HONESTLY, THIS STORY WAS never supposed to be about chicken wings. Although, if you bring up the words ‘Tracyton Public House’ in conversation with someone, the former two words are likely to be the first two words brought up.
The Tracyton Wings are kind of legendary. Perhaps more so than the historic Tracyton Port Commission’s decades-long debacle which the local paper labeled a “soap opera.” More than the lumber skids that used to lead to the Tracyton waterfront in the late 19th century down what is now Riddell Road. Even more so than Tracyton’s claim to the first post office on the peninsula.
I’d never had the Tracyton’s wings. Never been much of a wing eater. And I’d been advised to steer clear of that pub on Wednesdays. What interested me more was the story of the guy who runs the place.
During the pandemic shutdowns, the Tracyton Pub’s owner James Alford was running propane to-and-from the pub daily and doing creative things like putting a big screen TV on wheels to roll back-and-forth to the patio so customers could still watch the game six feet apart. All the while, he was talking about this movie theater he was working to build.
A few years back, James and a business partner had taken over the old Olympic Cinemas, formerly the Redwood Theater, off Riddell in East Bremerton. They near-completely renovated the cinema’s theaters and reopened the space as a hybrid movie theater, arcade and live entertainment venue, with a full kitchen and bar, called the Tracyton Movie House.
James is a massive movie buff.
He named the corporation that runs the theater ‘Galaxy Class Enterprises’ in homage to Star Trek. There are photos of him in the theater’s ‘Wall Of Fame’ with Spock, Kirk and Picard. There’s another of him and his business partner Bernie with Weird Al, signed, “Dare To Be Weird.”
Every year for his birthday month in May, James books a slew of his favorite retro flicks. The line up is typically awesome. “Army Of Darkness,” “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” “Star Trek: First Contact” and “Mortal Kombat” are just a few on the list for this month. So I thought maybe we should tell his story in sort of a ‘Mystery Science Theatre 3000’ rip-off, putting the reader behind the silhouette of James and Co., riffing off the cuff over one of the retro features.
Then the text came in.
James was getting set for another business venture. He said he was headed to Tacoma to bottle the Pub’s wing sauces for wholesale. “That would make a good headline for the article,” he wrote.
Arriving at SauceWorks, a co-packing facility tucked off South Tacoma Way, we walk through the door leading from the front office to the warehouse sized kitchen. James pulls me over to a box of ingredients stacked on a pallet and says, “You wanna see what $400 of ghost peppers looks like?”
I crouch down and pull out one of the bags to read the label, making note of the near 1.8 million Scoville Units — which, I know now, is near the highest level of the scale used as a ‘heat’ measurement for spicy foods. When I set the bag back in the box, I inadvertently sent ghost pepper powder flying through the air above my head.
Standing behind me, James starts coughing and ducks away, short of breath.
“Yeah,” Bryce, the Tracyton Pub’s kitchen lead, standing to my left, says with equal parts humor and disapproval. “When we clean out the squeeze bottles for the sauces after we’ve emptied them at the bar, you’ve gotta use cold water or else you’ll gas the whole kitchen.”
“That stuff will burn you if you touch it,” James says, getting his breath back. It’s an ingredient in the Tracyton’s spiciest sauce ‘Death Wish,’ one of four sauces — including ‘TPH,’ ‘Garbage,’ and ‘Wicked Jam’ — they’ll be bottling.
There’s been a lot of legwork behind the scenes leading up to this moment, James says, from finding the co-packing facility, designing the labels to perfecting the recipes.
They’ve scaled up the recipes from around five to nearly 50 gallons on the SauceWorks system, which took a significant amount of factoring and isn’t quite as simple as multiplying the amount of your ingredients by the factor of the volume.
“Not only that,” Bryce says, “I’m taking a sauce that’s made with five other sauces and then I’ve gotta figure out the ratios of the raw ingredients to make them perfect. The Garbage Sauce is not easy. Neither is TPH. Those were the hardest two to figure out.”
The TPH batch currently in the kettle at SauceWorks has reached pasteurization and is ready for a taste test. Tiiny spoonfuls are passed out for evaluation.
‘Needs more of this…’ Bryce says.
James agrees, ‘Two more of those and that will be perfect.”
The packaging team obliges, finishes the batch and then it’s off to the bottling line to be filled, capped, labeled with the Pub’s mascot moose George, packed into cases and palletized.
The sauces are currently sold by the bottle over the counter at the Pub and through their online store. But James said his immediate goal is to get the Tracyton Wing Sauce onto the shelf at the Silverdale Costco.
He said he’s already started gathering the paperwork.
James grew up here, studied Autotech at Olympic College and worked with the Costco corporation for nearly 20 years. The better part of 15 of those years at Costco were spent in Texas, James said, before a three year stint in Hawaii then moving back to the area to take over the Pub when his mom–former owner of the Tracyton Tavern for 19 years–passed away in 2015.
While James said his mom started wing night around 2010, it has since become something of a local bar food phenomenon.
“If there’s three boats in,” James says, talking about Navy ships. “It’s wall-to-wall.”
Now that he owns and operates the pub, open nearly 365 days a year, plus his stake in the burgeoning movie theater and live entertainment venue and now a fledgling wholesale sauce business, I ask him what’s next on his list… Tracyton Bowling Alley? Tracyton Fast Food Chain? Tracyton Video Rental Store?
Not surprised, he’s already thought about it: Tracyton Coffee House. // BILLMAN
Find more at tracytonpublichouse.com and tracytonmoviehouse.com
