Restaurant reviews Guy Hand has written for the Idaho Statesman, Idaho’s largest daily newspaper
Among borshch aficionados, the origins and essential ingredients of this Central and Eastern European beet soup are as varied and hotly contested as chili at a chili contest. There’s Russian borshch, Polish borshch, Jewish borscht, hot borshch, cold borshch, thick borshch, thin borshch, meaty borshch, meatless borshch and borshch without beets. There’s also little...
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I suspect that more pin stripes and jewels drift through Chandlers Steakhouse on an average evening than any other restaurant in the Valley. Beyond the bar’s backlit glassware, the bird-of-paradise spiked bouquets, the white linen and honey-colored light, there’s a bank of private rooms where more than a few deals are surely made over...
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I can live with, even appreciate, the old desk and piles of paperwork you pass by when walking into Chef Roland’s dining room. The cordless drill left on the floor near a table. And Roland Joseph himself shuffling across the room to a zydeco beat that’s moving twice as fast as he is.
All of...
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When Kana Girl’s Hawai’ian BBQ owner Keoni Tyler wanted to tinker with one of his family recipes, he had to ask his mom in Hawaii for permission.
“I’m 53 years old,” Tyler says, “and if my mom walked in here and saw that the food wasn’t prepared appropriately or the portions weren’t of family size,...
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A glass of wine, an appetizer, a little live jazz and I’m thinking life in springtime Boise is pretty good.
A windowless basement may not sound like the perfect place for such sunny contentments, but this cubbyhole on the lower level of the Garro Building on Bannock Street (between 8th and 9th) has delivered before....
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(GH: Here’s an expanded version of the taco truck review I wrote for the Idaho Statesman last week — due to contractual agreements, I now have to wait a week to post my reviews on Northwest Food News. In the Statesman article, there was no room to get specific about individual tacos, so at...
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At 2 o’clock in the morning, there’s a compelling, if slightly twisted logic to fried chicken and waffles. Especially after a night at Liquid or one of the other spots within teetering distance of Solid, a new, BoDo-based restaurant.
At that hour, food becomes less a meal than an antidote. Dishes that might simply be...
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Let’s face it: We Treasure Valley eaters are generally a conservative lot.
We drool over mac ‘n’ cheese, crunchy fries and juicy slabs of sirloin. We tend to turn up our noses at prissy presentations, things with tentacles and dishes we can’t pronounce. That, of course, should come as no surprise to residents of this...
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I’m a skeptical fan of themed restaurants. The theme – whether saddlebag Western, fishnet nautical or palm-frond Polynesian – is often nothing more than a decorative distraction from forgettable food. It turns out that the Tiki hut motif that decorates Reef in Downtown Boise is the mother of all those restaurant themes.
Don the Beachcombers...
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La Belle Vie is a charming new restaurant housed in a nearly century-old, former downtown Nampa home. The fact that it sits across the street from a sprawling brick warehouse only heightens the charm. After all, that contrast of urban nicety and industrial funk gives Nampa and much of Canyon County a kind of...
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