By Stevi Costa

In 2009, Central Connecticut University released a study evaluating the most literate cities in America, based on the number of bookstores, periodical publishing resources, newspaper circulation, library resources, the average level of education among residents and availability of Internet resources. Seattle topped the list, claiming the title of the most literate city in America.

Seattle’s book-loving climate has allowed Carol Santoro to spend the last 25 years of her life as an independent bookseller. Five years ago, Santoro decided it was time to be her own boss and when a retail space became available in her Greenwood neighborhood, she opened up a neighborhood bookshop all her own.

Santoro’s Books moved a few doors up from its original location to 7405 Greenwood Avenue N. in 2008 after disputes with the landlords made the original space untenable. Santoro was grateful to find another space so close by – and not just because she and her staff were able to move between locations with the use of dollies and handcarts. In just three years, she had built up a loyal following in Greenwood.

“I don’t think I would have considered moving anywhere else,” Santoro said. “I don’t think I would have moved more than a mile.”

Neighborhood loyalty has kept Santoro’s Books in business, despite the aggressive climate of chain bookstores and Internet retailers that have been the ruin of many shops. The bookselling climate is clearly different now than it was when Santoro started selling books in 1985. Back then, the biggest threat to independent booksellers was Crown Books. In the mid-90s, Santoro briefly toyed with the idea of selling books solely online, but larger Internet-only retailers beat her to the punch and changed the bookselling climate forever – even forcing once-time giants like Crown out of the game.

An advantage Santoro feels her store has over chains and Internet retailers is that her store can sometimes get special orders to customers on a same-day turnaround due to her direct relationship with certain warehouses. Santoro’s Books relies largely on remainder books to build revenue, which come from the publisher at a significant markdown, but the store’s biggest sales come from its selection of children’s books. “People view it as a good value for the money,” Santoro said, noting that young readers will return to a favorite book time and time again.

One of Carol Santoro’s favorite things about bookselling is getting young readers involved in developing a lifelong relationship with reading. The back corner of Santoro’s Books hosts several bays of children’s titles, as well as stuffed animals and a couple of cozy chairs. Every Friday at 11 a.m., neighborhood kids gather in that back corner for “Storytelling with Steph,” during which time one of Santoro’s staff reads from new and classic children’s novels and dishes out stickers to eager young listeners.

Santoro’s Books even promotes reading in local elementary schools, sponsoring book fairs at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, Greenwood Elementary, Daniel Bagley Elementary and Pacific Crest School. Unlike the traditional school book fairs sponsored by publishers like Scholastic, Santoro’s brings books from a variety of publishers and can tailor selections to suit the needs of the school. Santoro’s allows schools to choose whether they’d like the proceeds from the book fairs in cash or trade, offering a donation rate of 15 percent in cash, or 25 percent in book product which can be applied to any book currently in print.

Santoro’s also offers book fair vouchers so that parents can make purchases at the store up to 30 days after the date of the book fair, and also gives schools the option to host book fairs on site at the store. “It’s great for us. We raise money for their school and get that loyalty developed that’s just invaluable,” Santoro said.

For as much time as Carol Santoro spends encouraging children to latch on to her own love of reading, she also cultivates relationships with the adults in her community by participating in Phinney Reads, a neighborhood-wide reading program. The store offers books chosen by the Phinney Reads program at a 15 percent discount and hosts a monthly discussion session. Santoro’s even has it’s own in-store book club called Ridge Readers, which meets monthly.

For more information about Santoro’s book fair programs or other events at the store, visit www.santorosbooks.com.

A former environmental consultant, Maxwell longed to find a way to bridge her environmentally conscious lifestyle with venture that would support her photography hobby. In November 2009, Sasquatch studios became that space. Maxwell’s eccentric collection of retail products has “a little bit of everything” from home décor to jewelry to clothing. There are two organizing factors in the items Maxwell sells at Sasquatch Studios: items that draw inspiration from the natural world and items that are produced using recycled and reclaimed components.

She features the work of 14 local artists from the Puget Sound area, as well as some work from artists from her former home on Cape Cod. Some items available for purchase at the shop include blankets made out of vintage fabrics by Red Dirt Road of Martha’s Vineyard. Sasquatch Studios also features local artist My Mother’s Buttons of Edmond, Wash., which creates handmade jewelry from vintage buttons and timepieces, and Ballard’s own Positively Green notecards, which are a line of green-manufactured note cards using soy-based inks. The store is also the exclusive retailer for Chatoyant Design and Glassworks, which offers a selection of handmade glass jewelry. The studio also sells Maxwell’s own photographs, framed with reclaimed wood from the 1920s homes.

Although running her own business has been a lot of work, Maxwell is grateful that Sasquatch Studios has allowed her to renew her creativity and be involved in every aspect of the shop. Her search for unique artists to represent has also helped her to bridge artists from her two favorite places: Martha’s Vineyard and the Puget Sound. Many artists she sells at Sasquatch Studios are friends and acquaintances from both coasts, which has made it easy to find art to sell. “I know a lot of creative people,” Maxwell said, “so it works out pretty well.”

One of those creative people happens to be Maxwell’s mother, who will soon be creating a line of stuffed animals made from reclaimed vintage fabrics exclusively for the store. Another soon-to-be-featured artisan makes children’s clothing out of recycled wool. “I think it’s important to have beautiful things around, but it shouldn’t be at the cost of the environment,” Maxwell said. Luckily for Sasquatch Studios, local artists will often deliver their wares directly to the store, minimizing the carbon footprint that would be created during the shipping process. Though Sasquatch also features artists from far-away Martha’s Vineyard, Maxwell minimizes the amount of intercoastal shipping as much as she can.

In addition to handmade and recycled items, Sasquatch Studios also sells vintage clothing. Maxwell collects the vintage pieces she sells from Etsy.com. While her selection is not as extensive as what you might find at a vintage-specific store, the shop has two small rooms filled with hats, coats, shoes, skirts and dresses from a variety of eras.

Opening a brand new independent boutique during the holiday season wasn’t easy – especially because Sasquatch Studios opened its doors on Black Friday, when shoppers flock to big box stores for big savings. However, the Greenwood-Phinney Ridge area has residents that like to keep it local. By filling in a long-vacant retail space, locals were immediately drawn to the new store, which has continued to receive new foot traffic from Sasquatch Studios participation in the Greenwood Art Walk. “It’s really nice to feel like people notice and are interested in what’s going on,” Maxwell said.

When the Aster Coffee Lounge opened its doors in the street-level retail space of a new condo development at 5615 24th Ave NW in Ballard, owner Beth Scribner said that her neighbors were a little wary, but quickly changed their minds when they realized that an independent coffee house had opened up in a space that could have easily been purchased by a chain retailer.

Snapping up the kind of large retail space chains tend to buy was part of Scribner’s strategy to build a community-focused coffee house in a Ballard neighborhood that’s a little off the main drag of NW Market St. Coffee is a staple of life in Seattle, and Seattleites obviously have myriad options for places to go to get a cup of joe, but most neighborhood coffee shops close at sundown. The Aster offers coffee well into the evening: it opens at 6 a.m. on weekdays (7 a.m. on weekends), and remains open as late as 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

“Part of the strategy was to be open late at night for an alternative to restaurants and bars,” Scribner said. While most coffee houses offer pastries and sandwiches during lunch hours, the Aster diversifies its offerings with a beer and wine menu and light, healthy food items in addition to coffee and pastries so that customers can enjoy something at the coffee house any time of day or night. They also offer freshly-made waffles, for those who want a more substantial breakfast food than the standard coffee-shop pastry.

As for the products themselves, Scribner is proud to be one of only two coffee houses in Seattle that has a Clover coffee brewer. The Aster buys sustainably farmed coffee beans from single-origin roasters like Novo Coffee Roasters and Intelligentsia Coffee. After working in coffee for 9 years, Scribner grew passionate about presenting the public with a product that was high-quality and that provided its growers with a fair wage for their labor. She makes sure that her employees are well-versed in the practices behind the coffee they serve so that they can converse with any customer who is curious about sustainability practices and fair-trade coffee growing.

Scribner also tries to keep her business green, while turning a profit. The Aster minimizes waste by making all their flavoring syrups in-house, as well as their chai tea. In addition to reducing the amount of waste by eliminating excess bottles and cans, it also cuts down on exhaust that would be produced in shipping said products from a warehouse to the Aster. “We try to make as many choices in that vein that are financially possible,” she said.

Originally, Scribner wanted to focus her beer and wine selection on local brewers and vintners, but the cost of serving only Washington state wines became too expensive. She refocused her wine selection on quality wines offered at an affordable per-glass price, with selections from both in- and out-of-state. During the month of March, however, the venue will host three Washington state wine tastings and a Washington cider tasting. The also Aster serves draft beers from Ballard’s Maritime Brewery along with a variety of bottled beer selections.

The Aster Coffee Lounge celebrated its 2nd anniversary on March 1, 2010 and the café’s relationship with the Ballard community has developed organically since its 2008 opening. The lounge-like atmosphere welcomes customers to stay awhile, and also sparked one customer to prompt movie nights at the Aster. Once a month, Tony Kay, a self-proclaimed “scholockologist,” takes over the Aster on a Saturday evening host Bizarro Movie Night, at which he screens a B-movie on the lounge’s projection system while cult-film fans take in the spectacle over the Aster’s selection of baked goods, beer and wine.

“We’re trying to strike the right balance between being a community-focused coffee shop and having events that work for the business,” Scribner said. The Aster also participates in the Ballard Art Walk, which introduces a new crowd to the venue with each artist it features, as well as walk-ins who follow the art walk map. March’s artist of the month focuses on nature photography of Washington state trails, and will donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of his work to the Washington State Trail Association, which also happens to reflect the Aster Coffee Lounge’s focus on quality, community and environmental practice.

By Stevi Costa

Melissa Feveyear wants to bring the flower back. It’s not as though flowers have disappeared from the world, but Feveyear’s focus on sustainability in her floral designs strives to make sure that the flower never goes away.

Feveyear grew up around the floral industry, and eventually, after spending some time in the field of environmental studies and waste management, began selling flowers out of an airstream trailer on Phinney Ridge at 65^th. When Phinney Ridge Florist came up for sale 6 years ago, Feveyear bought the business, with the intention of taking the conventional neighborhood florist green. In 2008, she created Terra Bella Flowers & Mercantile and moved into her current location at 8417 Greenwood Ave N.

Terra Bella prides itself on creating floral designs that feature organic, sustainable and locally grown flowers wherever possible, and Feveyear often heads down to Pike Place Market to purchase flowers herself from vendors. She also works with local suppliers to include Northwest greens, grains and branches to include in her designs, and purchases flowers directly from local farms when the growing season matches the demand.

The greenness of Feveyear’s business generally attracts clients who prefer to make their purchases based on what available locally and in-season, but sometimes clients want a floral arrangement that does not meet those demands. “If we source from other places, they have to have sustainability verification,” Feveyear said, explaining that any non-Northwest sources for her shop have VeriFlora certification, which ensures that whatever carries the seal was farmed using sustainable crop production practices, integrated waste management systems and fair labor practices, among other criteria.

In addition to sustainability, beauty is also an important element in the floral designs at Terra Bella. Feveyear spent some time studying floral design in England, and became enamored with European garden-style design. Her creations at Terra Bella reflect the way flowers might be clustered in nature, and integrate non-floral natural elements that give “movement” to the bouquets, like wild grasses and curvy willow branches.

Feveyear strongly believes in bringing floral beauty to her neighbors in Greenwood. While living in Europe, she saw how important it was for people to have fresh flowers in their homes. In the United States, she noticed that the everyday luxury of fresh flowers didn’t have the same cultural precedence, which she attributes to the generally cost-prohibitive nature of the high-end flower market in the U.S. Although choosing to purchase sustainable flowers can often be a little more expensive, Terra Bella’s signature bouquets are competitive with conventional flower shops, offering selections starting at $35.95.

“I don’t consider myself an exclusive high-end florist because I like the idea of being a neighborhood shop,” she said. “Anyone can come in with change in their pockets and walk out with flowers.”

As the only florist in Greenwood, Feveyear works hard to make Terra Bella a part of her community. The shop also features a mercantile that sells works from local artists, some of whom she found through community art shows and floral industry events. Featuring paintings, handcrafted jewelry, journals and notecards along with sustainable flowers was another way Feveyear could incorporate her unwavering support for those who work with their hands, the idea of every day beauty and a local focus further into Terra Bella’s structure.

Locals drop by to browse the rotation of merchandise and purchase flowers, but also to visit the shop pets. Terra Bella is home to Oscar, a shop dog so popular that he has fans that come by just to bring him snacks, as well as two doves, Little Witch and Bella, the latter of which can often be seen flying around the shop.

Terra Bella Flowers & Mercantile is focused on creating community in Greenwood, and hopes to return the support the shop has received from its neighbors to the local farmers it relies on for its chief product. Eventually, Feveyear hopes to create a community-supported agriculture program to sustain local flower growers. Ideally, the program would involve community members purchasing a subscription to the CSA, which would in turn get them weekly or bi-weekly flower deliveries from the local growers participating in the program, just like a traditional food-based CSA. For now, Feveyear focuses on supporting local farmers and her community from within Terra Bella, one flower at a time.

The idea for the shop came from Diana Naramore’s time working at the Queen Anne Dispatch. She and her husband became close with the owners who suggested that the couple try to build a similar business entity on their own. The Queen Anne Dispatch incorporates mailing, gifts and fashion, due to the current owners’ former experience in the fashion industry. So when the Naramores set out to open their first multi-function business in Ballard in 2002, they decided to incorporate something necessary to the life of every Seattleite: coffee.

Sip & Ship offers Café Vita coffee drinks along with locally-sourced pastries and sells local artisan paper products alongside nationally recognized brands like Paperchase and Moleskine. In both sipping and shopping sectors, Diana Naramore said that community was a driving focus in her buying decisions.

“There are three considerations I make when I buy. The first is certainly local,” Naramore said, elaborating that her definition of local includes both things that are locally made and items purchased from a local representative who makes his or her living selling a product line such as the Botanica candles the store carries. Naramore’s other buying considerations include green business practices, preferring to stock products from paper companies that use recycled materials which reflects Sip & Ship’s own emphasis on going green. (Anyone can drop off unneeded boxes at the store and Sip & Ship will recycle them.) Finally, Naramore makes sure that the products she stocks are “cute,” like the featured cards from local artist Driscoll Designs and Ilee Papergoods.

“The perfect customer participates in all three elements: they ship, they shop, they sip,” Diana said. But Naramore understands that not everyone can participate in all three elements all the time. “There are key shoppers to each department that help us survive,” she said, noting that each facet of her business is seasonally driven, so when one sector of the store is down, the others remain buoyant. The model has been successful enough for the Naramores to open a second location in Greenwood in late 2008.

Shipping services, however, are the backbone of the business. Sip & Ship is an authorized shipping center for UPS, FedEx, USPS and Seko Worldwide Freight, so clients can drop-off prepaid packages with any of those carriers, as well as receive packages at the store rather than their home or business. (Sip & Ship will even notify you via phone, text or email when you have a package at the store.) According to Naramore, the advantage of shipping a parcel with Sip & Ship, rather than seeking out a carrier-specific site, is the ability to compare service rates so that customers can choose what’s best for them.

“A lot of times shipping can be very confusing,” Naramore said. “We like to take the confusion and ambiguity out of the shipping matrix.” Naramore and her employees begin by asking customers about their shipping needs regarding time sensitivity, fragility and necessity of package tracking. Customers are then presented with carrier options that suit those needs and then make their final selections based on price point.

On most services, Sip & Ship out-prices carrier-specific stores, except in the case of the United States Postal Service (which charges Sip & Ship a service fee that drives up the cost). From UPS and FedEx, Naramore receives a wholesale price for services and is provided with a suggested retail price to give to customers. Usually, Sip & Ship offers services below that suggested retail price.

Besides being a multi-faceted shipping-retail-coffeehouse, Sip & Ship is a community hub, thanks to Diana Naramore’s focus on inviting the community to her store and cross-promoting with other businesses. “We envision ourselves as a sort of concierge to the neighborhood,” she said, adding that the coffee shop loft space provides ample room for local business events. In the past, local business people have hosted seminars, writers have organized discussions about their work and doctors from nearby Swedish medical center have used the Sip & Ship for “Coffee Talks” where they answer general health questions from the local community, all of which have helped cement Sip & Ship as cornerstone of the Ballard business community.

Although Sip & Ship’s Greenwood location hasn’t been around quite as long, it has quickly become a community fixture by participating in local events like the Greenwood Art Walk and the Greenwood Car Show.

Sip & Ship Ballard is located at 1752 NW Market St. Sip & Ship Greenwood is located at 8560 Greenwood Ave. N. Visit www.sipandship.com for more information about either location.

Cockbain began working at the Broiler straight out of high school, taking a kitchen position that eventually turned into a regular stint as the weekend chef. He was then quickly promoted to a weekday chef position and worked as the kitchen manager at the Broiler for 12 years. When the owners began to talk about selling the restaurant in the mid 90s, Cockbain thought that the restaurant should remain in the hands of those who knew it best. “I felt like I knew the restaurant well,” he said. “It seemed like a good thing at the time.”

Cockbain upheld the integrity of the restaurant when he took over, forgoing any major remodels, menu changes, or employee reshuffling. “We’ve got a few [employees] here who have been here over 20 plus years. Most have been here over 10,” he said, noting also that he takes care to include his employees in any decisions that will make a change to the Broiler they’ve all come to know and love, whether that’s changing a uniform or adding a menu item.

The biggest menu change the Wedgwood Broiler has seen in its 45 years in business was the addition of a burger menu in the late 2000s. When the restaurant opened in the 1960s, it was conceived of as a surf and turf joint, making its bread and butter off steaks and seafood – the fine dining staples of the mid-century era. And though the Broiler has kept those standards like broiled salmon, prime rib and sirloin, other items have popped up along the way, including the Broiler’s signature burgers, which Cockbain added in response to the growing popularity of gourmet hamburgers.

The addition has proven successful, and today the Wedgwood Broiler’s burgers are some of the best selling items on the menu. Cockbain said that the weekend-only prime rib special is also one of the restaurant’s best selling items, along with the London broil. Red meat may be a mainstay, but the most unique thing on the Wedgwood Broiler’s menu is a certain, unexpected addition to the house salads: Cheese Nips.

Cockbain explains that the Cheese Nip-laden salads are another long-standing tradition at the Wedgwood Broiler, and are likely a combination former owner Glen Jensen borrowed from one of his other restaurants. In this case, the Broiler’s commitment to its traditions has been something of a hindrance – not in the sense that the Cheese Nip salads are unpopular with the customers, but simply in terms of the scarcity of the Kraft-manufactured cheese crackers. “You can’t believe how hard it is to find Cheese Nips nowadays. Sometimes my suppliers don’t even have them,” Cockbain said.

Maintaining tradition is clearly a hallmark of the staff at the Wedgwood Broiler. But for as long as certain members of the staff have been employed at the Wedgwood Broiler, they are outlasted by some of their customers. “We have a ton of customers who have been eating here longer than I’ve owned it,” Cockbain said. “And that’s really what keeps us going is our neighborhood, and the people here.”

Nonetheless, the Wedgwood Broiler is trying to reach out to a new generation of clients, creating a Facebook fan page to draw members of the internet generation out to this mid-century gem and establishing a Web presence. Cockbain says that the Broiler has been drawing in a few Facebook fans and that the campaign has made it easier to invite customers to events, like Sunday night trivia games held in the lounge, which usually draw anywhere from 20 to 60 patrons each night.

He hopes that the Web campaigns will do the same to promote the Broiler’s weekend breakfast, which offers steak, eggs, omelettes, pancakes and other treats served from 11:30 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

Samir’s Mediterranean Grill has not, however, forgotten about family. Many of the recipes Alawar uses were inherited from is mother. Others were perfected in his own family and brought to the table to share with his customers. “I don’t feed my customers better than I feed my kids,” Alawar said, “which is to say that I feed my customers as well as I feed my kids.”

Speaking of children, the inventive way in which Alawar wraps his signature falafel sandwiches keeps customers from looking like they should have used a bib when they leave the restaurant. Most falafel sandwiches are served semi-open, leaving escape hatches for rogue lettuce, hummus and falafel bits to fall away. Alawar’s falafels are wrapped fully, reducing the possibility for messes.

The fully-wrapped falafel also gives the option for portability, which comes in handy on sunny Seattle days when citizens would rather enjoy their food in the open air. To that end, Alawar has added a to-go window on the street-facing side of his shop so that patrons can enjoy fair weather while waiting for their wares.

Samir’s Mediterranean Grill offers cuisine that is commonly found throughout the Mediterranean, but with an emphasis on Lebanese flavors. “Lebanese is my specialty,” Alawar said. “I don’t try to make Indian food because I don’t know how.”

Along with standard Mediterranean fare such has hummus, babaganoush, dolma, falafel, schwarma and kebabs, Samir’s also serves ful medames (a dish of stewed, spiced fava beans served with tomatoes, parsley and pita that originated in Egypt as a breakfast meal), gyros and a kibbey plate, which Alawar says is his most popular meat entrée. The kibbey plate is ground beef spiced with Samir’s special seasonings and bulgar wheat, served over salatah, rice, garlic sauce and a side of pita bread.

For the amount of food Alawar puts forth in a plate such as the kibbey plate, the price is more than reasonable. The most expensive entrée on the menu is the lamb kebab plate ($9.75), while the average vegetarian plate, such as the vegetarian combination plate (with falafels, dolmas, hummus, sautéed vegetables, salatah and pita bread), runs $7.75.

The real deal at Samir’s Mediterranean Grill, however, are the sandwiches and wraps, all of which are less than $4.50, which fits comfortably into the average University of Washington student’s budget.

Alawar is big on making his cuisine friendly and affordable, which he believes are the cornerstones of his business practice. The restaurant’s giant catering platters are very popular for conferences at UW’s Medical Center. (Pictured is Samir’s Mediterranean Delight which contains rice, Mediterranean salad, hummus, babaganoush, meats, sautéed vegetables and dessert.) Samir’s usually produces one large catering order a week, netting the restaurant about $2,500, according to Alawar’s estimate. That figure only applies to non-University catering orders, however, as Samir’s Mediterranean Grill often provides catering for UW functions are reduced cost, which earned him a Booster Award that he proudly hangs in his restaurant. “I’m not here only to make money,” Alawar said. “I’m here to make money and friends.”

Alawar is indeed a fixture on 43rd St. He is at his restaurant for about 15 hours a day, arriving with his wife in the mornings after dropping their children off at a school. Locals who pass by greet him and converse as he unloads supplies from his van and starts preparing business for the day. His hospitality begins before he’s even open for business. “Our hospitality and our friendship goes with the service and the food,” Alawar said.

It’s not every day that you see a hair salon decorated with motorcycles and flames, but that’s the theme of Sammy Mar’s Helmet Head salon in Georgetown. Mar was tired of working cookie-cutter corporate jobs and went to beauty school, after which she grew disappointed with the kind of salons she found herself working in and decided to strike out on her own.

Luckily, Mar found a kindred spirit in Heather Tubbs, whom she met while working at a salon downtown in 2002. Tubbs told Mar that she would follow her if she opened her own salon, and that’s exactly what she did. At first, Tubbs would work at Helmet Head on weekends and then, after about a year, she bought into the business as Mar’s partner. On Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010, Helmet Head salon celebrated its 8th year in business.

As for the hard-riding style of the salon, Mar cites her passion for motorcycles as her inspiration. “Riding your motorcycle is nice because you can really think about things and it’s kind of meditative,” she said. While that might not be everyone’s picture of relaxation, Mar wanted to create an atmosphere that was completely antithetical to the pretension that she feels riddles some high-end salons. She wanted to create a salon “where you can still get good service, but have a lot of fun.”

As for the Georgetown location, Mar was inspired by a custom motorcycle shop she frequented. She noticed that Georgetown housed a small, funky art community and felt it would be the best place for her to open up a salon. Georgetown has been good to Helmet Head. In 2007, the salon moved from a 750 sq. ft. retail space to its current 3,300 sq. ft. space at 5527 Airport Way South.

The business has expanded in other ways, as well. When the salon first opened, Helmet Head only offered basic cut and color services, but has since added manicure and pedicure services, skin care (including peels and waxes) and massage. The salon employs a total of 5 stylists, a nail technician, a skin technician and two massage practitioners.

Overall, though, its still hair that brings in the most business at Helmet Head. “Cut and color are our big mainstays,” Mar said. “Some of the other stuff has kind of fallen down a bit because of the economy, but everybody needs to get their hair done.”

To make looking good something that everyone can afford, Helmet Head uses salon products that come at a variety of price points. “Loma is the most affordable of our products,” Mar said of the Monroe, Wash. hair care brand. Any Helmet Head customer who purchases a Loma product from the salon can bring the empty bottles back for a refill at 25 percent off the original price.

Helmet Head will soon add another brand to its gallery of products, which currently includes Davines, Kevin Murphy and Paul Mitchell Men’s. On Feb. 25, the salon will be hosting a launch party from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to celebrate the addition of Moroccan Oil to its salon menu. “It’s a wonderful hair care line for people who have curly hair,” Mar said. The launch event will feature product samples and demonstrations from a Moroccan Oil representative, food, beverages and belly dancers. In addition, Helmet Head will feature Moroccan Oil products in all of its services for the following month in order to get customers excited about the new product line.

Despite its tough-gal image, furthered by an appearance Mar made on the Style Network’s stylist-swapping show Split Ends which made it seem as though Helmet Head does “nothing but red Mohawks all day,” Mar says that the salon is a place for anyone who wants to get their hair done in a no-pretension atmosphere. The shop sees a wide range of clients looking for an even wider range of hairstyles, from mild to wild. After all, some of the salon’s clients do happen to be members of local roller derby squad the Rat City Rollergirls, thanks to the presence of stylist Carly Jo, who is a derby girl herself.

Overall, Mar likes to think of her salon as having a comfortable, homey atmosphere, with a little bit of Sammy Mar’s special brand of sass. “We like to offer uptown skills, but we have a very down home attitude,” she said.

Revelo, an El Salvadoran native, wanted to bring the food he grew up with to the people of Seattle to give them “more variety . . . and have them taste something different,” he said. When looking for a location for his first restaurant venture, he settled on the U-District, knowing it would be a good market for Salvadoran treats because of the open minds and adventurous palates of the nearby students at the University of Washington.

The restaurant takes it name “Guanaco” from a Salvadoran slang term for the Salvadoran people, drawn from the native word for llama. According to Revelo, Salvadoran cuisine is different from other Latin American cuisines in a variety of ways. “We use a lot of corn,” Revelo said, noting that many other food cultures will use plain flour, while Salvadoran cuisine primarily uses a combination of corn and rice flours. Traditionally, Salvadoran people “use whatever is local – local flowers, cheese from cows and goats, pork staples. Items available from local farms,” Revelo said.

The emphasis on local ingredients Revelo describes is reflected in the specialties offered at Guanaco’s Tacos Pupuseria. Though Guanaco’s does indeed serve tacos, burritos and tamales, the real draw are the pupusas. Pupusas are corn or rice flour tortillas filled with jalapenos, spinach, zucchini, chicken, refried beans, pork or cheese, which you can order with or without a tropical herb called loroco. Though this may sound similar to a quesadilla, pupusas are more similar in appearance to filled pancakes in which the dough incases the filling.

Pupusas are the most traditional food of El Salvador, so it’s no wonder why Revelo would choose to make them the central part of his menu and his quest to bring authentic Salvadoran food to Seattleites. In addition, Guanaco’s offers a few more traditional specialties that have become very popular with its clientele. Plantains, traditionally served fried, and yucca, served boiled or deep fried, are two of the restaurants most popular appetizers. Another house specialty is the pastelitos, flash fried corn pockets stuffed with potato, carrot, onion and beef.

Although the Brooklyn Ave. location is slightly off the beaten path for U-District denizens, Guanaco’s has steadily built up a following since its opening in 2007, drawing in regular and sizeable lunch crowds. “It’s taken awhile or people to get to know us, but know it’s doing really well,” Revelo said, citing the restaurant’s 40 plus reviews on Yelp.com with a rating of four or more stars and a rating of 92% on UrbanSpoon.com.

A recent tuition drawing also recently helped curry favor with the student community. Last fall, Guanaco’s gave one lucky patron $500 toward tuition payments. Revelo said that he plans to do another tuition drawing in the future, after things get going at the Capitol Hill location.

In the meantime, Guanaco’s is also working on building up the catering branch of its business. At present, the catering menu consists of a pupusa platter, a pastelito platter with homemade salsa, a 3 lb yucca platter (boiled, fried or 50-50), a tamale platter, a sweet corn tamale platter, a burrito platter and a build-your-own-tacos platter. Each platter serves about 10 people for, at most, $34.95. According to Revelo, the catering offerings have so far proven popular with the University.

He hopes to soon be able to develop delivery for Guanaco’s so that patrons can get their fill of pupusas and pastelitos in their very own homes.

Guanaco’s Tacos Pupuseria is located in the U-District at 4106 Brooklyn Ave. NE, Ste. 102A. The menu is available online at: guanacostacos.webs.com/menu.htm.

By Stevi Costa

Capitol Hill’s resident gourmet hot dog joint, Po Dogs, opened its doors on Nov. 14, 2009. Since the restaurant broke ground in the reclaimed auto shop it calls home at 1009 E. Union St., owner Laura Olson has been working non-stop.

From preparing the space, to picking out the kitschy-cool dueling guns wallpaper that adorns the restaurant, to sampling myriad varieties of dogs, buns and French fries, Olson has put a lot of work into making her hot dog dreams come true. And the workload hasn’t let up since Po Dogs began serving customers. “I work over 100 hours a week in the restaurant,” said Olson, “and then I go home and I do all the financials at home.”

Olson, who left behind a corporate job after realizing that she’s simply “not a desk job type of person,” actually enjoys the amount of hours she spends on Po Dogs. “I love what I do,” she said. “But the most challenging part is trying to add more hours to my day.” Nevertheless, Olson says that even though she works like a dog, she doesn’t feel like she actually puts in 100 hours each week. “I love my employees, I love my product and I love my location. All that combined, I’m really excited. There’s nothing I hate about my job,” she said.

When Olson says she enjoys her product, she means it. Regarding her hot dog-heavy menu, Olson saw a need to share her love of tubed meats with the rest of Seattle. “I love hot dogs,” she said. “I feel like hot dogs are not as appreciated as they should be. People are doing crazy things with hamburgers, but nobody has really done it with hot dogs.”

Olson and the rest of the Po Dogs crew are indeed doing crazy things with hot dogs. With Hebrew National all-beef kosher franks as the base, the eclectic menu features inventive dogs like the PB Dog (topped with peanut butter and sliced bananas), the Wasabi Egg Roll Dog (wrapped in an egg roll, deep fried and served with wasabi aioli) and the Morning Glory Dog (topped with scrambled eggs, Tillamook cheddar and pepper bacon).

Each month, Po Dogs offers a specialty dog in order to keep pushing the noble hot dog to the borders of tastiness. In December, the specialty dog was a Chili Dog. January’s offering is a Mac-n-Cheese Dog, which requires a 3-hour macaroni and cheese recipe, made fresh daily, smothered on top of a frankfurter. Vegetarians can substitute a locally-sourced veggie dog at anytime to indulge their tubed (faux) meat cravings.

In deciding what outlandish hot dog toppings would find their way onto the Po Dogs menu, Olson and her friends held numerous tasting parties leading up to the opening of the store. “It took a lot of trial and error,” Olson said. She also did copious amounts of research into regional hot dog specialties (reflected in the Texas, Seattle and Chicago Dogs) as well as global cuisines that might translate into hot dog toppings.

“We tried to find what would work best and what was edible and not too crazy,” Olson said. Some of those globally-inspired tastings led to the creation of the aforementioned Wasabi Egg Roll Dog, the South of the Border Dog (guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream) as well as a former Thai-inspired Dog of the Month. Olson has also featured Indian-inspired dogs with fruit chutneys.

But chutney, peanut butter and bananas seem to be the limit for sweetness on hot dogs. “I can tell you right now that chocolate does not go well on a hot dog,” adding that, eventually, Po Dogs may try topping a dog with chocolate-based mole sauce to take the chocolate-covered hot dog idea and make it potentially palatable.

In the spirit of trying new things, Olson said that Po Dogs will be hosting a Sausage Fest in February to give patrons a chance to try other tubed meats than the standard all-beef hot dog. During Sausage Fest, the restaurant plans to offer Polish Kielbasa and other sausage varieties. If customers like the new dogs, Olson says that Po Dogs will consider adding those meats to the menu permanently.

In addition to out-of-the-box hot dogs, Po Dogs also offers house-made potato chips cut from Red Argentine potatoes, which Olson likes because of the unique color and taste. “For some reason, I love the color of the red Argentine potato chips after we cook them. And the taste is kind of crisp and clean, and not Lay’s potato chip-like,” she said. The restaurant also serves natural-cut French fries, beers (both bottled and on tap) and Mexican Coca-Cola in glass bottles.

Po’Dogs is located at 1009 E. Union St. in Capitol Hill. The menu is available online at www.podogs.com.