Isle-style menu is a hit at WSU -- but bento a bust (1988 story)

 

Isle-style menu is a hit at WSU -- but bento a bust

 By Bob Krauss, Advertiser Columnist
Honolulu Advertiser daily newspaper, Dec. 25, 1988

Thanks to Myles Lee of Pearl City, members of the Washington State University football squad from Pullman, Wash., have no trouble ordering from local menus while working out here for today’s Aloha Bowl .

They’ve been chowing for two years on teri beef and chicken katsu at a place called Coconut Joe’s that serves Hawaiian plates just across the border from Idaho.

Lee, a refugee from Pearl City, runs the local establishment with his parents. He’s back in town for the game.

“You might say we’re the Zippy’s of Pullman, Wash.,” he explained. “Lotta students come in .Once they try it, they like it, but it’s really a challenge to get them to try.”

“Teri chicken is the favorite. Some things you can’t get them to eat.

“Saimin just didn’t sell. We tried bento. People asked what’s in it? I’d tell them rice, teri chicken, beef, fish and Spam.

"As soon as I said Spam that was it. On the Mainland Spam is concentration camp food. I think people in Hawaii eat more Spam than the rest of the country put together.”

“Fried noodles goes good, but loco moco never got off the ground. That’s rice, a hamburger patty with a fried egg on top with brown gravy. The only people who ate it were local kids.“

Lee said he gets steady business from Hawaii students at the university. The student body includes a Hawaiian Club with a membership of 134 students.

“Some of our counter clerks are local kids from Hawaii,” said Lee. “Our cooks all are from Pullman. They don’t have any problem but my parents and me do preparation, make teriyaki sauce and cut up the vegetables.”

Lee said most of his customers take him for Hawaiian. When he says he’s not, they guess Chinese. Then he explains he’s Korean, they say, “Oh yeah, that’s what I thought.”

He said his parents operated the Pearl City Korean Restaurant before his father retired and they moved to Pullman. Lee attended Iolani School and graduated from Waipahu High School, then the University of Hawaii and Washington State.

Lee said his mother makes her own kim chee and serves it free to anyone who wants some. “There aren’t many people in Pullman who ask for kim chee,” he admitted.

Lee said he gets steady business from Hawaii students at the university. The student body includes a Hawaiian Club with a membership of 134 students.

Crop art offers big Pullman welcome -- Artist from Kansas returns to the Palouse for third year to create large crop mural

Crop art offers big Pullman welcome

Artist returns to the Palouse for third year to create large crop mural

By Anthony Kuipers Moscow Pullman Daily News 8/7/2021

For the third consecutive year, a group of people worked diligently to create an art project welcoming back Washington State University students to Pullman in a way befitting the Palouse.

Wind and heat did not stop crop artist Stan Herd and his team from completing the latest crop mural on the hillside of Jack Fulfs' farmland overlooking the intersection of U.S. Highway 195 and State Route 270 this week.

They were only interrupted by the vehicles that honked their horns in excitement when passing.

“We get honks all day long,” Herd said. “The only thing sore on my body is my arm from waving.”

This year’s design, when completed today, will say “Welcome Home” with the Cougar logo and BECU’s logo included. It is 360 feet tall and 220 feet wide. It took a week to complete.

Herd once again partnered with Fulfs and BECU, a credit union sponsoring the project, to create a mural that immediately catches the eye of anyone leaving or entering northwest Pullman. Five Washington State University students volunteered on the project.

The 70-year-old Kansas man has been creating crop art all over the world for 48 years and said he has never worked with the same partners three times until now. In that time, he has grown fond of the Palouse.

“The first year we came up, we fell in love with Pullman and this incredible terrain and the people,” he said.

His team used compost, garbanzo beans, pinto beans and red mulch to complete the design, which he created with the help of DNA Seattle, an advertisement agency based in Seattle.

Though his future plans still include taking his talents across the world, he is open to returning to Pullman.

“I’d love to come back,” he said.

Kyra Roesle, also from Kansas, has been working with Herd for six years.

She said the key to making crop art is being able to envision the artwork three ways: on paper, from the ground level and from the sky.

She calls it “triangulating between the three eyes.”

“If you can triangulate a location off of that, of those three images together, you can build anything,” she said. “It’s just paint by numbers. Just really, really, really, big.”

Roesle said she enjoys the reactions the mural draws from people, especially from the tight-knit Pullman community.

“It’s really special here in particular because Cougar country people are a family,” she said.