I've been googling around and checking web sites, and I note that the one for the Juanita Beach Spud says that it's family owned by the original owners. I've been trying to find out if what I was told, that Ivar had taken them over, was true, but so far, I've come up with nothing.

My father was an absolute whiz when it came to cooking fish. He learned it from his grandfather, who came over from Scotland with the Hudson's Bay Company and settled on San Juan Island, and from Native Americans around the islands. When Dad oven-broiled a salmon steak, it came out pure ambrosia—food for the Gods—salmon heaven! He said the temperature had to be exactly right, and there was a point of about twelve seconds' duration when it was perfect. Any less and it was two moist and any more and it began slowly turning to sawdust. Unfortunately, I never learned the art from him.

Dad wasn't too enchanted with Ivar's Acres of Clams. Ivar really ballyhooed his clam chowder. But where Ivar goofed with it was that he apparently didn't allow the clams enough time to clean themselves. When dug up, they're still alive, and if you put them in a bucket of fresh water and let them sit for a couple of hours, they expel all the sand they contain. Dad used to say that each bowl of Ivar's clam chower contain a tablespoonful of authentic Pacific Northwest beach.

I've never tried Ivar's fish & chips. What the heck! I'm game.

Spud's fish & chips may have been a heart attack on a paper plate, because the fish was dipped in batter and everything was deep-fried, but one would at least go out smiling. . . .

Don Firth