Bacanora is one of the most acclaimed new restaurants in the country, landing on Bon Appetit’s list of the 50 best new restaurants of 2022, Esquire’s list of the same, and the New York Times’s list of the 50 best restaurants in the country, while it was a semifinalist for the James Beard award for best new restaurant. It’s very difficult to get a reservation, with seats opening a month in advance, but they do take walk-ins for bar seating and the patio, which is how I ended up with a spot right. I arrived just before they opened at 5 pm, which left me enough time to get to the 6:30 game in Glendale, and sat right at the bar, where I was eventually joined by another visitor from out of town who’d found the restaurant on Eater Phoenix (which does a great job covering the city’s food scene, along with the Phoenix New Times). I ordered two dishes on the bartender’s recommendations, the charred cabbage salad and the scallops elote, the latter of which is a ceviche in disguise. The cabbage salad was the best thing I ate on the entire trip and one of the best dishes I’ve had anywhere this year. There’s a wood-fired grill/hearth right there just past the end of the bar, and the cabbage (white and/or green) is indeed charred and smoky, chopped and tossed with a chiltepin vinaigrette, crema, pumpkin seeds, and crumbled tostada shells. It was tangy and spicy and very crunchy, unlike any cabbage dish I’ve ever had, so much so that I’m going to buy cabbage this week, grill it, and try to at least re-create this ‘salad’ in concept. The scallops elote did sort of pale in comparison, although the freshness of the scallops was remarkable in the seafood desert (pun intended) of Phoenix. Raw shellfish preparations are one of the few foods that make me hesitate, probably because I grew up on Long Island during a period when there were frequent health warnings about the risks of eating raw local oysters (which happened again this summer, this time after several deaths from Vibrio parahaemolyticus). These bay scallops were tender and had a faint flavor of seawater, although they were a little drowned by the flavors from the elote, grilled corn with two different types of crema, one spicy and one lime-infused, and comes with tostada sheets for scooping to add a little more salt and some more crunch. The menu, which reflects the flavors of the Sonora state in northwestern Mexico, changes very frequently, and neither of the items I had is on the permanent menu on their site, so you’re rolling the dice a little if you book ahead of time. I’m comfortable saying it’ll be worth it regardless.
Hai Noon is the latest restaurant from chef Nobuo Fukuda, a legend in Phoenix dining circles and a Beard winner for Best Chef – Southwest back in 2007, but whose namesake restaurant Nobuo at Teeter House closed in 2021 during the nadir of the pandemic. Hai Noon takes over a former dive bar’s space at the Sonder Mariposa hotel in Scottsdale, and the contrast between the setting and the delicate cuisine, which is mostly Japanese but with some French flourishes, enhances the whole experience. Chef Nobuo is known for his “sashimi spoons,” two per order, each of which is a single bite of raw fish with a few small accoutrements and a sauce, usually salmon, amberjack, or hamachi. I over-ordered, in hindsight, but I wanted to try both of the spoons with amberjack (kampachi), one with grapefruit and avocado, the other with shiso, Japanese ginger, and taro chip. I’d eat both all day long because the fish was as high a quality as any I’ve had anywhere, although I think the latter one (shiso/ginger) would get the nod as the superior one because the flavors were relatively new to me. In both spoons, however, the fish remained front and center, as it should when it’s this fresh. The cauliflower with sesame sauce also comes with okra, and the sauce was salty and very rich, with that faint peanut buttery taste I often detect with toasted sesame seeds (in a good way). The mushrooms en papillote were my least favorite of the four things I ordered, mostly because the flavors were so muted compared to the other three items that they felt a little flat, although the mushrooms themselves were excellent. It’s possible that I just couldn’t adjust my palate from the salty, umami-filled flavors of the sashimi and cauliflower to the garlic butter of the mushrooms. I also had a “Japanese old-fashioned,” which was just an old-fashioned with a little ginger syrup and black sugar (kuro sato). Nobuo is also planning to open a second restaurant in an adjacent space called Hidden Gem.
Dilla Libre Dos is, as you might infer, the second outpost from the folks behind the Dilla Libre food truck, this one located in Scottsdale not too far from the Giants’ stadium. They’re best known for their quesadillas, but as lactose is not really my friend, I went with the shrimp tacos with Tapatio crema, slaw, and pico de gallo, which were good-spicy and extremely flavorful, with lime, salt, cilantro, and other herbs between the seasoning on the shrimp and the toppings. I’d skip the rice and beans, though, which were just ordinary.
The Neighborly Public House is a high-end gastropub that might be a little overpriced for its target demographic but does serve quite credible food for the genre. I had the grilled “bbq” salmon because it was the end of the week and my stomach was starting to complain about all the heavier things I’d eaten, but other than the sauce being kind of generic, this salmon – from Iceland, which is trying to make its mark in sustainable aquaculture – was perfectly cooked, just barely to medium and still extremely tender and buttery. It’s served with a jicama slaw and a little salad of grape tomatoes with cornbread croutons, so I achieved the goal of eating something that was lighter and in theory more healthful than most of my meals this week. The menu also has several varieties of burgers, a fried shrimp platter, Maryland crab cakes (I just couldn’t), and salads, more or less what you’d expect from a gastropub, with a modest list of beer and wines. I did enjoy their take on a Manhattan, which used rye, orange bitters, and sweet vermouth infused with cacao nibs, adding a little more bitterness to what can be a too-sweet drink.
I went to Pa’La for lunch one day, and it’s changed quite a bit since I first went there back in 2018, when the place itself was smaller and so was the menu. It’s still built around wood-fired cooking, including outstanding breads, including the Tuscan flatbread known as schiacciata, which is sort of an Italian pita or naan that’s thick enough to slice in half and use as a sandwich bread. Their menu changes frequently but the boquerones (pickled white anchovies) are nearly always on it, which are bright and briny but would probably be better with a little bread rather than the crackers that come with them. I also had the albacore tuna sandwich, which comes and goes based on availability, on that schiacciata bread. It’s lightly dressed with aioli, arugula, and pickled red onions, and was big enough that I didn’t actually need the boquerones after all. The bread is the real star here, though – whatever you get, get something that brings you bread, or even a pizza if they have it. (They’re also known for grain bowls, which is what I had when I first went five years ago.) Co-owner Claudio Urcioli has a new spot out in Gilbert called Source that also uses some of his incredible breads, but I wasn’t anywhere close to it.
Provisions Coffee was the one disappointment of the trip – it’s a very trendy space, but the coffee is just fair and my drink was just lukewarm, I think because the barista just used milk they’d already steamed for someone else’s drink and allowed to cool for too long. I also got a donut from Outcast Donuts in Mesa, which uses a croissant dough (so it’s a cronut, just not by that name); the donut was good and shockingly not too heavy, but my goodness is that place trying too hard, with the decor, the names of items, all of it except the actual food.
I also hit some old favorites, including the Hillside Spot, Crêpe Bar, Matt’s Big Breakfast, the Cornish Pasty Company, Pane Bianco, and Frost Gelato, but the different schedule for the AFL this year meant I missed Cocina Chiwas, the new full-service spot from the folks behind Tacos Chiwas; and didn’t get to Pizzeria Bianco or FnB or Virtù or Noble Eatery, some of my favorites from the Valley.