Franktown Cafe

We are always looking for dining options in Carson City, especially now that the national chains rule and there aren’t too many locally owned, unique, good places left. So we’ll mention one we went to today.

We were in town and looking for a place to have breakfast and remembered that we always drive by the Creekside Deli on college just east of the freeway and have wondered about it. We decided, what the heck, lets see what they have, even if it is a deli. Hopefully it would have a more varied menu than the usual high calorie, high fat breakfast fare (which I like).

We went inside and discovered it is really more of a cafe. Upon walking in, there is an appealing dining room to the right with several tables and three big windows that look out on to the Virginia Range to the north. Off that, there is another dining room. The hostess welcomed us an suggested we sit wherever we wanted as she retrieved some coffee for us.

The menu is large with burgers, wraps and 12 hot sandwiches. Soup combos, cold sandwiches and 9 salad choices round out the choices which are all made to order. Add to that a full breakfast menu and we realized it is more of a cafe than a deli. The DW (Dear Wife) had to choose between a salad, falafel or the veggie burger to get her healthy “fix”. She choose the burger and was delighted with the natural and varied ingredients all blended in a tasty patty.

Check this place out and support a local restaurant/deli that is actually really good too with a nice atmosphere and friendly staff. They cater in and out and you can call in your food order for dining in or take-out at 841-3354. If you are on a “lunch hour” calling in ahead is great as things are made to order and take a little longer than the “fast food” joint.

Joanie’s Creekside Deli, 1795 East College Parkway, Carson City 841-3354

Now that the chains have driven all the local restaurants out of business, where do you go for a good meal with a nice, comfortable, non-chain like atmosphere. We’ve been looking. We like Chili’s but it still feels like a fancy Dennys.

So we’ve been on the lookout for somewhere to maybe get a nice meal in a nice place and keep our money local. We’re still looking.

A pretty good imitation of a local restaurant is the new Firkin and Fox. Here’s a good article on aroundcarson.com . We went last Sunday and the sumptuous Victorian english pub decor fits in nice with the town and the historic St Francis Hotel building on Carson Street, downtown. The food was good and the service was good also. It was difficult to be a satisfying conversationalist with my wife though, with football on flat screens everywhere you looked, but it was the NFL playoffs and maybe they aren’t on all the time.

They are still a chain though with 31 in Canada, 8 in the States and 135 “in development”. Which, if nothing else, maybe they will have the staying power a mom and pop might lack.

I also see that there is an article on aroundcarson.com about Khristophers Cafe up by the Walmart on South Carson/395. Sounds good and we’ll have to try it out.

There’s a saying that says “It’s human nature to, when things are going good, to toss a “hand grenade” in it and mess it up.

When I started washoevalley.org the theory was to minimize monkeying with glitz and concentrate on content and that has worked well. Now, though, for some reason I am switching to the Mac and that is starting a cascade of things that are making things more complicated and taking time away from content (and everything else around here).

I guess the reasoning was that the Mac was supposed to make my life simpler and more logical but 6 months into it, it is just more complicated. The software I use for the website is not available for the Mac and so I still keep the old PC around just for the website and Family Tree Maker. I have Dreamweaver, the website creation software for the Mac, but it is for professionals and the learning curve has been more than an hour so I have gotten nowhere with it.

I decided, since washoevalley.org is really just a complicated blog, to switch to blog software and this would make me platform and location independant. I could update the site from anywhere. I selected a blogging program, WordPress, who advertises itself as “easy” and a new hosting site as it advertises itself as having a “one step” automatic intallation of WordPress.

Liars! After two days of wading through segmented bits of help sections, emails, forums and searches for this mysterious “one step” or “one click” process, I am just now getting a handle on how to complete the process of setting up and designing the NEW washoevalley.org. And it ain’t gonna be easy.

So stay tuned, even though new content may slow a bit, I am still working on the project, just behind the scenes. Hopefully, when the transition is made the new site will be slicker and and easier to update and manage. But isn’t that the eternal promise of computers. Are we there yet?

Well, at least here in Washoe Valley, it wasn’t all that. In the last couple of years we’ve had deeper snowfalls and higher winds. Even the rain just reminded me of a rainstorm last year. I don’t think we got the predicted 10′ of snow and 200 mph winds on the ridgetops either.

But we don’t get many “natural disasters” or even severe winter weather anymore so I can’t blame the news and weather community for getting all excited once in awhile. We all get tired of endless network coverage of storms back east and in a sick way feel kinda left out. It even seems to be standard operating procedure for weathermen, when standing before the national map, to stand to the left, obscuring our region.

Our thoughts go out to the folks in Fernley today though who are suffering a flood from a canal breach. Initial blame is being placed on an anonymous gopher although no gopher terrorist group has claimed responsibility. I’m sure this will cause months of recriminations for all concerned as apparently many in the area don’t have flood insurance and even if they do it is still a big mess. Was it classified as a flood plain? Is it a coincidence that a gopher hole caused the breach during the big storm? Was there a lack of human concern for the danger of gopher holes?

Already looking forward to the next “storm of the century”.

Well, the guests have all driven off, and the decorations are almost packed up so I can get back to not “having a life” and resume normal operations at washoevalley.org. I did try to organize a Christmas light contest on the site but with the distractions here at home never got it together. Hopefully next year.  Although we did go out Christmas Eve and take some photos which I  will post on the site. It was a nice thing to share with our guests and thanks to all those who worked so hard putting up the displays.

Hopefully, the “storm of the century” will keep me home and cozy to catch up on things.