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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Luna founders leave an enduring foodie legacy

Dan Webster

When I moved to Spokane  in 1980, dining out in Spokane for my then-family usually meant ordering Mexican food at Señor Guillermo's (in the Valley), ordering Chinese food at Peking North or eating whatever I could at the downtown Onion Bar & Grill. Given my dietary restrictions (I was then a vegetarian), I avoided most restaurants that catered to the steak crowd. We loved going out to breakfast, though, sometimes at the old St. Regis (where my daughter could color on the paper tablecloths), sometimes at Knight's Diner (when it was at its former site in the parking lot of the General Store).

But it's no big secret that, overall, Spokane in the '80s was a gastronomical backwoods. These days I can name a half dozen Spokane restaurants that could compete in either Seattle or Portland. But it took time, following Expo '74, for a consciousness regarding fine dining to take hold here.

One of the big leaps in that consciousness came because of the married couple William and Marcia Bond. A story in today's Spokesman-Review reveals that the Bonds, owners of the South Hill eatery Luna, are selling the place that they have owned and run since 1992. And while the story assures us that the new owners — Aaron DeLis and his fiancee, Hannah Heber, along with his parents Frank and Julie DeLis, all of Spokane — will continue with Luna's tradition of fine dining, we should recognize just how important the Bonds have been to Spokane's sense of good-food consciousness.

The story runs down the Bonds' specifics, where they came from, how they came to open Luna, how the place not only raised the city's expectations about fine-dining but also about helped educate many of us about the virtues of pairing food with wine. It doesn't say that the Bonds were also active with the former Contemporary Arts Alliance, which was the group that founded the long-running Spokane International Film Festival. And I'm sure the Bonds were involved in many other things as well.

What I want to do here, though, is simply recognize just how much their Luna has done for Spokane. Since it opened in 1992, it's always been one of the city's finest dining establishments. It helped raise expectation of what good food was, something these days most Spokane residents take for granted.

So thanks, William and Marcia Bond. You made a difference.