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Golden Wheel Restaurant

The Golden Wheel. When I was a kid, those three words were enough to elicit shouts of pure joy from me, my sister, my cousins, everyone. It’s the kind of place that hasn’t changed recipes or decor in about thirty years, because you know, it ain’t broke.

The Golden Wheel was that special restaurant that kids in our family always begged for on our birthdays. We’d get dressed up, parade through the front door, parents bemused in our wake, and we would be seated at one of the dozen or so booths. As kids, our drink of choice was the Shirley Temple. Yakima wasn’t known for its fine and varied cuisine at that time, so the Shirley Temple was one of those exotic treats that made The Golden Wheel such an experience. No other restaurants had that drink on the menu.

And even if they did, a Shirley Temple anywhere but The Golden Wheel just wasn’t as good.

The other big treat was the restaurant’s sweet and sour sauce. Over the years, it’s the sweet and sour sauce my family compares all other sweet and sour sauces with. If something is close to The Golden Wheel’s recipe, it’s sublime. The Golden Wheel, of course, is beyond sublime. Seriously, I have no idea what they put in the sauce, but it’s sweet, tangy, the perfect shade of orange, and so thick and gooey it could double as roofing material (this is meant to be a compliment). Not that I eat roofing material.

My immediate family has moved away from Yakima, but whenever we go back, we inevitably suggest a mini reunion at The Golden Wheel. Now I’m old enough to order cocktails from the restaurant’s infamous Lotus Room, the bar that makes its drinks so strong you can get a hangover just from the fumes. Nothing about the decor has changed, and I’m pretty sure the metal teapots have the same dents and dings they had when I was a kid, the menus as sticky as ever, but I still wouldn’t trade an evening at The Golden Wheel for anything. Nostalgia? Maybe. But why not?