The trip to Phoenix didn’t produce any story gems like the St. Louis trip did, but it definitely had its share of good eats, even if I did make a few heretical stops at chain restaurants.
I arrived too late to get to Scottsdale Stadium in time for batting practice, so I shot up Scottsdale Road to a sushi place called Sapporo that I’d been to three times before and considered one of the better sushi joints I’ve been to in the U.S. (It’s also the place where I was when I learned that Darryl Kile had been found dead in his hotel room, something that came back to me when I walked over to the spot in the restaurant where I stood when I took that phone call.) I sat at the sushi bar, figuring I wanted to eat as quickly as possible to get to the game on time, and ordered Too Much Sushiâ„¢, a problem I tend to have when eating alone at sushi restaurants. I also went for their house salad, which turned out to be a lot more ornate than the typical green salad you get in sushi places but with the same ginger dressing, which is really all that matters. The sushi was good but slightly disappointing; I thought the sake (salmon) was a little bland, and the unagi(freshwater eel) wasn’t slightly warm like it usually is. The spicy tuna rolls were very good, but could have been a bit spicier. Anyway, I was pretty sure I’d exceeded my per diem – I’m responsibly for anything I spend over that amount – on just one meal, but when I got the bill, it was $21. Turns out that everything is discounted for happy hour, making that meal the best sushi deal I’ve ever gotten. I know Tony Bourdain warns people to run away from “discount sushi,” but this particular discount is OK.
Café Carumba, a rare high-end restaurant that serves all three meals, was a major find for breakfast, and I wish I’d had a few more days there to work my way through the breakfast menu. I hate doing the eggs/sausage-or-bacon thing every day while I travel – once per trip is usually enough – but it’s hard to find an alternative. (The hotel wanted $10 for its crappy buffet; I wasn’t warm to the idea of giving them $10 for a container of yogurt and a stale pastry.) At Carumba, I did do the eggs-sausage-toast bit, since it’s my usual test dish for a breakfast spot. The sausage patties were delicious, probably house-made, lightly spiced and not too porky. The eggs were overcooked, although I have to admit that they were generous with the portions; apparently the menu’s reference to “two eggs” meant ostrich eggs. The rosemary potato wedges were a little dry, but the flavor was excellent. But what caught my eye was the yogurt-and-granola dish for $5, enough to pull me back the next morning. I don’t know where the granola came from, but it was superb, not too sweet (since the yogurt is already sweetened – I don’t need a sugar rush at 9 a.m.) and with a little cinnamon, and the bowl was topped with a sliced fresh strawberry. That, an English muffin that turned out to be free because the server forgot to bring it out with the yogurt dish, and a cup of hot tea (they serve Tazo) ran $9 with tip. Whenever I get back to Phoenix, my first breakfast stop will be at Carumba for their migas, which they make with chorizo sausage; my failure to try them stands as my major food regret of the trip. Heavy, spicy food isn’t really the ideal breakfast in my book, but this is the sort of sacrifice one has to make from time to time.
Wednesday’s lunch was a trip to Phoenix Ranch Market, something of a religious experience for people who like to cook; it’s a huge Mexican grocery store that also features a large food court. Any time I walk into an ethnic restaurant or store and find it packed with members of that ethnicity (and, therefore, not with people who look like I do), I figure I’m in the right spot. Indeed, despite the fact that the woman who took my order was so flustered by the prior customer’s inability to make up her mind that my burrito ended up an all-carnitas version instead of carnitas with rice and beans, I’m still a huge fan. That plus an enormous tamarind juice that I couldn’t finish ran $7, and I left with three Mexican cookies that cost $1 – two were just like oversized Italian butter cookies, and the third was a cocol, a sort of Mexican sweet bread (not sweetbread) flavored with anise seeds that didn’t thrill me. The food court also offered ice cream, cakes and other pastries, and plenty of other lunch options like enchiladas, tacos, etc. The carnitas, by the way, were served without any sauce (which may be traditional, but it was new to me), but had all the flavor of an excellent barbequed pulled pork.
Wednesday’s dinner and Thursday’s lunch were at chain restaurants. I was in Peoria and options were limited. We’re just going to pretend that those meals never happened.
Friday was the best eating day of the trip, which is typical, since it was also the last eating day of the trip. Breakfast was the aforementioned yogurt meal at Carumba. Lunch was an unusual plate at the Blue Adobe Grill in Mesa, less than a mile from their ballpark. The food is New Mexican cuisine (as in, from New Mexico), and the quality was extremely high. But apparently I’m not a huge fan of the red chile, at least not the varieties used in the cuisine of New Mexico. The carne adovada enchilada had a perfectly good piece of slow-roasted pork that came in an extremely bitter and somewhat spicy red adobo sauce. I’m told that this is normal. Why people would willingly eat something so bitter is beyond me; the only things that should taste that bad are medicine. The bitterness overwhelmed the spiciness and the sweetness that I think lay hidden underneath. I don’t think this is a fault of the cook; I think this is how it’s supposed to taste, and suddenly I’m not so sure that a week in Santa Fe is on my list of vacations to take. The red chile rice was better, with less bitterness but less heat, and the “shredded” beef taco (served on two soft corn tortillas with shredded cabbage) was excellent; the beef was more pulled than anything else, and it was a pleasant surprise to have a taco that wasn’t made with ground beef cooked within an inch of its life. The meal’s highlight was actually the smoky green salsa that came with warm tortilla chips to start the meal. I was tempted to take the salsa with me, but my only potential vessel was a pant pocket, and I thought the salsa might ruin my cell phone.
Friday’s dinner was my one meal with companions, Jeff Erickson of Rotowire and my occasional comrade-in-forks Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus. Looking for a quick meal between BP and the game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, we hit Honey Bear’s BBQ, a rather, um, unassuming little building on Van Buren just west of the 202. Smoke was pouring out of the back of the building, and once I determined that the place was not on fire, I took it as a good omen. I got greedy and went for the pulled pork, baked beans, and peach cobbler, which ran about $9 including a drink. The pork was excellent, very tender with good smoky flavor, and Joe and I had an extended discussion on the sauce, eventually concluding that the cook was going for a pan-American sauce, with some vinegar (North Carolina), mustard (South Carolina), and sweet (Memphis) flavors coming through. The beans were also plus, with bits of their hot links inside; Joe had a hot link sandwich, and gave it a thumbs up. Their links are hot but not killer-hot and were extremely juicy. The cobbler was good, although the layers of dough ended up a little gummy from sitting there while I ate everything else. Jeff got the ribs and thought they were good, but not as tender as promised (they claim “You don’t need no teeth to eat our meat!”). It was an incredible find by way of Google Maps and Chowhound, and I was still full three hours later.
Next year’s goal will be a chain-free trip to Phoenix. I’m optimistic; there are a lot of good eats to be had in that town, and I think I only scratched the surface of the Mexican scene.