the same time. More hash browns alongside had a golden crackly top and moist insides to go with eggs cooked sunnyside up.

Smokehouse breakfast with ham, $12.95

Very often the ham part of ham-and-eggs is a neat little soldier of a ham slice, uniformly cut from a pressed loaf, microwaved or held in a heating tray until needed. A nicely browned 8-ounce slice has some texture and character and heft as it was here.

A large flaky biscuit baked in-house was a breakfast in itself along with peppery thick cream gravy redolent with bits of sausage. The biscuit was not quite baked all the way through, though, so the inside was a little gummy.

Old Mill Cheese Steak, half $11.95, full $14.95

Skip the drive to Philly and get this one instead. On the lively and spicy side, luscious smoked tri-tip meshed with mushrooms, onions, and bell peppers in a coat of melted cheese. A really delicious and messy sandwich.

Potato salad and dirty rice, $3.95 each

Side orders are done especially well at Old Mill. House-made new potato salad, a far cry from that weird yellow sweet paste sold in plastic tubs in supermarket refrigerator cases, was crunchy with celery, creamy but not mushy, and lightly peppery. Dirty rice was outstanding – often made with chicken livers and giblets, this savory, fluffy rice was chock full of smoked beef niblets and seasoned generously with cayenne.

Smoked brisket sandwich, $12.95, side of baked beans $2.95, cole slaw $2.95

At dinner, full plates of smoked meats are available, but they can also be ordered as sandwiches for lunch. Smoked brisket, though on the salty side, was juicy and tender with visible smoke rings – lots of smoke taste here, though the amount of meat on the sandwich was a bit scanty. The house-made baked beans had a snappy vinegary tang with diced bacon flavor. Femme de Joie assumed the cole slaw would have a creamy dressing and was pleased to instead taste a piquant apple cider vinegar-based sharp dressing that paired well with smoky meats. A A tiny cup of barbecue sauce tasted of ketchup, sugar, vinegar, and liquid smoke; the brisket did not deserve to be sullied with it.

Though not everything was perfect, there are many good things going on at Old Mill Eatery & Smokehouse – enough to warrant a drive up I-5 to Shasta Lake. If you crave barbecue that isn’t coated with sticky bottled sauce, this is worth trying out on your way up to the dam (go have a look while there’s water in it).

Old Mill Eatery & Smokehouse, 4132 Shasta Dam Boulevard, Shasta Lake, CA 96073. 530-275-0515. Open daily, Sunday though Thursday, 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM, Friday and Saturday 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Parking lot. Cash and cards, no checks. Beer and wine. Not much for vegetarians to see here. Follow them on Facebook.

You’re at the airport waiting for your flight. You feel a bit peckish, maybe a little anxious, and decide to throw caution to the wind and get something to eat. You think about comfort food: a stack of warm cookies, a cheeseburger, a triple gin and tonic – but when you actually start looking at the prices, the trip back down to earth nearly shatters your ankles. Ten dollars for a bowl of soup? Thirteen bucks for an Irish coffee? Twenty-one for a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon? Even as you reluctantly fork over $9.75 for a sad cellophane-wrapped turkey sandwich, you already know what it tastes like: the lonely humiliation of being the last one chosen for the softball team.

Fortunately for those who fly in and out of Benton Airpark, the situation is much happier. You might not think of dining at the airport, but West Redding is fortunate to have the Airpark Cafe close at hand, open to the public and pilots alike. Taken over by new owners a few months ago, it’s a cheerful place to enjoy a leisurely breakfast or lunch while enjoying the views of the mountains and planes landing and taking off. The outdoor deck is pleasant even on hot days with canopies and misters. Service is friendly, though a bit on the slow side.

Reuben sandwich, $7.99, with house-made potato salad; small house salad, $2.50

Grilled Reuben sandwich needed just a bit more sauerkraut – it was pretty thinly spread – but otherwise was tasty and a good value. House-made potato salad was much better than the stuff in industrial-packaged tubs you so often get in small cafes – creamy and slightly sweet. Femme de Joie was expecting a salad of bagged iceberg lettuce so it was a nice surprise to get this salad of dark greens and tomato instead – and at a good price.

Chicken fried steak breakfast sandwich, $8.25, side of hash browns, $2.50

Whoever thought of putting chicken fried steak into sandwich form is one smart cookie. This isn’t diet food by any means, but it was tender and savory with a thin omelet, cheese, and smear of gravy inside the bread. Hash browns were crisp on the outside and tender inside.

French toast combo, $8.25

Freshly made French toast was light and fluffy alongside crisp bacon, eggs cooked as requested, and hash browns. A very good deal for the money.

Side order of two biscuits ($1.50 each) and gravy $1.50

The gravy was definitely made in-house, as evidenced by the swirl of sausage fat that hadn’t quite been incorporated. Great sausage flavor and not too salty, this went nicely on fresh biscuits and smeared on the hash browns.

French dip supreme with mushrooms, onions, and Swiss cheese, $8.25, sweet potato fries on the side

Airpark Cafe had some very tender tri-tip available, and that smokey taste made this French dip rise above the ordinary, a juicy and messy combination. Sweet potato fries were out of a freezer bag but were crisp and non-greasy.

Florentine Omelet, $8.99, home-style potatoes on the side

The Florentine Omelet was a special of the day, with spinach, tomatoes, and ham, covered in Hollandaise. Eggs were tender and filled with fresh ingredients; the lusciously rich Hollandaise was missing the requisite tang of lemon and was more like a thick eggy butter sauce. Home-style fries were a bit undercooked.

Cobb salad, $7.99

Cobb salad included dried cranberries, feta cheese, fresh apple, red onion, tomato, candied walnuts, and strips of grilled chicken atop a mesclun mix – this would probably be called a half-salad portion in most restaurants, but the price fit the portion size. Light and refreshing, this made a good lunch.

Airpark Cafe is a little gem in an unlikely place above the tarmac, not far from the Dog Park – hence the dog bed and dog water bowl on the deck. The low prices and friendly atmosphere make up for the somewhat slow service. It’s quite small so is unsuited for a group of more than about eight people, and is up a flight of stairs (Femme de Joie assumes there is another access from within the building it’s housed in, but doesn’t know for certain). It’s a good value with tasty food in an area where restaurants are thin on the ground. Worth checking out.

Additional bonus: they are currently offering a tri-tip dinner and a movie on Saturday nights in the hangar; schedule at flyhillside.com

Airpark Cafe at Benton Airpark, 2600 Gold Street at Airpark Drive, Redding, CA 96001. 530-241-4204. Open daily, 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Cash and cards; no checks, Beer and wine. Vegetarian and vegan options. Parking lot.

It seems to be an inescapable part of growing older: asking, “Do you remember -” and increasingly finding the answer is, “No.” The Rite Spot, Shasta Maid, Redding Bakery, Shasta Bakery, the Shack, Midway Inn, Ramona’s, Holly Cafe – for longtime locals, those exist only in memories; sometimes the location has been erased, paved over or left to the nonstop erosion of time.

Femme de Joie was just a wee tot when she and Maman de Joie visited the old Gold Street Cafe – in particular she remembers a slice of caramel layer cake; a few days later she asked Maman if she thought the cafe still had any. Over the years there were many visits to Gold Street Cafe; it was inexpensive, quick, and the diner-style food was pretty good, with the homemade pies in a glass display case a standout. Then the cafe was sold a couple of times and finally closed in late 2014.

A few months ago a banner appeared on the east wall of that building, announcing that Trendy’s would open soon. Now Femme de Joie has to say here and now that she thought Trendy’s was an awful name for a restaurant. It sounds like a place in the mall selling cheap fall-apart jewelry to teenage girls. But the reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor were generally positive, and the food photos looked luscious, so how bad could it be?

The old pastel paint and faux-Victorian decor is gone, replaced with sleek black and white paint and accents of red. A major and much-needed change was changing the restrooms around so you don’t have to walk outside the building to get to them. Service is generally fast and on the chatty side.

Corned beef hash and eggs, $11.00

Corned beef hash is made in-house and did taste homemade, though there didn’t seem to be a lot of it on the plate. Amico del Signore asked for hash browns and was told Trendy’s doesn’t serve them, but that the garlic herb house potatoes were “really special.” We found them not-special without much garlic or herb taste, just home fries by another name.

Griddle cakes were recommended with the corned beef hash and the waitress assured us that “everything is homemade.” From where M. de Joie sat, she could clearly see the restaurant-sized boxes of Krusteaz Pancake Mix on a shelf in the back, so she wasn’t terribly surprised when the pancakes proved to be very sweet with overwhelming vanilla taste. Perhaps the Krusteaz is used for a purpose other than pancakes, but having used this product herself, Femme de Joie feels this is the “homemade” pancake batter. Some people consider adding an egg and milk to a mix to be homemade; M. de Joie is not one of those people. It reminds one of the very old joke about the young bride who went all over town looking for a box of scratch because her new husband told her that’s what his mother made cake from.

Country Fried Steak, $11.00

Eggs were ordered straight up; they arrived runny on top. While M. de Joie doesn’t mind this, most people would strenuously object being served uncooked egg white. Likewise undercooked was the roux for the gravy; the gravy tasted of raw flour. The country fried steak also suffered from raw flour underneath the crisp exterior – probably from cooking too fast so that the outside was done before the entire coating was cooked. The steak itself separated into curious layers when prodded with a knife.

Biscuit and gravy would have been good if (A) the biscuit had been baked all the way through and (B) not smothered in the raw-flour gravy.

Femme de Joie is a clean-plate ranger, but left quite a bit of this meal on her plate. Amico del Signore declined to accompany her on subsequent visits.

Two carnitas gringo tacos, $12, with house-made potato salad

The carnitas tacos were quite good, with juicy, tender meat, a spicy aioli over avocado slices, and melted cheese cradling the inside of the flour tortilla taco shell. The menu promised jicama slaw but what was delivered was cabbage. Potato salad had lots of dill pickle and was one of the better restaurant potato salads M. de Joie has tasted, There was a lot of empty territory on the plate, though; for $12.00 you’d expect a bit more actual food.

The Bomb Burger, $12.00, with fries, extra $1.00 for garlic and Parmesan

This is one of Trendy’s most popular items, or so the waitress said. The 1/3 pound burger itself was good, but the Cholula fried onions didn’t have any Cholula taste (there’s an oversized bottle of Cholula on M. de Joie’s kitchen counter at all times, so she’s quite familiar with the pequin-arbol flavor). The onions had a nice light crunch at first but as they cooled, the crunch morphed into a bready, starchy texture that didn’t enhance the burger and mostly wound up back on the plate, along with the none-too-fresh flap of leaf lettuce. The garlic fries were probably wonderful when they were hot, but Femme de Joie didn’t get to experience them then. When they arrived at her table, they were lukewarm and gummy. Maybe they were cooked at the beginning of the 15 minutes it took to get the order and had been patiently awaiting the burger.

After reading the glowing reviews online and hoping Trendy’s would carry on the diner food legacy of Gold Street Cafe, it’s almost as though M. de Joie visited an entirely different restaurant. There’s nothing wrong with Trendy’s that some basic timing and cooking practice can’t fix. But when the food is disappointing, the menu prices seem even higher than they are – and they do seem pricey for portion size and quality. She hopes that some simple kitchen management will take care of the problems. Trendy’s has plenty of fans, but right now Femme de Joie doesn’t see whatever it is they see.

Trendy’s. 1730 Gold Street at Railroad Avenue, Redding, CA 96001. 530-768-1499. Open Monday-Friday, 6:00 AM – 2:00 PM, Sunday 8:00 AM – 2:00 PM. Closed Saturdays, Cash and cards; no checks. No alcohol. Vegetarian and vegan options. Parking lot. Follow them on Facebook.

If you’re whipping along Hartnell Avenue, perhaps heading west toward Four Corners and planning your congested intersection strategy (You think it’s bad now? You should have tried navigating it before traffic lights were installed), or traveling east to pick up some eggs at the Hen House, you might well never notice the long cinder-block building just to the right of the gigantic Cash and Carry parking lot.

Maybe the ’50s-style space-age-retro sign atop the laundromat caught your eye, but other than that, it was just part of the landscape. Femme de Joie used to get her flivver repaired at the old Chevron station nearby and remembers that building was once home to a diner called Watson’s; it also housed Indognito and a Jiffy Burger, but she never set foot inside any of those places, feeling that she was probably spending enough to get the engine’s hamster wheel greased (she has since upgraded to a better line of hamsters).

Rita’s Kitchen has occupied the diner end of that building for 10 years now, the front door with the red canopy facing Hartnell. If you’re expecting the polished chrome, snappy black-and-white checkerboard tile, red Naugahyde booths, and flashing neon of a faux-retro luncheonette with American Graffiti waitresses, you will be expecting a long time. This ain’t no Streamline Moderne railway car restaurant: white enameled cinder blocks line the wall with reproduction Coca-Cola ephemera scattered about. The ceiling heat vent sports a fresh coat of duct tape and there are a few random dings and marks here and there. Four smallish tables, three or four seats at the counter: it seats no more than 20.

Owner Rita Fore cooks while her niece Ashley Hazelwood waits tables. They’ve got a smooth system to get your food out fast.

Corned beef hash and eggs, $10.50

Canned corned beef hash is what you get in the vast majority of breakfast cafes; its resemblance to Alpo is hard to ignore. Rita’s makes theirs from actual corned beef and it’s absolutely worth eating, with shredded corned beef mixed with hash brown potatoes and fried crisp, along with a serving of hash browns (likewise crisp) and eggs.

This is what Rita’s calls mini-cakes (an option to go with breakfast main courses instead of toast). It was more like a short stack of regular-sized pancakes, light, fluffy, and tender.

Chicken fried steak, $11.50

A schmear of house-made sausage gravy was all this crisp-outside-medium-inside steak needed. Sometimes chicken fried steak is tough with a lot of gristle but the one served at Rita’s was gristle-free and not overcooked.

Pastrami Reuben with potato salad, $8.50

M. de Joie loved the creamy homemade potato salad with tiny crunchy bits. She was much less crazy about the pastrami Reuben – a good grilled sandwich was spoiled with unpleasantly salty pastrami. Femme de Joie enjoys salty food but this was too, too salty even for her.

Joe’s Special, $9.95

The story goes that Joe’s Special was developed by a San Francisco restaurant in the 1920s – it may have been Joe’s or Original Joe’s or New Joe’s. Anyone who knows the real story is long gone and it probably doesn’t matter any more, but the recipe survives: eggs scrambled with spinach and hamburger. Rita’s version was heavy on spinach and short on eggs – fine for M. de Joie, who is a spinach fiend, but it was more like a mass of spinach and hamburger with a teeny bit of egg thrown in rather than a scramble per se. The thin-sliced country potatoes made up for it with their crunchy edges and fall-apart interiors.

Side of gravy ($1.00) with biscuit

Creamy, peppery sausage gravy deserved better company than the refrigerator-cold, slightly gummy biscuit it came with. M. de Joie did appreciate that jam was served in a little plastic bowl rather than the inevitable peel-back-top tubs of Smucker’s.

There were a couple of glitches but overall, Femme de Joie likes Rita’s Kitchen. Too far from Hotel Row and Interstate 5 to be of interest to tourists, this is a locals’ place. Simple, tasty food in a very unpretentious diner atmosphere at fair prices – while not a place to linger for a long lunch and too tiny to bring your entire tribe, it’s worth a stop, especially for breakfast.

But watch that step in and out the door – Rita says the City of Redding won’t let her make it safer since the surrounding sidewalk belongs to them. Anyone at City Hall want to explain how that’s business-friendly?

Rita’s Kitchen & Catering, 1154 Hartnell Avenue, Redding CA 96002. 530-223-4214. Open Monday through Friday, 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM, Saturday 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Closed Sundays. Cards and cash, no checks. No alcohol. Vegan and vegetarian options. Parking lot. Follow them on Facebook.

Redding and Anderson have their share of what Maman de Joie called “hard-luck spots” – places where businesses opened optimistically, closed quietly, and another business moved in rapidly – lather, rinse, repeat. For whatever reason, those locations seemed almost cursed, Bermuda Triangles of hopes and dreams that disappeared into the nether world where small businesses go to die. The cafe in a minuscule strip mall at 2083 Balls Ferry Road seemed destined to be one such place – Femme de Joie recalls a sandwich shop (run by the guy who used to host a free Thanksgiving dinner at his home) and an Italian takeaway in that slot, among others.

About ten years ago, Becca’s Cafe evolved out of Miners Cafe in that little strip mall and seems to have put the curse to rest. Run by Marvin and Becca Howsmon, this little diner has become a local favorite for its extremely reasonable prices, unpretentious menu, and well-prepared comfort food, as well as the friendly proprietors. When Amico del Signore tried describing it to a friend who was unfamiliar with it, the friend finally said, “Oh, that religious place?” Well, the walls are decorated with the sort of tchotchkes and bric-a-brac you see in many small cafes, including a poster with Psalm 23 and similar artwork, there’s a rack of Chick tracts by the cash register, and they wish you a blessed day when you pay your bill. No one whacks you upside the head with a Bible or proselytizes. They’re busy cooking and serving.

Chicken fried steak, $7.99 with biscuit and gravy

No one will ever claim that chicken fried steak is health food, but it makes a delicious breakfast when well-prepared with a crisp crust and tender, juicy interior as it is at Becca’s. A generous pour of peppery cream gravy over the biscuit on the side was enough to smear on the hash browns too. Owner Becca confirmed that they buy frozen hash browns but do not pre-cook them as many restaurants do – they cook to order, which makes them taste more like homemade.

Ham, tomato, mushroom, and cheese omelet with avocado (upon request), $7.99

Becca’s does omelets particularly well, with tender eggs and a plethora of fillings that are never gummed together with too much cheese. This one was a three-egg, but the menu indicates you can order a four- or five-egg omelet as well.

Ham and eggs, $7.99

Your basic diner breakfast of ham and eggs depends largely on the quality of the ham – will it be dried out and over-salted, or lightly browned and tender? In this case it was the latter, a more than fair serving for the price, with biscuit and gravy on the side.

Bacon, mushroom, and Swiss cheese omelet, $7.99

Even if you’ve cut back on bacon, sometimes its siren song calls to you; just a little bit can satisfy that craving as in this omelet. Though that second slice of cheese somehow hit the plate rather than the eggs, the rest of the omelet was on the mark: again, fillings (particularly crisp bacon) that weren’t obscured with excess cheese.

Avocado burger, $7.99

To be sure, the burger is a pre-made patty, but it had not been lingering in a freezer for six months. Cooked to order (not held on a steam table), it was still juicy and flavorful.

Fish and chips, $7.99

This was the only item Femme de Joie tasted at Becca’s that she wasn’t crazy about. Rather small portions of fish were on the dry side and unmemorable. She did like the simple fresh salad on the side.

Onion rings, $3.50

Yes, out of a freezer bag, but deep-fried at the right temperature – crunchy and not overly oily.

Becca’s is hardly fancy or au courant, and if you’re high-maintenance you might not love it. They use lots of pre-made and frozen foods. It gets noisy with kids and adults chattering. You have to slip to the (tiny) restroom through the kitchen and the kitchen staff isn’t going to dress up in their best duds to impress you. The ceiling vent could use some repair and cleaning. Not a hipster in sight, though we spotted a couple of folks who appeared to have just rolled out of bed. Sometimes it gets pretty crowded and you might have to warm a bench beside the front door to wait for a table (the whole place seats about 40 people). But the prices can hardly be beat with special extra-cheap menus for seniors and kids, and the portions of tasty fare are generous for the price. The coffee costs $1.00 – no, it’s not Blue Bottle, but it tastes pretty good for one dollar. Becca’s might not appeal to those seeking a fine dining establishment, and for those people there are all those other restaurants offering such things. For everyone else, drive on down to Anderson and check it out.

Becca’s Cafe, 2083 Balls Ferry Road, Anderson, CA 96007. 530-365-4511. Open daily, 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Parking lot. No alcohol. Cash, cards; no checks. Vegetarian options. Follow them on Facebook.

Some 20-odd years ago, Femme de Joie had a close gal pal who lived near the Perko’s in Westwood Village. If we were out and about doing Girl Stuff, she’d often say, “Let’s grab a bite at Perko’s.” The options in that area being severely limited, M. de Joie went along with this, but was invariably underwhelmed. The food wasn’t inedible; it was indifferent and inoffensively tasteless and bland. The scrambled eggs stick in Femme de Joie’s mind as resembling the powdered eggs served in her college cafeteria. It was food as fuel – nothing more or less. After her friend moved away, M. de Joie moved Perko’s to her list of places she would never again have to darken the door.

Recently, friends TC&C recommended the Humble Joe’s on Hartnell Avenue to Amico del Signore. These are not people who patronize the House of Carrot Sticks or Fanny’s Flophouse & Pizzeria; they enjoy a good meal in clean, comfortable surroundings. Femme de Joie was highly skeptical, but TC&C had never given bad advice yet, so we headed off to breakfast. It was good enough that we returned and ordered the exact same breakfasts a week later.

In the interim between breakfasts, M. de Joie learned that Humble Joe’s owner Tom Lachuassee had been the operator of Perko’s but had grown disenchanted with the direction the company was going, so struck out on his own nearly three years ago. Perko’s soldiers on elsewhere, but the two Redding and one Anderson locations are now local.

Masterpiece Omelet with Cheddar cheese, red onions, green onions, and bacon plus hash browns, $10.48

Biscuits and gravy (included with omelet)

The Masterpiece Omelet is one of those build-your-own concepts: start with the basic cheese omelet at $8.99 and add ingredients to taste. Sometimes those are a rip-off to an unsuspecting or distracted diner, but in this case was a good value, with a surprisingly abundant amount of crisp bacon plus sauteed red onions and green scallions. Likewise, a lavish serving of hash browns on the side with melting interior and crackling exterior was twice the amount of potatoes normally served up in most breakfast houses. A peppery, creamy gravy topped the biscuit.

Oaxacan pileup, $11.49

Not the most elegant of names, but this interesting variation on huevos rancheros makes you forget the semantics. A stack of hash browns, crunchy corn tortilla, shredded pork verde, a tomatillo cream sauce, and eggs made a delicious and unusual one-dish breakfast. Again, portions were generous.

Reuben with potato salad, $11.99

M. de Joie liked the Reuben sandwich with plenty of sauerkraut and pastrami plus rather good potato salad (did not appear to be out of a deli carton), though she thought this was not as good a value as some of the other dishes on the menu.

Fish tacos and chips, $12.49

Generally speaking, Femme de Joie likes fish tacos very much. She would describe this as fish tacos for people who don’t like fish or tacos. She cannot claim to be an expert on fish sticks because she has never knowingly eaten one, but that is what appeared to be the center of attention: fish sticks carefully cut into rectangles and placed carefully on top of cubes of avocado and iceberg lettuce which was on top of slightly warmed corn tortillas with minced red onion and tomato, ranch dressing and bottled salsa on the side. It was an impressively large amount of very bland food. The fries on the side were not bad.

Femme de Joie did not visit the Anderson location so can’t comment on that, but the Westside Humble Joe’s suffered from lack of upkeep – in particular the fabric booth covers showed dismaying amounts of built-up grime where many hands and feet had made their unsightly impression over time. However, the Hartnell location is well-kept and cheerful. They cater to seniors – even though Femme de Joie and Amico del Signore are what might be termed Extremely Advanced Youth, they found themselves the youngest people in the place, which lead to being able to overhear very loud conversations from other patrons whether we wanted to or not. We now know everything there is to know about renting a car in Spain, and M. de Joie wonders if the lady in another booth will let her family know how much they hurt her feelings (she certainly repeated it often enough that everyone within earshot knows it).

However, overall M. de Joie liked Humble Joe’s. Service was fast and friendly and the food, while not haute cuisine, was better-than-average coffee shop quality. Stop in and give it a try.

Humble Joe’s Chophouse and Grill, 10 Hartnell Avenue, Redding CA 96002, 530-221-1144. Also 2631 Balls Ferry Road, Anderson CA 96007, 530-365-3308, and 6400 Westside Road, Redding CA 96001, 530-244-0738. Open Sunday through Thursday, 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM; Friday and Saturday, 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cash and cards. No alcohol. Parking lot. Very confusing website at http://www.humblejoes.com/

Even the most dyed-in-the-wool ardent Reddingites have to admit that it gets intolerably hot here in the summer. (You think it’s bad now? Imagine what it must have been like for the early settlers, clad in voluminous layers of heavy fabrics and garments with nary an air conditioner in sight.) Many stay indoors and turn the thermostat as low as their electricity budget will allow. Some head for the mountains to camp or to the lake to poach gently until well-done. But for Femme de Joie’s money, the best bet is to endure the 3 1/2 drive to Humboldt County and enjoy those cool ocean breezes (until she has to turn around for another 3 1/2 hour drive back home).

The Eureka Times-Standard reported in 2011 that the City of Arcata put a cap on the number of chain businesses allowed within city limits, a ruling some might find draconian but which M. de Joie finds utterly delightful. If one really needs to patronize a franchise or big box megastore, Eureka is a ten-minute drive away, but locally owned and operated businesses rule in the home of Humboldt State University. Yes, you can get a Big Mac in Arcata, but you have to drive all the way north to Valley West off Highway 101 to get it. Wouldn’t it be better to just stay close and enjoy some real food instead?

Golden Harvest Cafe has been serving up breakfast and lunch since at least the early 1980s (when Femme de Joie discovered it). Sean Balissa and Dorothy Myers bought it in 1998 with the intent of having a restaurant friendly to both vegans/vegetarians and carnivores. The lines out the door during Sunday brunch attest to their success in appealing to a wide range of tastes. M. de Joie and Amico del Signore have always been so stuffed after a breakfast that they have never tried the lunches.

Cajun potato cakes, $10.19, eggs $1.50 each

Golden Harvest features several variations of potato cakes for breakfast – a sort of potato hash with eggs atop. Cajun potato cakes were spicy-hot with cayenne-heavy Cajun seasoning, crisped all around, and savory with pepper jack cheese, olives, onions, and sausage (tofu sausage upon request). Definitely on the hot and spicy side, this was an unusual and delicious potato breakfast dish.

Golden Toast, 2 slices for $7.89

Remember the 1960s fad for cornflake-coated fried chicken? This variation on regular French toast beats that by a mile. Embedded crunchy cereal gives texture and sweetness to normally soft Texas toast slices.

California Benedict with avocado and tomatoes, Hollandaise and garlic cream sauce, $11.39

Sometimes you just have to have something unapologetically artery-clogging, but it better be worth it. The California Benedict fills that bill. We couldn’t decide whether the house-made Hollandaise was more delicious than the garlic cream sauce, and they were even more heavenly smooshed together on the plate. Crispy hash browns on the side were perfect with tender insides and crunchworthy outsides.

Chicken fried steak and eggs with biscuits and gravy, $13.99

This was quite simply the best chicken fried steak either M. de Joie or A. del Signore has ever tasted. Made with pounded New York steak and cooked until the batter was crisp but the interior medium-rare, tender and juicy, this was worth every calorie-packed bite. Sometimes gravy on the side is too salty, gummy, or otherwise a letdown, but Golden Harvest’s gravy was a perfect balance of creamy, savory, and peppery. Likewise, biscuits were tender and flaky.

Golden Harvest Cafe recently expanded to include a Eureka location, though it’s hoping too much to expect them to open a Redding location. The Eureka location presumably does not include the angry Arcata ghost who resides upstairs; it is rumored that he/she hates loud techno music and throws cutlery at the kitchen staff if the music is too loud. Femme de Joie did not hear or see said ghost so can’t provide independent confirmation, though she would definitely pay extra to experience this.

Everything we’ve tasted at Golden Harvest Cafe has been nothing less than wonderful, including coffee from Humboldt Bay Coffee Company (placed in a carafe on your table). Vegans and vegetarians are well-provided for – do not sneer at their house-made tofu bacon, as it is crisp and smoky with great bacony flavor. Though there are many fine places in Humboldt County to enjoy breakfast, Golden Harvest has to rank in the top three.

Golden Harvest Cafe, 1062 G Street, Arcata, CA 95521. 707-822-8962. Also 1707 Allard Avenue, Eureka, CA 95503, 707-442-1610. Open daily for breakfast and lunch 7:30 AM – 2:00 PM. Cash, cards, no checks. Kids’ menu. Vegans and vegetarians well-provided for. Beer and wine. Parking lot behind the building (access off 11th Street) or street parking ( feed the meter). Website at http://www.goldenharvestcafe.com/index.html or follow them on Facebook. Menu pages (pdf) here, here, here, and here .

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.

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.

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.

The phrase “tote-bag hell” was first coined during the 1970s for those interminable weeks when public television programming was interrupted every six minutes to beg the viewers to pledge money. In exchange, the pledger received a “token of appreciation” – a tote bag or a coffee mug. Tote bags and coffee mugs are now apparently passe – instead, the lucky donor gets a CD/DVD of Live from the Andorra Opera House, Peter Lemongello Salutes Allan Sherman! Even a die-hard Peter Lemongello fan must surely be aware that no matter how shiny and new that DVD may be, it’s just an enticement to get you to send money for the greater good.

There’s been a restaurant of some kind in the courtyard of the Hartnell Castle for many years. Femme de Joie knows she dined there a few times, but it was so unmemorable she cannot recall now if it was Mexican, Chinese, or what. Savory Spoon opened in that oft-abandoned spot in late 2011. M. de Joie immediately filed it away in her soon-to-close-due-to-bad-location file cabinet. But it didn’t close; it prospered and grew from being open three days a week to six days. Good things were heard about the food and the pay-what-you-can Mondays. It was time to drive east on Hartnell to visit.

The dining room features perhaps 20 small tables (no booths) topped with butcher paper; a cup of crayons is provided. Also on the tables are small pepper grinders and salt grinders – a very nice touch. Collections of vintage menus and kitchen tools make more interesting wall decor than the usual starving-artist paintings found in small cafes. It was perhaps half-full and not crowded on any of our visits.

M. de Joie was surprised at how varied Savory Spoon’s menu is. There are numerous vegan options (including seitan) as well as gluten-free dishes (though Femme de Joie did not ask whether cross-contamination measures are taken).

VLAT (Vegetarian bacon, lettuce, tomato & avocado) potato salad, $11.00

When vegetarian meat substitutes were first widely available, most of them were on the disgusting side. M. de Joie remembers a booth at the Shasta District Fair circa 1970 that was handing out fake steak bites. She has blocked out exactly how nasty that bite was. There’s been a lot of progress since then, and this sandwich was a good example. Crisp and smoky veg bacon stood in for the real porker product. Matched with local tomatoes and buttery avocados, this was a healthier take on the classic with a strong resemblance to the real thing. On the side, potato salad was good enough to be compared to homemade – this definitely did not come off the Sysco truck. However good the food was, we did expect more food for $11.00.

Monte Meat Burger (brown rice, legumes, mushrooms & vegetables) with chipotle sauce, side of cod chowder, $12.00

It’s easy for most restaurants to offer a veggie burger by just defrosting a Boca or Garden burger, but kudos go to anyone who makes their own. The Monte Meat burger had a meat-like texture (it held together rather than falling into sorry lumps like many veggie burgers do) and taste (though again, it isn’t going to be mistaken for ground chuck). Femme de Joie was rather taken aback at the size, reminiscent of a kiddie burger at a fast-food place, though the homegrown yellow tomato soothed some of the disappointment. Chipotle sauce was very mild and bland. Cod chowder was full of vegetables but a bit short on actual cod, though it had the fishy taste of a cod swimming in the cauldron.

Strawhouse Morning Blend coffee, $2.50

Savory Spoon uses a lot of local food purveyors, including coffee from Strawhouse on Highway 299 at Big Flat. Why would you get coffee from a wide spot in the road on your way to the coast? Because this is exceptionally good coffee and worth the extra trouble.

California omelet (bacon, tomato, avocado, blue cheese) with red house potatoes and rye toast, $9.00

It isn’t that easy to find a really good breakfast in Redding, but Savory Spoon does them right. A tender omelet with a harmonious combination of fillings (blue cheese on an omelet? Yes, please) was the centerpiece. Red house potatoes were a delight – not burned or underdone or out of a freezer bag, seasoned lightly, they made the plate complete. Rye bread from The Oven Bakery in Mount Shasta was a surprise – toast is often just on the side to take up room, but fine rye bread is actually worth eating. A nice touch was jam served in tiny bowls rather than the peel-away plastic tubs.

Biscuits and gravy, $8.00/$5.00

House-made sausage gravy isn’t on the dieter’s list, but this gravy was worth at least a taste or two. Not overly salty or greasy, creamy gravy had plenty of sausage bits (unfortunately, a bit of gristle too). It would have been nice to have the gravy served on the side rather than poured over the biscuit so the biscuit could have remained unsoggy.

Tofu scramble with potato, red bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, with hash browns and rye toast, $9.00

Scrambled tofu? It’s been a staple of vegetarian & vegan breakfasts for years, and is worth exploring if you’re looking for a low-fat alternative to eggs. Colored with turmeric to look like eggs, tofu takes on the taste of whatever it’s cooked with. This was a pleasing mix of vegetables with soft tofu curds. It’s been a mission of Amico del Signore to find really great hash browns, and these were pretty close to potato Nirvana: very crisp, nongreasy house-made shreds of browned potatoes.

The food is delicious with so many nice touches, and the undertaking of the Savory Spoon is noble and in line with everything M. de Joie agrees with. It is located in an underserved area for restaurants and also attempts to serve the disenfranchised population. Savory Spoon has so many good things about it – ingredients sourced from local purveyors, dedication to high-quality organic foods, gluten-free and vegan options, a pay-what-you-can day on Monday for the poor & indigent. Having said all of that, Femme de Joie found this to be by far the most difficult review she has ever written.She walked out of Savory Spoon feeling uneasy, unsettled about some niggling little discrepancy, something that just wasn’t sitting well with her. It finally came to her, not in an enlightening moment of shimmering clarity, but after hours of boring Amico del Signore with existential questions and general angst. It’s the pricing.

Take the coffee, Morning Blend, retailing at Strawhouse for $13.00/pound. It is very good coffee and a very good deal at $2.50. But Cheesecakes Unlimited in Redding serves coffee for $2.79, Clearie’s for $4.00, a French press of coffee (2-3 cups) at Moonstone costs $5.95. Wines: Savory Spoon has a nice selection of primarily local wines. A bottle of Burnsini 2009 Tehama Red sells for $24.00 at Vintage Wine Bar but $18.00 at Savory Spoon. The food pricing seems askew: a large spaghetti lunch (including garlic bread but not soup or salad) costs $15.00 but a 1/3 pound Prather Ranch bacon cheeseburger (including a choice of sides) is priced at $12.50. Chicken and dumplings at dinner is $15.00, more than meatloaf ($14.50). And at breakfast, a bowl of cream of wheat or oatmeal seems sky-high at $7.00, compared to an English muffin with meat, Cheddar, and a fried egg for $5.00. Should a seitan sandwich cost more than a Reuben? Why do inexpensive pasta and chicken cost more than beef? Why is a simple bowl of hot cereal more than a ham-egg-cheese breakfast sandwich?

M. de Joie wondered what’s wrong with the chicken if the pasta costs more? Why do pancakes cost more than an omelet? There must be something she is missing here. It would seem logical to her that a nonprofit restaurant capitalize on the same things that for-profit restaurants make money on – i.e. the huge markup in beverages – so that the other menu items are not so far out of line with other restaurant menu pricing. Does getting a cup of coffee for $2.50 make up for a seven dollar bowl of oatmeal? At what point does “It’s for a good cause” trump actual value? Like the DVD sent out by PBS in exchange for a donation of $120, is it enough to keep people coming back for more, or will it eventually dissuade consumers?

These are questions M. de Joie does not have a satisfactory answer to, but thus far the customer base seems quite happy with the food at Savory Spoon – and in the end, that is what will keep it alive.

Savory Spoon, 1647 Hartnell Avenue #1, Redding, CA 96002. 530-222-7200. Open Tuesday-Saturday, 9 AM – 8:00 PM. Sunday brunch from 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM. Community Monday, 12:00 noon to 4:00 PM; pay what you can. Cash and cards. Beer and wine. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free options. Parking lot. Website at www.SavorySpoon.org

In "Square Meals," their love letter to American suburban cuisine, the very tongue-in-cheek food & pop culture writers Jane and Michael Stern have this to say about Hawaiian food: "There is no cuisine more adventurous, or more totally spurious, than that called Polynesian. We don't know what Polynesians eat, but that doesn't matter, because it has no bearing on Polynesian food, suburban style. Polynesian dining is the ultimate in exotica. It is a cuisine that encourages you to flame foods, tint them unnatural shades of red and blue, and generally create a very sexy mood. It is the food of love, suggesting a Hawaiian honeymoon or moonlight cruise.

"Polynesian Night calls for a romantic setting, the dining area lit with pagoda lanterns, the table set with fragrant gardenias bobbing in glasses of tinted water, and centerpieces constructed from tropical fruits and nuts. The man of the house wears his most colorful aloha shirt, the woman her muumuu or grass skirt... a good luau concludes with the singing of Hawaiian love chants such as 'O Makala Pua," "Imi Ao Ia Oe," or "Lovely Hula Hands.' What? You say Hawaii isn't Polynesia? Who cares? To the suburban gourmet, that is a petty distinction. All Pacific cuisines are one, their escutcheon a Maraschino-red banner bearing a parasol and scowling Tiki god engulfed in the Sterno-blue flames of the pu pu platter." From there the Sterns go on to offer recipes for Flaming Cabbage Head Weenies with Pu Pu Sauce and Kilauea Purple Passion Rice.

Femme de Joie has never experienced the Hawaiian tourist luau or been offered a bowl of poi to be washed down with a Blue Hawaii. But she does know that the stereotypes about any regional cuisine are just that - stereotypes - and that savvy chefs use the best local foods to create their finest dishes. But you won't find that kind of cooking in the tourist areas. You'll have to seek it out.

And that brings us to 808 Bistro, which is about as hidden as a restaurant can possibly get. Improbably located in the basement of the Department of Transportation building, it's highly unlikely any non-Reddingite ever darkened its doorway unless they happened to be in that building on business. Those who did almost certainly walked away smiling: Oahu-born & raised Chef Keith Kakiuchi is turning out some of the best food in town, and not just Hawaiian - he covers a range of Asian cuisines as well as French, Greek, and other western-style preparations. Yes, you can get Kalua Pork or Ahi Poke - but there's so much more.

808 Bistro is only open for breakfast and lunch, and only on weekdays. You have to sign in with the security guard, then walk down the stairs and through below-ground hallways to get to it. The dining room doubles as the CalTrans break/lunch room, but unlike most workplace lunchrooms with their scary refrigerators and sinks full of dirty dishes left by co-workers who think the Good Fairy will wash them, this dining room is cheerful and clean with Hawaiian motif artwork and cool aqua paint throughout. On hot Redding days, it's a cool relief to step down to 808, order at the counter, and relax while Chef Kakiuchi prepares your order.

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Macadamia nut pancakes came with guava syrup and lilikoi syrup (lilikoi might be better known as Passion Fruit) - all made by Chef Kakiuchi. These were some of the lightest, fluffiest pancakes we've ever tasted, with a generous amount of macadamias; the house-made syrups were fruity and not overly sweet.

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Omelet with bacon and sausage was tender with crisp bites of salty meat folded inside. The house-made hash browns were perfect, with a crusty exterior and creamy shredded potatoes inside. That tart green tomatillo salsa was hot enough to make Tabasco redundant, and was far tastier.

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Breakfast wrap with egg and ham was enlivened with more of that hot green salsa. Freshly made (as is almost everything at 808), it didn't have that pile-everything-on-and-wrap-it-up quality of most breakfast burritos/wraps: simple ingredients well-prepared.

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Loco moco is wildly popular in Hawaii; there's even a restaurant chain by the same name. The basic version consists of rice topped with a hamburger patty, which is in turn topped with brown gravy and a fried egg. Bad versions are gummy and salty, but this one was piquant and more-ish, with flavorful house-made gravy saucing the entire dish together. Amico del Signore spent a bit of time waxing surfboards and catching waves at Waikiki so he knows his way around a plate of loco moco. He thought this was one of the best versions he's tried. M. de Joie was impressed with the dish as indicative of the level of cooking at 808: this could easily be thrown together with leftovers and gravy out of a packet, but was made with the same care as any other dish on the menu.

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Chef Kakiuchi runs a daily special, and on this lucky day it was Korean-style ribs with rice and macaroni salad. Two racks of beef short ribs were cut flanken-style (across the bone) and marinated, then grilled to order. We can't say enough good things about those ribs. We detected high levels of garlic plus shoyu, some sugar - but there was such a masterful blending of spices and flavors that no one ingredient overwhelmed the dish. Truly one of the very best versions of ribs ever; definitely the best Asian-style ribs in Redding.

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A puff pastry turnover was filled with fresh - not dessicated - coconut paste, which wasn't nearly as sweet as it first appeared, with genuine coconut taste and texture. It had been sitting since early in the morning so the puff pastry was a bit soggy but wasn't so bad that we didn't lick up all the icing.

808 Bistro really is one of those undiscovered gems and M. de Joie feels it deserves more patronage than it's getting. The level of cooking is very high indeed and prices are more than reasonable. A couple of caveats: while prices are low, the serving sizes usually reflect that. And everything is cooked to order, so be prepared to sit down and wait. This isn't fast food or "Polynesian" either, for which we are grateful. There's not a pu pu platter in sight - just fine cooking.

808 Bistro & Catering Company, 1657 Riverside Drive (in the basement of the Department of Transportation/CalTrans Building), Redding, CA. 530-225-3370. Open Monday-Friday, 7 AM - 3 PM. Vegetarian and vegan options. No alcohol. Street Parking. Website at http://www.808bistroandcatering.com/index.html

The late Dame Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop cosmetics chain) wrote of a visit to Mexico City when she was taken to Fonda Meson de Alonso, where she was promised "real Mayan cooking." The house special was a taco filled with live beetles. Roddick kept her menu firmly in front of her face until the bill was paid and she could leave. But food writer Raymond Sokolov, in "Why We Eat What We Eat," declared that Fonda Meson de Alonso merely made a pretense at serving authentic pre-Columbian dishes as a publicity stunt; though the ant eggs in green sauce and iguana consomme were sure to grab the diner's attention, those were mere novelties: the rest of the menu featured beef, pork, and goat - all post-Spanish meats. Sokolov sneered that Fonda Meson de Alonso used wine in a quail dish - a European technique. ( In case you were going to be in Mexico City and wanted to sample the mosquito eggs in mole, Fonda Meson de Alonso does not appear to be in business any longer.)

Now here comes Gustavo Arellano, author of "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America" and the syndicated column, "Ask a Mexican!" Raised on nopalitos, birria, and Asadero cheese served by his Zacatecas-born parents, he was confounded by the Mexican combo plate put in front of him at an Anaheim restaurant. After researching the history and evolution of Mexican food as well as tracking the inroads into American culture, Arellano now says that Mexican food is too complex, too varied to be neatly summed up by whether a taco is deep-fried or what kind of cheese is used. It's not a static cuisine, bound forever by Escoffier-like rigidity and rules. According to Arellano, if it was made by a Mexican, it's Mexican food.

Which brings us to Baja Burrito, a teacup of a storefront in a tiny strip mall on South Bonnyview Road that occupies a spot vacated by Blimpie's, near the ever-present Starbucks. Many was the time that Femme de Joie and Amico del Signore drove past and wondered aloud, "Suppose that place is any good?" It was just out of convenience that A. del Signore did stop in one day, buying lunch for a friend, and reported back to M. de Joie with great enthusiasm that this was a place worth visiting.

To get to it, you either have to be driving west on South Bonnyview, or turn at the light onto Eastside Road and swing around through the back of the strip mall. There are a couple of tables out front, along with the special-of-the-day board. Inside are more tables, including a couple of surfboard-shaped bar tables in the window. Order at the counter from the menu board and your food will be assembled as you like it, Subway-style. There's likely to be a line around lunchtime, but it moves fast.

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Burritos are the specialty of the house, and you can have it your way: carne asada to al pastor, chile verde, chicken, vegetarian. Never previously a big fan of burritos - that pasty white tortilla always put him off his feed - Amico del Signore has been converted. After trying several kinds, he has settled on the pulled pork as his favorite: a pile of ultra-tender shredded pork in a flavorful but not spicy sauce. Black beans and refried beans are both made in-house, and the difference between them and canned is quite noticeable - try one or both, plus the fresh toppings (none of which were shredded last week to save time; their bright colors spoke to their very recent prep). Secret ingredients: try the roasted corn salsa and the roasted tomato salsa, as well as the hot pickled carrots on the side.

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This might be Femme de Joie's new favorite fish taco in town. After ordering, she watched the counter staff carefully stir the batter and dip the fish filet, then deep fry it for a very brief time. There are no pre-packaged fish sticks here. Topped with a slightly sweet creamy sauce and pico de gallo, these fish tacos were light, not greasy, and full of fresh flavors.

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Hot mess? No sir, that's the nachos with pulled pork and cheese sauce. On our first visit as we stood and dithered about what to order, two ladies came in who knew what they wanted - nacho lunches for each. Watching their orders being assembled put the nachos on our to-try list. A far cry from the dry nacho plate appetizer offered on most menus, this was a full meal.

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There are two salads on the Baja Burrito menu, one involving that ubiquitous deep-fried tortilla shell bowl, and this one: just the fillings with your choice of toppings. Chile verde was pleasantly piquant with tomatillos and cubed pork, a great tart contrast to the other rich ingredients.

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Tuesday is the only day tamales are offered at Baja Burrito, so Femme de Joie took advantage of the daily special. Soft, moist masa had a savory corn taste and the generous amount of pork filling was tender and not overwhelmingly spicy. While the rice is pretty average, the black beans are delicious with a simple fresh salsa topping.

Baja Burrito serves a very steady stream of hungry customers in a very under-served area of town. On weekdays starting at 7 AM, they make a breakfast burrito, and stay open late enough to pick up a fast meal for dinner. Daily specials include chile rellanos on Wednesday, tortas ("the best in town!" the owner crowed) on Thursday, and menudo Saturday and Sunday. The food is freshly prepped every day and is just different enough to place it above similar burrito places around town. It's fast without being unhealthy, inexpensive, and a good value. Service is quick and always friendly, with a great willingness to show the customer the different ingredients and explain how each one is prepared. So is it authentic? Frankly, we don't care; we think Gustavo Arellano would approve. On your way to I-5, or on your way home, stop in.

Baja Burrito, 2400 South Bonnyview, Suite 130, Redding, CA 96001. 530-243-2244. Open Monday-Friday, 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM, Saturday 10:00 AM - 7:00 PM, Sunday 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Cash, cards. On-site parking lot. Daily specials. Vegetarian and vegan options. Bottled beer. Follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Baja-Burrito/159725954071932

Cottonwood is one of those I-5 exits most people zoom on past. Unless they need to fill the tank or get a cup o' joe, the average driver sees it as a blip, another of the zillion green exit signs that freckle the roadside. Hardly anyone says, "Hey, Cottonwood! Bet that's a happening place - let's take a gander!"

Femme de Joie doesn't get down thataway much unless it's to check out the year-round Christmas shop or put gas in the car on her way to Somewhere Else. But she'd heard good things about Cottonwood Eatery, so this winter she made it a point to see if there was really something worthwhile to stop for.

The first visit was not auspicious. On a cold grey morning, M. de Joie talked Amico del Signore into trying breakfast at Cottonwood Eatery. It's not a propitious augury when you walk into a restaurant and the patrons have their parkas on. Half of the dining space seemed to be warmer than the other half; we were seated in the not-warm section. Finally a couple of customers asked that the heat be turned up, which the friendly waiter - apparently the only waiter - did cheerfully. By the time we left, the temperature was getting more comfortable.

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The waiter asked A. del Signore if he wanted hash browns or country potatoes with the homemade corned beef hash. Hash browns, please, but when the hash arrived it was served atop a large pile of country potatoes. When it was pointed out to the waiter, he said that was the way their corned beef hash was served: on top of country potatoes. After a certain amount of negotiation, the order was returned to the kitchen; when it came back, there was a noticeably smaller amount of potatoes under the hash. The corned beef was sliced ultra-thin. It looked like chopped cold cuts, but tasted of the spices normally used in boiling corned beef, so we are assuming it was made from an actual brisket or round of beef, not deli slices. The corned beef was sauteed with bell peppers; apparently the country potatoes were supposed to be the potato part of the hash as a sort of deconstruction - not a food fad we love. Eggs ordered over easy were overcooked; the hash browns were crisp on the outside but gummy inside.

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The Mediterranean omelet looked beautiful: diced tomatoes, freshly sauteed spinach, crumbled feta cheese. But though the eggs were tender, the whole thing was just parts piled on top with nothing to bind them together. Feta was cold and unmelted on the inside. The country potatoes were not done all the way through. A biscuit was underbaked and doughy inside; gravy was salty and very strongly reminiscent of a can of Campbell's cream of whatever.

After that A. del Signore was reluctant to return, so M. de Joie went alone for lunch a few weeks later.

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Soup of the day, tomato with cavatappi (macaroni in a spiral) and vegetables. This was very reliant on tomato puree and would have gained flavor with the addition of a little chicken or vegetable broth or milk, but still was satisfying and hearty.

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The house-made veggie burger on an "artisian" roll with pesto mayonnaise was outstanding. Most veggie burgers in restaurants are either the frozen pre-made Garden/ Boca brands or soft fall-apart mushes, but the Cottonwood Eatery's version, made with lentils, seemed closer to tasting like meat than most. While it won't fool a dedicated carnivore, neither will it turn them off: this was an excellent, well-thought-out combination of tastes and textures. The house-made cole slaw was fresh and crisp; there was also a large fluff of undressed mesclun on the plate that seemed to cry out for a purpose in life. Solution: eat the burger over the lettuces and let the juices fall on them as a sort of dressing.

It was by taking half the veggie burger to A. del Signore that M. de Joie convinced him to try the Cottonwood Eatery again. That, and the fact that they serve prime rib on weekends.

On a Saturday night, the Cottonwood Eatery was hopping. As dusk fell, staff went around the dining room lifting the window shades so that anyone driving by would see they were open for business. By the number of patrons continually at the door, it appeared that everyone in town knew already.

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We started with an order of sweet potato fries. The menu said they would come with chipotle aioli, but ranch dressing is what we got. No matter: it was a generous portion, crisp and savory, lightly salted and not heavy with oil.

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The daily soup was Italian meatball noodle. Similar to the soup previously served to Femme de Joie, the strong tomato taste was smoothed with the addition of cheese and plenty of meatballs. Think of the flavors of lasagna in a soup and you've pretty much got it.

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Mesclun is more expensive and wilts faster than sturdier but less flavorful lettuces, so for a small-town restaurant to have it in the kitchen shows attention to quality of ingredients. Restaurants that charge a lot more usually serve a plate of chopped iceberg and maybe Romaine - durable and cheaper - as their dinner salad. A nice touch.

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One of the evening's specials was pork porterhouse - a pork chop with the tenderloin attached, served with pineapple grilled with feta. Pork nowadays is much leaner than many cookbooks admit to; as a result it's often overcooked and dried-out. But this was lusciously juicy and flavorful, with a slightly spicy rub. The pineapple with feta was wonderful, sweet and salty with light crunch, a great accompaniment. There wasn't a lot of garlic in the mash, though they were otherwise creamy and freshly made.

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The prime rib was on the rare side of medium rare. It would have benefited from some au jus because this was not a well-marbled serving and as the meal progressed it seemed to dry out. Still, the exterior had excellent flavor from a peppery rub, and the meat was tender as is expected from this cut. It came with a creamy horseradish and also some hot horseradish called Atomic, which was entirely accurate. The baked potato seemed to have been rubbed with oil and also seasoned; it was much better than the standard starchy baked potato served just to take up space on a plate.

Both meals came with divine green beans, fresh and lightly cooked with bacon and onions, a far cry from the floppy strips of Cafeteria Land, and far, far better than the usual chopped melange of squash & company labeled "chef's selection of vegetables" on menus.

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When you walk in the front door, there's a glass pastry case with a selection of desserts made in-house. Femme de Joie normally passes up restaurant desserts but in this case a coconut cupcake called to her. It was on the sweet side - well, it's cake; it's supposed to be - but light and not cloying.

When we left the restaurant after dark, it was the only place lit up and open for business on the street. Probably 99 percent of the Cottonwood Eatery's customers are very local. It's easy to see why they're lining up: aside from that unfortunate breakfast experience (which Femme de Joie is chalking up as a temporary aberration), the food is quite good and reasonably priced. Service is unfailingly friendly and helpful. While it's more cowboy than chic, the Cottonwood Eatery is striving to be more than just a place you go when you don't feel like cooking. Worth the drive from Redding.

Cottonwood Eatery, 20828 Front Street, Cottonwood, CA 96022. 530-347-1717. Open Monday 7:30 AM - 2:00 PM; Tuesday-Thursday 7:30 AM - 8:00 PM; Friday-Saturday 7:30 AM - 8:30 PM, Sunday 7:30 AM-3:00 PM. Cards, cash; no checks. Vegetarian and vegan options. Beer and wine. On-street parking. Follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cottonwood.eatery

The first time Femme de Joie dined at Brick's, back when it was on Placer Street (in the tiny building now occupied by the wildly popular Wilda's), she was underwhelmed. She and Amico del Signore ordered sandwiches (the exact contents now forgotten) which arrived slathered in a sweet red barbecue sauce that completely obliterated any smoke or grill taste. It could have been terry-cloth in those rolls; we wouldn't have been able to tell. Privately we vowed to never return.

But years went by. Brick's prospered and moved to a bigger location. The disappointing pain of those first sauce sandwiches eased. And eventually Brick's was given a second chance to redeem themselves. Breakfast seemed like a good place to start, so one Saturday morning we hied ourselves to Eureka Way to try it out.

If there is a Redding restaurant with a more poorly designed parking lot than Brick's, M. de Joie would be afraid to attempt parking in there. It isn't Brick's fault;' this lot has been like this for a number of years. It's as though the inventor of the Tilt-a-Whirl decided to transfer the concept of an amusement park ride to paving.

There have been several restaurants in this spot. If memory serves, there was the Donut Wheel, the ill-fated Avocado's, La Gondola (sorely missed), and possibly a couple of others. The current interior arrangement isn't fancy - wooden tables and chairs, a small beer bar in the back, a salad bar.

Tri-tip and eggs, $9.89.

Tri-tip is one of those cuts of meat that everyone professes to love, but is nearly always dessicated and rendered flavorless by well-meaning cooks. This, however, was luscious and tender, with smoke rings around the edges. House-made hash browns were similarly well-executed - crunchy exterior and creamy interior.

Chicken-fried steak and eggs, $10.89

We debated whether this chicken-fried steak was better than the one served at Dry Creek Station. While we didn't come to a definitive conclusion, we agreed it was equal. The steak still had some pinkness in the center and was quite juicy - a rarity for CFS. M. de Joie has never cared much for country potatoes/home fries in restaurants because they always seem to have an off taste, but these were delicious, crisp without being burned, and without that old-oil taste.

Grits, $2.89

Is there another place in Shasta County serving grits? They aren't everyone's cup of tea, but it's worth ordering a small cupful and trying them with butter, a squeeze of honey, or using them to mop up egg yolk. These were al dente, as Joe Pesci prefers.

Southwest chicken Reuben, $7.99

Brick's serves an interesting variation on the standard Reuben, substituting smoked shredded chicken for corned beef. It made for a messy, drippy, and delectable sandwich, the smoky chicken holding its own with the other ingredients. The swirled rye bread didn't hold up so well and finally collapsed.

Hot link sandwich, $7.99

Femme de Joie does enjoy food that's fiery enough to make her reach for the Tums. The hot link sandwich at Brick's did just that, but it was worth it. A combination of sliced Andouille and Louisiana hot links, this might be a bit too spicy for some people. It is hot, as the name implies, and a bit on the greasy side, but the piquant seasonings make this more than just one-note hot.

Both sandwiches came with waffle-cut fries, which added support to M. de Joie's theory that any French fried potatoes which are sliced in fancy shapes will always be inferior to fries sliced in the usual wedges or finger strips.

Spicy mac and cheese, $2.99

We both liked the creamy shell mac and cheese - not overcooked or dry, it did have a little heat but wasn't so hot that the kids would reject it out of hand.

Coleslaw, $1.59

One the other hand, M. de Joie wasn't crazy about the coleslaw, which was less than crunchy. With a non-sweet mustardy dressing, it would have been better served on a sandwich as a relish rather than as a side dish.

Overall, Femme de Joie likes Brick's and is glad she gave them a second and third chance. The atmosphere is casual and service is friendly, if a little on the slow side at times. And they get huge Brownie points for serving Guinness and Newcastle Brown Ale on tap. It's a good locally owned and operated place on Redding's West Side, an area that could use some more decent restaurants. Rather than stop at that chain burger hatchery across the street, give Brick's a try (they serve burgers too).

Brick's Smokehouse BBQ & Grill, 1970 Eureka Way, Redding, CA 96001. 530-245-9158. Fax 530-245-9163. Open Monday-Friday, 10 AM - 11 PM; Saturday & Sunday open 6 AM for breakfast. Beer and wine. Vegetarian options. Cash, cards; no checks. On-site parking lot from hell or park on the street. Website at http://bricksbbq.com/index.php/home

Femme de Joie arrived late to the Dry Creek Station party. She had heard of it but had always assumed it was a sort of roadhouse-cum-greasy spoon with nothing much to justify the drive out east of Redding. Nothing against roadhouses or Ye Olde Greasy Spoon; it's just that she'd prefer the roadhouse to be within crawling distance of home, and there are plenty of greasy spoons to go around.

It was the fire just two years ago that alerted her that it might have something worth the drive - if people were in such a swivet over losing it, Dry Creek Creek station must have had something to recommend it besides cheap beer. So M. de Joie cannot join the chorus of yayers/nayers over whether it was better before the fire. That's like arguing over whether Joe Montana's retirement spelled the end of the 49ers: it doesn't matter now. Let us see what we have today.

Whatever the inside looked like before probably bears no resemblance to the decor today. When you enter off the front porch, the pleasant-looking bar is to the right. The dining rooms (of which there are three large spaces) look rather like an ordinary coffee shop with ordinary wooden tables and chairs, some faux-stone, a surfeit of bear paintings and bear hanging wall plaques, industrial carpeting and lighting.

Amico del Signore and M. de Joie made the drive - not all that far, really - for breakfast. It was crowded on a Saturday morning and service was friendly, if a bit harried and scattered. Getting a coffee refill took time.

8-ounce fresh chicken fried steak and eggs, $7.50

Fresh chicken fried steak is what the menu said, and that is what it was. It looked like any other CFS but was by far the best we had ever tasted. The steak actually was fresh - not pre-breaded product made in Minnesota and shipped across the country - and covered with a luscious sausage country gravy. Tender and actually tasting of beef instead of Mystery Meat, this was a winner.

Dry Creek Breakfast Burrito, $6.50
It was probably unfair to have this burrito at the same table as the Chicken Fried Steak. It was filled with eggs, sausage, potatoes, onions, cheese, and topped with the same country gravy as the steak, and was quite good on its own, but M. de Joie kept sneaking bites of the CFS instead. Not that the burrito was bad - it wasn't; it was all the savory breakfast items rolled up into one neat package. But the CFS was better.

On a late afternoon in midweek, we headed to Dry Creek Station for dinner. Arriving about 5:15 PM, the parking lot was already half full. We stood in the doorway uncertainly for several minutes until a waitress emerged from the back to lead us to a table. Presently she came around and took our drink orders - one margarita ($5.00) and one tall (24 ounce) Bud Light ($4.00), which were brought quite promptly to the table.

Despite the steakhouse name, Dry Creek Station has fish, salad, and pastas on the menu, as well as inexpensive ($4.50) desserts. There's a wine list but it isn't automatically brought to the table - it's standard pours (Robert Mondavi, Rodney Strong).

All dinners come with a salad. This was bagged salad mix that was actually quite fresh (not always the case) with a little cup of dressing.

All-you-can-eat barbecued ribs, $12.95, including choice of potato and bread.
We do miss the old Hatch Cover and their occasional special of BBQ beef ribs, but Dry Creek Station's ribs have put that longing to rest. Slathered with a dark BBQ sauce, very meaty and tender ribs fell off the bone at the slightest prodding. A second plate of ribs was brought at our request. A. del Signore said these were easily the best beef ribs he'd had in a restaurant.

16-ounce prime rib with Au Jus, $14.95
This may have actually been more than a pound of prime rib. The crusty exterior had a strong salt-rub taste and the interior was cooked exactly to order. Mashed potatoes were creamy and house-made, with more of that country gravy. A thimble-sized container of horseradish proved to be explosively hot so it was more than ample. The odd little slice of grilled bread on the plate was pretty tasteless but did soak up some of the au jus.

Understand that this is not a steakhouse on the level of, say, Morton's of Chicago, or Ruth's Chris, or the House of Prime Rib. You might stand around waiting for someone to notice you before seating you - no hostess. There's no complimentary bread basket. Salads, though tasty, are minuscule. The forks and knives are just one step up from plastic picnic ware - Femme de Joie's fork actually bent as she attempted to detach a sliver of gristle with the cheapest steak knife on the planet. And it's LOUD - by 6:30 we were leaning across the table to yell to each other.

But the food is good, portions are generous, and prices are extremely reasonable. Service is friendly, though they could use another server on the floor. This is a solid local place with loyal clientele who pack it every night, so get here early.

Dry Creek Station, 22025 Highway 299 East (9 miles east of Redding), Bella Vista, CA 96008. 530-549-5386 or 530-779-0098. Open for breakfast Monday-Friday, 7 AM - 11 AM and Saturday-Sunday from 8 AM - 12 noon. Open for dinner daily, 5 PM - 9 PM. Cards and cash; no checks. Parking lot on-site. Vegetarian options. Full bar. Website and sample menu at http://drycreekstationhouseofsteaks.com/

It might seem as incomprehensible to newcomers and young folks as journeying from Missouri to California via covered wagon, but once upon a time there was no Interstate 5. Instead, that ribbon of highway known as State Route 99 flowed through the center of California and right through the center of towns like Burbank, Sacramento, Yuba City, Red Bluff, and Redding. You didn't have to take an exit to get to a gas station or a motel or a store: they were lined up right next to the road. When Interstate 5 was more or less completed in 1968, those businesses along 99 that depended on high traffic volume were left to sink or swim. Many of them did sink, along with their neighbors, and formerly prosperous areas of town deteriorated like drywall left out in the rain.

There are those who shut their eyes and lock their car doors driving though the blight. And then there are those who see opportunity with the many vacant buildings and low rent. Think of Racha Noodle and Kanya Gardens, two fine restaurants that might not have been able to initially afford uptown rent but which have prospered and earned success. Now we add Sweetie's to that group of entrepreneurs.

You might have seen the barbecue wagon parked next to Eddy's Pub on Market Street - that's Sweetie's barbecue they use for catering.Their brick-and-mortar restaurant is the space where Denny's, the Lime Tree, and AJ's came and went on South Market Street.

As soon as you walk in, you realize this is not your average coffee shop. A sign near the front door advertises local tomato Benedict, line-caught salmon, and free-range eggs. Patrons range from nearby workers on their lunch hour, families with toddlers, and quite a few retirees, all enjoying the good food at low prices.

Amico del Signore ordered the local tomato Benedict - eggs Benedict sans ham, substituting fat slices of very ripe, very juicy tomatoes that actually came out of a local garden instead of being bounced around in the back of a tractor-trailer all the way from Calexico. Topping it was a house-made Hollandaise, smooth and lemony without the salty taste of packaged mix. The friendly waitress (who, it turned out, was the owner) told us that her husband makes the Hollandaise to order - even though that's more trouble than using a prepackaged mix or can, she said the customers react positively to it. Hash browns were also house-made, with a crunchy exterior and creamy interior.

Mipas is eggs scrambled with tortilla chips, and Sweetie's version was light, tender, and fluffy. Little speckles of egg white indicated the eggs are fresh - not scrambled-egg mix. A light amount of melted cheese enhanced the mix of flavors and textures, as did a small dish of salsa and pickled Jalapeno slices. This can be ordered with sausage (as pictured here), ham, or bacon, or with beans.

After that initial breakfast, Femme de Joie and Amico del Signore were eager to return for lunch, to see if it was as good as breakfast. It was.

The house-smoked pulled pork sandwich really showed off the owners' barbecue chops. At first glance, both A. del Signore and M. de Joie thought the sandwich might be dry, as there was no sauce on the meat or offered on the side. But one bite told the story: no sauce was needed. The pork was permeated with real smoke flavor - not from a bottle - and super-tender. Served on a house-made sweet potato roll, this was one of the best examples of fine barbecue available around the North State.

Mediterranean spinach salad with grilled salmon is the kind of dish you wouldn't expect to find in a diner. As the owner told us, they strive to use fresh and high-quality ingredients, and the presence on the menu of line-caught salmon (not farmed, which is often mushy-textured and lacking in flavor) showed they mean business. Fresh baby spinach leaves combined with tomato, cucumber, pitted Kalamata olives, thin-sliced red onion and a light scatterling of feta cheese was a great base for the buttery grilled salmon.

Rhubarb is considered by many to be a somewhat old-fashioned ingredient like gooseberries or elderberries, and you don't often see it offered in restaurants. But Sweetie's served up this luscious strawberry-rhubarb shortcake with a base of house-made yellow cake and a generous amount of not-too-sweet stewed fruit topping, made from homegrown strawberries. A winner and a serving that's big enough for two.

The South Market area might one day make a reversal of fortune. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, yuppies will start moving into this unfashionable area because of low rents and then open up boutiques and chi-chi cafes, and raise all the rents. Before that happens, drive down to Sweetie's and enjoy breakfast or lunch in a comfortable atmosphere.

Sweetie's, 3105 South Market Street, Redding, CA 96001. 530-244-2269. Open daily except Monday, 6 AM - 3 PM. Parking on-site. Cards, cash; no checks. No alcohol. Serving breakfast and lunch. Vegetarian options. Website at http://www.sweeties-catering.com/index.html

Serve piping hot, with a pitcher of Soy Sauce for those who want a higher and more truly Chinese flavor. - From the instructions for Chinese Fried Rice, Sunset Magazine, 1936

Back in 1933 when Lim's opened, Americans were afraid of Chinese food. It could be argued they weren't wild about the Chinese people themselves and the fallout from that fell on the food, but that's a discussion for another time and place. In addition to quasi-Chinese dishes, restaurateurs added some foods familiar to Americans to their menus. BLTs, hot roast beef sandwiches, cottage cheese and canned peaches were borrowed from diners and became staples in a lot of Chinese-American cafes.

Over the decades, Americans gradually became more familiar with the formerly scary ingredients common to Asian cookery - sesame oil, fresh ginger, vegetables like winter melon and tatsoi, and - yes - soy sauce, which became an ingredient instead of a sauce. Some of the old-style cafes closed. Some adapted to changing tastes, adding Mongolian lamb and Buddha's Jewels to their menus. And a few refused to change at all. Lim's Cafe is one of those.

The menu is half Chinese, half American. The Chinese dishes are things like chop suey, chow mein, etc., - and are organized that way on the menu, rather than by beef, chicken, vegetables, etc. American choices include Chip Steak with French fries ($6.50), Full Order of Tomatoes ($5.00), and Denver Sandwich ($6.50) - all very retro items. There's a dinner menu as well - Fried Shrimp Dinner ($14.25), Grilled Pork Chops ($10.50), New York Steak ($16.00). You get the idea. The tropical drinks list includes the usual Mai Tai and Pina Colada, but also the Ding Ho ("Feeling Blue? Try One of These and It'll Pick You Up") and the Moon of Delight ("Very Mild, We Recommend for Lady").

When Femme de Joie first visited, she stood uncertainly near the door until a waitress yelled to sit anywhere. She'd hardly sat down before a waitress appeared at the table with water, ready to take the order. Apparently the vast majority of Lim's customers have the menu memorized.

Nearby, a young couple exulted over their lunch. He: "I'm so glad we didn't go to Grand Buffet!" She, to waitress: "This is his first time here!" Waitress. "If I'd known it was your first time, I would have warned you. It's addicting! Almost all our customers have been here before."

In a fit of retro nostalgia, M. de Joie ordered Pork Chop Suey, simply because it had been so long since the last time she's had it, she'd forgotten what it tasted like. The waitress brought squeeze bottles of ketchup and hot mustard, and asked if M. de Joie required a plate to mix rice and chop suey together. No.

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Chop Suey, $7.50

Chop suey was composed of very freshly cooked bean sprouts - a LOT of bean sprouts - bok choy, carrots, pork, bound with a thick cornstarch sauce, along with a very small bowl of steamed rice. No seasonings such as ginger or garlic had been added. It was freshly cooked and hot, but they forgot to add any taste.

On Femme de Joie's second visit, a nearby table of elderly gentlemen discussed baseball at great length, especially the Giants, as well as each other. "Bob, you're lookin' good." "Yup. 82 next week." "82? You don't look a day over... 74." They were clearly regulars, exchanging razzing with the waitress. They had the menu memorized.

Chinese BBQ ribs, $8.75 appetizer

A large portion of pork ribs was served with a small mound of steamed rice. While the ribs were perfectly cooked and very moist without being greasy, after a few bites M. de Joie became aware of an odd off-taste. It may have been something brushed on the rubs as they were cooking. After a few more bites, the odd taste morphed into a not-tasty taste. This is where those bottles of ketchup and hot mustard came in handy.

Cashew chicken, $9.00

Again, a generous portion of food, freshly cooked and colorful. But there was a large amount of very overcooked bok choy stems and celery, no seasonings, and the cashews had just been dumped unceremoniously on top of the completed dish. Bland, bland, bland.

The third time M. de Joie dined at Lim's, she sat near a man who was clearly enjoying his food. He did not attempt to disguise his moans, slurping, and lipsmacking. Thinking back now, perhaps she should have said, "I'll have what he's having." Instead, Femme de Joie ordered one of the four lunch specials always listed on a card on each table.

Special #1 - pork chow mein, egg foo yong, fried rice, $5.60

At first glance, there appeared to be a salad on the plate, but that turned out to be the chow mein. A more truthful name would be Soggy Cabbage on Lengths of Chewy Stuff. There was a small sprinkling of shredded Chinese pork on top; a powerful taste of star anise fairly overwhelmed the cabbage. Fried rice was nothing more than overcooked rice with a lot of soy sauce. At least the egg foo yong was harmless - there were shreds of an unknown green vegetable inside but there was simply no seasoning at all, not even salt, and it was blanketed heavily with a brown sauce that owed a lot to a packet.

Femme de Joie can understand some of the allure of Lim's. It's very cheap and you get lots of food. Service is very fast and very friendly. The retro ambiance can be charming in a late-night diner sort of way. And if you grew up here, you probably have fond memories of meals shared with family and friends.

M. de Joie has talked to numerous people who state matter-of-factly that Lim's has the best Chinese food around, so it does have a solid fan base. But M. de Joie finds the adulation given Lim's inexplicable and mystifying. In saying so, she's aware she's trampling on feelings and toes and happy memories, but there is far, far better Chinese food to be found in Redding.

Lim's Cafe, 592 North Market Street, Redding, CA. 530-241-9747 or 530-243-2991. Serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Open 7:00 AM - 9:00 PM, Monday-Thursday, 7:00 AM - 10:00 PM Friday and Saturday. Cash, cards, no checks. Small parking lot behind restaurant. Full bar. Vegetarian and vegan options.

Femme de Joie misses the old Omelet House, up there on North Hilltop.

No, it wasn't a transcendental experience, but it was a pretty good place to get breakfast in a town where decent breakfasts are thin on the ground. Behind the counter was a menu signed by Ron Howard, who stopped in one morning for provender. Whatever happened to that menu?

About 20 years ago Country Kitchen opened next door to, then moved into, that old Omelet House space. They've made a successful go of it, dishing up breakfasts and lunch for some years now - they were even mentioned in the New York Times "36 Hours in Redding" (http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/travel/escapes/07hours.html ). It's the kind of place where you pick up The Nickel outside to peruse while you wait for your food, in case you were in the market for eustachian equipment, a dowsing class, or Pearl Harbor pups.

Country Kitchen is known mostly for their generous servings of breakfast, though they do lunch too, as well as sell bread and cinnamon rolls from their bakery. Generally customers are shuffled first into the smaller dining room, mostly booths with a couple of tables in the center. But if it's busy, the larger Omelet House area handles the overflow. Customers are a mix of retirees, families, working men, and an aging hippie or two. Service is friendly, if occasionally somewhat scattered - the person who brings the coffee may be quick to tell you she isn't your waitress.

Scrapple with hash browns, a biscuit, and eggs, $9.55; side of gravy, $1.99.

Oh, it did gladden M. de Joie's heart to see scrapple on the menu. If you're not familiar with this delicious dish, it's what was made with the remainder of the pig once the chops, ribs, roasts, and so on were removed - the small, flavorful scraps were boiled with cornmeal to make a thick pudding, which was fried until crisp. This version is topped with bacon to reiterate the porky goodness, and served with potatoes and eggs. Lovely crisp scrapple cakes were tender on the inside with a crunch on the outside. You wouldn't want to eat this every day unless you carry a defibrillator in your back pocket, but it's a treat once in a while.

Special of the day, sourdough pancakes with peaches, sour cream and brown sugar cinnamon sauce, sausage, $8,25.

When this plate was first set before M. de Joie, it truly looked like fried eggs on top. Nope - it was canned peaches. The pancakes were delicious, but M. de Joie could not bring herself to appreciate the oddly bitter creamy cinnamon syrup. Too bad - the pancakes and peaches (out of a can) would have been better served with plain (imitation) maple or fruit syrup.

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Chinese chicken salad, $9.75, served with house-made cornbread.

You wouldn't expect a salad so blatantly healthy and colorful to come out of the kitchen of a mainly-breakfast cafe, but there is was. This was excellent - freshly-grilled chicken on top of a beautiful array of crisp vegetables. If there was any complaint, it was that the dressing was so thin, it didn't stick to the salad and puddled underneath. Other than that, Chinese chicken salad was a winner, as was the crunchy cornbread served alongside.

The only item Femme de Joie tasted at Country Kitchen that was a misfire was chicken fried steak (not pictured) - the doughy, undercooked crust was unappetizing and the steak was very salty. as was the gravy that day.

Though there are some misses on the execution, M. de Joie likes Country Kitchen and could be persuaded to go back. It does get crazy busy at times, especially Sunday mornings, so call ahead if you're with a group. There's something for everyone on the menu and the prices are fair for the large portions. If you're out on Hilltop waiting for the mall to open, stop by.

Country Kitchen, Town and Country Plaza, 1099 Hilltop Drive, Redding, CA 96002. 530-223- 5438. Open daily from 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Breakfast and lunch, bakery. No alcohol. No checks accepted; cards, cash. On-site parking. Vegetarian options. Website at http://www.countrykitchenredding.com/

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Page Summary

What’s the Attraction at Madayne?
Old Mill Delivers Real Barbecue in Shasta Lake
Come to Airpark Cafe for the Views, Stay for the Food
Trending Downward at Trendy’s
Rita’s Kitchen Does Diner Food Right
Becca’s Cafe in Anderson is a Local Favorite
Humble Joe’s is a Senior Favorite
Start the Day at Arcata’s Golden Harvest Cafe
Retro Relic Macias el Michoacano in Cottonwood
El Delicioso Burrito: Don’t Fear Gas Station Cuisine
Joe’s Giant Orange – Yesterday’s Kitsch Becomes Today’s Diner
Savory Spoon – the Price of Nonprofit
Dial 808 for Delicious Food
Fast Mex at Baja Burrito
Cottonwood Eatery – Worth the Drive
Brick’s Brings Barbecue to Redding
Dry Creek Station – Diner Prices, Steakhouse Quality
Sweetie’s Restaurant Stands Out On South Market Street
Lim’s Cafe – Retro or Relic?
Country Kitchen – Something for Everyone

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Where to Eat in Redding and Shasta County, California

Entries tagged with breakfast

What’s the Attraction at Madayne?

Old Mill Delivers Real Barbecue in Shasta Lake

Come to Airpark Cafe for the Views, Stay for the Food

Trending Downward at Trendy’s

Rita’s Kitchen Does Diner Food Right

Becca’s Cafe in Anderson is a Local Favorite

Humble Joe’s is a Senior Favorite

Start the Day at Arcata’s Golden Harvest Cafe

Retro Relic Macias el Michoacano in Cottonwood

El Delicioso Burrito: Don’t Fear Gas Station Cuisine

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

Savory Spoon – the Price of Nonprofit

Dial 808 for Delicious Food

Fast Mex at Baja Burrito

Cottonwood Eatery – Worth the Drive

Brick’s Brings Barbecue to Redding

Dry Creek Station – Diner Prices, Steakhouse Quality

Sweetie’s Restaurant Stands Out On South Market Street

Lim’s Cafe – Retro or Relic?

Country Kitchen – Something for Everyone