Soy House

New to the Bakerview Square area, Soy House is serving up Vietnamese cuisine.  While I have not eaten here myself, my husband has been there a few times and he thinks it's great stuff.  Not so great: styrofoam take-out containers wrapped up in a plastic bag for carrying convenience.  Ick.

Soy House

414 W Bakerview Rd

Bellingham, WA

(360) 393-3585

Slow blogging week

I have to apologize for not having restaurants to blog about lately.  I recently had an unexpected stay St. Joseph's, so the only food I was eating was courtesy of the hospital kitchen.  Hospital food is certainly nothing to write home about, but I'm really disappointed in the amount of styrofoam that was used in food service.  Hospitals generate a lot of waste anyway, much of it is necessary to maintain sanitary and sterile conditions.  But they could do a much better job at minimizing the non-biodegradable wastes that aren't part of the sterilization process, such as the 20 oz. styrofoam cups that they served drinks in.  I'd be willing to bet that the little plastic cups in which they delivered my meds were thrown away, too.

D'Anna's Café Italiano

I had no intention of throwing D'Anna's a curve ball the other night when we ate there.  I wasn't terribly hungry and just wanted a small bowl of minestrone (which was excellent, by the way).  But apparently they only have one size of minestrone--huge.  When I asked if it was possible to take the rest home, my wonderful waitress went off in search of a container.  I didn't ask for a non-styrofoam container, but I heard her ask the one of the kitchen staff, "do we have anything that isn't styrofoam that I could put some soup in?"  What she came back with appeared to be a paper cup and plastic lid that would normally be used for serving espresso-to-go.  I don't think that plastic lid was recyclable, but they did a bang-up job avoiding the styrofoam.  Kudos!

Whether or not their other carry-out containers are typically non-styrofoam, I can't say.  I'll have to check it out some other time and let you all know.

D'Anna's Café Italiano

1317 N State

Bellingham, WA

(360) 714-0188

UPDATE: D'Anna's uses paper boxes for carry-outs...yay!  Thanks to Shauna for the tip!

Jalapeños Family Restaurant & Lounge

For this post, I have to do a little boasting first.  Tonight was the first time my spouse and I  remembered to BYOC!  It's pretty sad to admit that my Mom gave me the idea of BYOC a few years ago, but because I get so stoked about going out to eat, I usually forget to take my own carry-out containers.  Not tonight, though!  Gold star for us!

As it turns out, I would've done fine if our carry-out containers had been forgotten--I am happy to report that Jalapeños Family Mexican Restaurant has paper clamshells for taking home your leftovers!  Gold star for them!

Jalapeños Family Mexican Restaurant

501 W Holly

Bellingham, WA

(360)671-3099

Italian Tomato

While up in British Columbia today, my co-travelers and I stopped at a little Italian place just outside the Vancouver airport in Richmond, BC...Italian Tomato.

Food: Excellent. Enormous portions of pasta, so I'm willing to bet you'll have leftovers.

Carry-out provisions: Styrofoam.

And to make it just a little bit worse, each of our four containers of leftovers was in a plastic bag. Four styrofoam containers, four plastic bags. Ugh.

Italian Tomato

8380 Bridgeport Rd

Richmond, BC

(604) 247-0040

El Gitano

My co-workers and I frequent this restaurant in Mt. Vernon when we're there for work. Always great food, but unfortunately, they're still doing styrofoam. ¡Que terrible! There are El Gitanos in Bellingham, Burlington, and Smoky Point. I've only been to the Mt. Vernon restaurant, so I can't say with 100% certainty that the others use styrofoam as well, but it's probably likely. BYOC!

El Gitano

1810 Riverside Dr

Mt. Vernon, WA

(360) 424-5514

Also:

1125 E Sunset Dr, Bellingham (360) 714-1065

624 E Fairhaven, Burlington (360) 755-9010

3528 168th St NE, Arlington (360) 653-1400