REPORTER
Mercer Island
WEDNESDAY, 20,2014 2013 | 75¢ WEDNESDAY,MARCH APRIL 23,
Serving the Mercer Island Community Serving community Since since 1947 1947
City to revisit Coval application
It’s raining eggs
‘Leap for Green’ is Saturday The annual Leap for Green community sustainability fair is from noon until 4 p.m., Saturday April 26 at the Mercer Island Community and Events Center. Find out how you can make a difference for our planet and have fun too. Visit www.mercergov. org.
Staff recommends Planning Commission reopen public hearing process
Preschool Circus is (also) Saturday Get ready for fun at the Preschool Association’s annual Circus and fundraiser between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, at Mercer Island High School. Entry is free. Tickets sold for games and rides. There will be food trucks, pony rides and prizes. See www.mercerisland preschoolassociation.org for more.
Find out about bilingual education Considering a bilingual education for your children? Come hear from Professor Fred Genesee about the value of bilingual education at 6 p.m, April 30, at the Stroum Jewish Community Center, 3801 East Mercer Way. Free and open to the public. For more, see Page 15.
Breakfast of Champions April 30 Visit with educators and friends at the annual Breakfast of Champions breakfast at 7 a.m., Wednesday, April 30, at Mercer Island High School. Each year, proceeds from the breakfast are utilized by the non-profit Mercer Island Schools Foundation, to fund dozens of programs and grants to enhance learning for the students of the Mercer Island School District. For more, go to www.mercerislandschoolsfoundation.com
life Have the ! you want
By Celina Kareiva
ckareiva@mi-reporter.com
Mary L. Grady / Staff Photo
One-year-old Bailey sits down to count her eggs with the help of her dad, Jiagen Eep, at the city’s annual Egg Hunt at Mercerdale Park on April 19. Despite the rain, hundreds came to look for eggs.
Phobulous snags Seattle chef By Celina Kareiva
ckareiva@mi-reporter.com
Tho Tran can remember cooking even as a teenager in a Thai refugee camp. Born in Vietnam, Tran would watch his mother, memorizing the careful cadence of her movements as she weighed out ingredients. “Everybody can cook, but the key is pacing,” said Tran, who recently joined Phobulous as its new chef. “It’s like a science, and Vietnamese is different from all other [cuisines].” Tran comes to Phobulous after seven years at Monsoon, an upscale Vietnamese restaurant with branches in Seattle and Bellevue, and menu items infused with French and Northwest flavors. At Monsoon,
cessful.” At 14, Tran left his family and Vietnam to serve in a minor camp in Thailand. The move was a risky one, but his parents wanted a better life for him. Many young Vietnamese men disappeared into comhe served as a sous chef, man- munist labor camps when they aging cooking staff and tast- turned 18, some never to be ing each dish before it left the seen again. Tran heard horror kitchen for a customer’s table. stories of those encampments But Tran traded that in for from friends – stothe cozy atmories of fatigue and sphere and a single bowl of slower pace of rice a day. Thailand Phobulous. offered some sliv“To be honer of opportunity. est with you, Young men could [working at be sponsored by the Monsoon] was church, relatives or Tho Tran, chef at Phobulous Westerners interesteasier than here because here, I ed in adoption. have to manage the whole kitchAfter about eight months, an en. Everything I do is by myself. uncle helped the church sponsor Of course, I have people helping him and Tran took his leave. In here. But all the meat, the soup, 1989, he left for California. I have to cook because consis“Somehow I learned to live tency is key,” he says. “That’s what makes a restaurant sucCHEF | PAGE 9
“I took what I learned from most restaurants and my mom.”
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City Council revisited discussion on the Coval Long Plat, the site of a proposed 18 townhouses, Monday night just past Reporter deadline. Staff recommended that council direct the Planning Commission to reopen the public hearing process for additional fact finding with the understanding that many questions had gone unanswered when Council rejected preliminary plans for the historic Island home in February. At the time, Council asked if it
COVAL | PAGE 9
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