New downtown restaurant offers lighter fare made from scratch

Photo by matt nagle

TABLE FOR TWO. Capers owner Eve Hewitt (right) sits with executive chef Shannon O’Dell at an outdoor table in front of the restaurant’s newly opened downtown location on Pacific Avenue.

For the past five years, Capers Take Home Eatery in Proctor District has enjoyed a brisk business from customers looking for a healthy and tasty alternative to the usual takeout. Featuring a selection of 14-16 entrees along with soups, salads and sandwiches made with only the freshest ingredients, Capers carved a unique niche for itself by offering patrons fully-cooked meals in microwaveable containers they can take home, heat for two minutes and serve.

Now there's a whole new Capers location at 701 Pacific Ave. in downtown Tacoma. Rather than continue with the take-out theme, the new Capers is a full restaurant with seating for 50 indoors and tables outside to accommodate another 20 diners.    

Inside the atmosphere is relaxed and peaceful, with ceiling fans and lots of natural daylight reflecting off the polished hardwood floors. The place looks crisp, clean and upscale, but you can go there and feel comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt.

Owner Eve Hewitt said her new venture is different in some ways from Capers in Proctor District, but also similar. "The major philosophy of both restaurants is fresh food made daily onsite with the best quality ingredients. Those things are the same. We make everything from scratch."

While Capers in Proctor District serves a sizeable selection of entrees, the menu at the new Capers features lighter fare: a tantalizing selection of several homemade soups, seven different salads and eight sandwiches. The restaurant also offers one or two bistro-style entrees for the evening crowd. All meals are prepared under the watchful eye of chef Shannon O'Dell.

"We want to be an alternative if you want something lighter, like a cup of soup and a nice salad with a glass of wine, or on a work night if you want to bring your laptop in while you eat," Hewitt explained. "Everything is good-sized, so it's plenty to fill you up."

She brought some Capers favorites with her to the new location, including a zucchini casserole with sunset salad ($9.99); a Dungeness crab casserole with sunset salad ($11.99), a recipe handed down from her grandmother; and an antipasto platter of meats, cheeses and traditional accompaniments served with bread ($9.99).

The salad selections ($8.99 each) are entrée-sized. "Our Chinese chicken salad is great," Hewitt declared, made with chicken, egg, bacon and bleu cheese. The spicy pork pot sticker salad, served over a bed of Napa cabbage, "is one of our best sellers in Proctor."

Sandwiches, hot and cold, are also $8.99 each, all served on a variety of breads delivered every morning from the Essential Baking Company. The meat selection includes turkey, albacore tuna, roast beef and black forest ham. "All of our meats are the best quality we can get. We use everything fresh and we don't freeze anything."

Two sandwiches are served hot: pastrami with Swiss cheese and coleslaw, and pulled pork with coleslaw. Hewitt said Capers' grilled three-cheese sandwich is quickly becoming a favorite. "Someone raved about it on the Exit 133 web site on the second day we opened," Hewitt recalled. "The next day, two people drove in from Puyallup just to have the grilled cheese sandwich."

Sandwiches come with a choice of mixed green salad, Caesar salad, coleslaw, macaroni salad or potato chips. "We want to have a menu where people would have a lot of choices," Hewitt remarked. "You can mix and match whatever you're in the mood for."

Capers is now open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Phoned-in orders for takeout are welcome, and Hewitt said business hours would be extended "as business grows." For more information, call (253) 272-2240. Also check out http://www.caperstakehome.com.

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