→ October 17, 2023
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Arizona eats, 2023 edition.

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.  

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→ April 5, 2023
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Arizona eats, March 2023.

Belly Kitchen & Bar’s downtown Phoenix location (they also have one in Gilbert) is easy to miss – it looks like a house and is located on a tiny lot on the southeast corner of 7th Ave & Camelback. The menu is influenced by Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese cuisines, and the dishes are all supposed to work with the wine & cocktail menu, although I admit that usually after one cocktail I’m not ober enough to make that connection. Anyway, I ordered the bartender’s two main suggestions, the crispy spring rolls and the pan-seared king trumpet mushrooms, as well as their rum and rye old fashioned. (Two of them, as it turned out.) The mushrooms were the more interesting of the two, tossed with some small cubes of tofu and served in a black bean and Sichuan peppercorn sauce that was faintly sweet, a little spicy, and very earthy with a ton of umami from the fermented beans. The spring rolls were a very good exemplar of their type, served with large lettuce leaves, mint sprigs, and nuoc cham sauce for dipping, although it was nothing I hadn’t had before, just generally not this good. And, somewhat unfortunately for the purposes of this blog, that was all I could eat – I was full, and just left wistfully eyeing the plates my neighbors got. I really wish I’d had room for the jackfruit and mustard green fried rice in particular.

Pizzeria Virtù is the second outpost from Chef Gio Osso of Virtù Honest Craft, although he’s also now opened a third place, Piccolo Virtù, so I’m behind. The pizzeria is more than just a pizza outlet, with an assortment of fresh house-made pastas and traditional Italian plates as starters. I went with my longtime friend Bill Mitchell, whose words and photos you may have seen over at Baseball America, and we did one item from each section – their insalata with arugula, grape tomatoes, red onion, shaved Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and a lemon-olive oil dressing; the pizza with ‘nduja, a spicy sausage from the Calabria region of southern Italy; and their rigatoni with tomatoes, basil, prosciutto, and more Parmiggiano-Reggiano. The pasta was by far the best dish we got, cooked truly al dente with bright sweetness from the tomatoes and basil and exactly the right amount of salinity even with two very salty ingredients in the prosciutto and the cheese. The pizza was solid, more Neapolitan-adjacent than Neapolitan, without a ton of air in the outer ridge of the crust but saved by the high quality of the toppings. (They also misspelled ‘nduja on the menu, writing “n’duja” instead, which is only funny because it’s an Italian term.) The salad was a good salad, nothing more or less, but I’m also glad we didn’t get something heavier. I can also vouch for the amaro viale cocktail, a combination of bourbon, three different amari (potable bitters), and sweet vermouth that hits like a negroni but with the smoothness of the bourbon rather than the herbal notes of gin.

Sweet Dee’s Bakeshop is on East Stetson not too far from Old Town, focusing mostly on pastries and sweets. Their breakfast sandwich comes with a scrambled egg, bacon, avocado, and goat cheese on a croissant, and was solid to very good other than the common problem of the egg being cooked more than I like it. I usually stick to the classics when I have breakfast out there – Hillside Spot, Matt’s, Crêpe Bar, sometimes Snooze – but this was excellent for something faster when I had a morning game to hit.

Futuro Coffee has been on my to-do list for Phoenix for years now, at least going back before the pandemic, as its adherents have argued it’s the best espresso place in the Valley. They certainly do take their espresso seriously, with a single-origin option each day, and the standard options to take it with varying degrees of milk. The day I went, the single-origin was an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, which in my experience does not play well with dairy; I asked the barista his advice and he said he thought it was best black. It’s served in a wide terra cotta cup, unlike any coffee vessel I’ve ever tried, which did keep it warm for longer than ceramic would, along with some sparkling water. Futuro is located inside the Palabra art gallery and the space is very cool, weirdly sparse and yet comfortable enough to sit and write for a while. They’ve used a number of top roasters from around the U.S. and Canada, including heart and 49th Parallel.

Fire at Will is in a relative wasteland for good food, up at Shea and Tatum, an area that’s mostly populated by chain restaurants. Their menu is eclectic, to put it mildly – I have a hard time seeing what the core idea is here, or finding any unifying theme among the dishes. I heard the folks sitting next to me ask the bartender if there were any must-try dishes on the menu, and the bartender recommended … the burger. That’s not a great sign, at least in my experience. I tried just two things given how large the portions are – the fried Brussels sprouts and the Iberico ham croquettes. The Brussels were truly outstanding, served with nuoc cham (fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar), chopped peanuts, and a little diced Asian pear; I’ve had a lot of fried Brussels sprouts but this was among the very best, as there wasn’t a single leaf that was overcooked and nothing was too undercooked to eat, while the sweet-sour sauce had the right balance to offset any lingering bitterness in the brassicas. The croquettes were also extremely well-cooked, very crispy on the outside but smooth and still soft on the interior, although I didn’t taste the ham at all, which is a colossal waste if they used real jamón iberico.

I ate one meal down in Tucson after my game at Hi Corbett Field, stopping at El Taco Rustico on N. Oracle on my back to I-10. It looks bare bones but the food is anything but – their carnitas is outstanding and the pollo asado has a ton of flavor, although it paled next to the pork since it’s just inherently less fatty. They also offer four vegetarian options (nopales, rajas con queso, eggs, or summer squash) as well as the fifteen meat or meat-containing choices for fillings. The guacamole starter is pretty generous for $8, with house-made chips, probably not something I needed but I ordered it anyway for the sake of my readers. Chef-owner Juan Almanza opened the restaurant right as the pandemic hit and kept it open with the support of the community during that first year, although now it appears that he’s built a strong following on his own.

I had two bad meals on the trip, one unsurprising and one less so. I ate at Revolu Modern Taqueria near the Peoria Sports Complex, mostly due to time constraints, and it was exactly what I expected, a chain restaurant’s facsimile of tacos, including “diablo” spiced shrimp that a toddler could eat. I also went to my longtime favorite FnB and had by far the most disappointing meal I’d ever had there, for reasons I can’t even completely explain. I’ll just note that the “smoked” salmon salad, which the server highlighted as a favorite, came with salmon so overcooked I couldn’t eat it. I’m not sure if it was smoked or poached, but it was beyond chewing. Maybe I just caught them on an off night.

The rest of my meals were at places I’d tried before, like the breakfast spots mentioned above, plus Republica Empanada, Pane Bianco (which now serves New York-style pizza on some days), Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee, Lux, Frost Gelato, and Defalco’s Italian Market. All lived up to previous standards.

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→ October 21, 2022
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Arizona eats, Fall 2022.

The best new place I ate on the trip was the first: CRUjiente Tacos, an upscale taqueria just east of the Biltmore and north of Arcadia, featuring tacos with non-traditional fillings. I went with three – their Korean fried chicken taco, a fish taco, and a garlic mushroom taco. To my surprise, the last one was the best, by a lot: garlic-roasted mushrooms with chèvre and a jalapeño lime aioli, served on a fresh blue corn tortilla. I could have had three of those and considered it a good meal, although I would have regretted not trying others. The fish taco was solid, although the fish itself (halibut?) was a little underseasoned. The ancho tartar sauce and citrus slaw provided just about all of the flavor. The fried chicken taco was disappointing, as the dominant flavor was fish sauce, and it didn’t have the powerful spice/umami balance of real Korean fried chicken. I was ravenous that day, so I started with the chips and three salsas. The habanero salsa was barely spicy at all, but the avocado-tomatillo salsa was excellent.

Phoenix Coqui is a food truck turned brick-and-mortar site, serving homestyle Puerto Rican food from a central Phoenix location. They offer the usual array of stewed meats in mofongo, mashed plantains that can form an edible bowl in which the meat is served … but I’ve had mofongo multiple times in Puerto Rico, and I have realized it’s just too heavy for me. So I went for two of Coqui’s empanadas instead, one chicken and one mushrooms. The crust is the real standout, crispy but not greasy and shockingly thin. The chicken was a little dry, probably because it was shredded white meat that ended up cooking twice; the mushrooms were better but probably could have used some acidity. I also ordered the bori fries, served with a garlic-mayo sauce (which I think also includes ketchup, a popular dipping sauce in Puerto Rico) that I ended up using with the empanadas. The fries were fresh from the freezer, unfortunately.

Sushi Sen popped up on an Eater list of the best sushi places in Phoenix, which, yes, I understand that’s like being the tallest man in Lilliput, but there are a few very highly-regarded sushi places in the Valley, like ShinBay, which is omakase­ only.Sushi Sen is a la carte and offers a ton of over-the-top rolls, which I admit should have been a sign for me. The sushi here is just fine, but not something I’d go out of my way to eat, and it’s definitely better value than quality. I think it’s better than “average” sushi, but I also think average sushi isn’t worth eating (or depleting the oceans), so take that for what it’s worth. The non-sushi items were a mixed bag – the cucumber salad with octopus was solid, the calamari tempura was rubbery – while the various nigiri I had were all about the same except for the maguro (tuna), which had a flavor I couldn’t identify but that I definitely did not like. The portions on the nigiri are enormous, which is a mixed bag, I suppose. If you try it, I would suggest the striped bass, which comes in a ponzu sauce; the chunky spicy tuna, which isn’t just the scrapings off the skin of a tuna loin but much larger pieces (and I didn’t detect that same off flavor, so maybe the sauce muted it); and the yellowtail.

I took one for the team and tried Café Lalibela, a modest Ethiopian café and shop in Tempe that has shown up on multiple best-of-the-Valley lists. Ethiopian food isn’t always my friend, and after eating it I feel like I am sweating berbere out of my pores, but I love the food – it just doesn’t love me back. It’s also a tough cuisine if you don’t eat (most) red meat, so I went with the one chicken option, doro wat, along with their spicy collard greens (gomen), along with injera, the teff-flour pancake that you use to eat the food, tearing off pieces and wrapping bits of the food in it. I’ve got limited experience with Ethiopian food, as you might imagine; the last time I had it I was scouting Josh Bell as a high schooler, and he just homered in the World Series, so it’s been a while. I thought the doro wat was fantastic, a little spicy but nothing I couldn’t handle, with a deep, earthy flavor from the berbere’s coriander and caraway. I found the collards to be too bitter, though, in part because they had so little salt.

Tampopo Ramen is a tiny ramen bar in Tempe, not far at all from the Cubs’ ballpark, and after CRUjiente it was the best new place I tried. Their tonkotsu ramen is mellower than most I’ve tried, in a positive way – same flavor profile, but less overwhelming. I might have done with more salt, but if you haven’t noticed, that’s a thing of mine. Anyway, the noodles are the real standout, as they’re made fresh in-house every day. I added wakame and kikurage (mushrooms) to the main tonkotsu ramen, but when I go again, I’d like to try the miso ramen to see if it gives me more of that salty kick.

I tried to sneak into Pizzeria Bianco for lunch on my last day there, but Chris Bianco’s appearance on Chef’s Table: Pizza has generated new interest in his flagship restaurant, so I ended up at Blanco, a mostly-in-Arizona chain of Mexican restaurants. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat here, but the grilled mahi-mahi tacos were completely adequate, and I was surprised by the quality of the fish. As chain food goes, you can and will do worse.

As for places I went that I’d been before: Hillside Spot, Crêpe Bar, Matt’s Big Breakfast, Noble Eatery, Soi4, Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee, Frost Gelato. Sometimes, it’s good to just play the hits, and they didn’t disappoint. I was disappointed I couldn’t slip over to FnB, my favorite restaurant in the Valley, but I would have been pushing it on time.

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→ March 31, 2019
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Arizona eats, 2019 edition.

The larder & the delta was in the now-closed Desoto Central Market food hall, but has since reopened in its own space and I think it’s going to be a standby for me when I’m in Phoenix and looking for something more vegetable-forward than most of the restaurants out there. The menu draws inspiration from southern cuisine, but vegetables are more front and center than meat. My friend and I got four dishes, all from the small plates sections of the menu, including the can’t-miss vegetable beignets, which are stuffed with mixed vegetables and are huge, airy, and just faintly sweet, served with green goddess foam, a black garlic-mustard topping, and some ‘vegetable ash’ that is just for show. The hamachi crudo with citrus, herb oil, and some not very spicy Fresno peppers was also superb, almost entirely because the fish itself was so fresh – citrus is a great complement to hamachi but this fish was good enough to eat with just a pinch of salt. The hoe cakes – a type of savory, unleavened pancake that traces its roots to slaves in the American South (and likely beyond) – come with a house-fermented chow chow (a type of spicy pickle, like a chutney) and a celery leaf salsa verde, which brings the same kind of contradictory sensation as the beignet: you associate the starch with sweet flavors, and here you get acidity and heat and a slightly heavy base from the density of the cakes. My least favorite dish, although it wasn’t any worse than average, was the baby beets salad, with more citrus, escarole, fennel, and almonds, which I think suffered because it has such a muted profile compared to the other dishes. The new space is small, but with quite a bit of seating on the patio and a long bar where we ended up sitting, and they do happy hour specials from 3-6 on weeknights that looks like pretty good value.

Fellow Osteria has a menu designed at least in part by Claudio Urciuoli, now running things at Pa’la and formerly of Noble Bread/Noble Eatery, with an emphasis on fresh pastas, some made in-house and some imported, as well as pizzas and a few very traditional southern Italian plates. Their charcuterie plate includes sopressata, speck (smoked prosciutto), three cheeses, basil pesto, peperonata, and flat breads, all good but I could have taken that entire bowl of peperonata and drank it like a shooter. The orecchiette di grano arso, one of the pastas they import from Italy, is a traditional Apulian pasta made from ‘burnt’ wheat that is toasted, providing a nutty, caramelized flavor, cut with some untoasted wheat so the finished product will still have enough gluten to hold together. Fellow serves theirs with a slightly spicy sausage from Schreiner’s, a local purveyor, and broccolini; even with the big flavors of the sausage, this dish is about the pasta itself, which was perfectly al dente and also had a very satisfying, deep semolina flavor that tasted more complex than regular white pasta.

Restaurant Atoyac Estilo Oaxaca has been a bit of a white whale for me since I lived there; like its previous incarnation, Tacos Atoyac, it’s a bit out of the way of my travels for work, not very close to any ballpark except maybe Maryvale, without nothing else nearby that would bring me to the area. They do very simple, no-frills, authentic Oaxacan cuisine, with superb homemade tacos. There’s a lot of red meat here, which is a minor limitation for me, but I did fine, getting three tacos, one with chicken, one with shrimp, and one with fried fish, as well as sides of rice and refried beans, which proved more than enough for me – I could have skipped the beans, but when in Rome, etc. I’d get all three again, but the shrimp was probably the least flavorful of the three (I concede that shrimp is hardly a Phoenix staple), and I was pleasantly surprised at how much flavor the chicken had, given how much that meat is an afterthought at restaurants that focus on beef. That said, if you eat cow, they have beef cooked many ways, including asada, al pastor, lengua, and more, and also offer burros and other plates beyond tacos. Atoyac’s location is a little hard to find – I drove right past it – without a ton of parking, and it’s a barebones spot, but clean, which is all I really ask of a restaurant.

The Normal is actually two separate restaurants in the Graduate Hotel in Tempe, on Apache, close to ASU’s campus, and their new menus incorporate some dishes from the couple behind Tacos Chiwas and the just-closed Roland’s (more on that below). The morning I went to their diner for breakfast, they were out of the fresh flour tortillas required for some of their dishes, and their take on chilaquiles, with a salsa rojo, had a solid flavor profile, with a little heat and a strong earthy flavor from whatever pepper (maybe a red New Mexico?) it included, but the dish needed far more of the sauce to keep it from drying out.

I didn’t get to Bri this trip, unfortunately, but that was ‘next’ on my list of places I wanted to try. I visited a few old favorites, including FnB, which is still my favorite high-end restaurant out that way; Soi 4; Noble Eatery; the Hillside Spot; and crepe bar, which now has a sweet crepe with sunflower butter, grilled figs, bananas, and coconut flakes that is delicious and so filling (that’s a lot of fiber) that the first day I ate it I didn’t need lunch. Roland’s Market closed shortly before I got to Arizona, although the location has already been converted into a new, larger outpost of Chris Bianco’s Pane Bianco, while also serving coffee and breakfast, open from 8 am till 3 pm. I also got word that Giant Coffee, one of my favorite spaces in Arizona, has switched to using beans roasted by ROC, a local roaster whose coffees are way too dark for my tastes, which is a huge disappointment, so I stuck to Cartel and crepe bar (now using Tucson’s Presto) for coffee on this trip.

 

You can find some of my previous Arizona food posts here: from March 2018,  one writeup from May 2016, from March 2016, and my 2016 Cactus League dining guide, a bit out of date but still mostly relevant.

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→ March 16, 2018
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Arizona eats, 2018 edition.

I’m just heading home now from an eight-night trip to Arizona, briefly interrupted by my trip to San Francisco to Twitter HQ for the release of Smart Baseball in paperback, and since I was solo this trip I tried more new restaurants than I usually do in spring training, with several I can strongly recommend.

Ocotillo has been on my to-do list in Phoenix for probably two years now, but it’s so popular and distant enough from the AFL parks that it had to be a spring training option. It turned out to be well worth the wait, boasting a broad menu that offered plenty of diverse options and still had some excellent, hand-crafted items. I had the duck confit salad as a starter and a pappardelle with chicken ragout, both of which were good enough that I’d like to go eat them again. The salad comes with an entire leg that has been confited and I believe quick-fried to get the skin extremely crispy, and that’s served over baby lettuces, arugula, shaved fennel, candied almonds, and a citrus vinaigrette. The pappardelle – the menu says “duck egg papparedelle,” as if I’d know the difference – was well cooked, maybe a shade past al dente, with a tomato-based ragout that had white and dark chicken in it and a bright flavor like that of a vodka sauce. The only dish that anyone had that wasn’t a hit was the Brussels sprouts starter, as they were totally undercooked. The space is huge, but there was still a wait on Friday night if you didn’t have a reservation.

Taco Chelo just opened officially on March 9th, although I believe they had a soft open prior to that, and the new counter-service taco-and-drinks joint from Aaron Chamberlain (St. Francis, Phoenix Public Market) is both excellent and a good value. They offer five different taco options – vegetable, fried fish, carnitas, barbacoa, and carne asada – plus several starters, including a pinto bean dish I strongly recommend and chicharrones that could feed an army. They also offer little quesadillas for a few bucks each, and even though that’s not really my thing (I don’t eat much cows-milk cheese), this was outstanding, especially because the tortilla was thicker than what you’d normally get, giving the resulting sandwich (yes, a quesadilla is a sandwich, don’t @ me) more tooth. They also offer a few margaritas, a Paloma (tequila and grapefruit soda), and a few beers. You could easily get dinner and one drink for under $20 here.

Eric Longenhagen introduced me to the Arab market and restaurant Haji Baba, not too far east of Tempe Diablo, an unassuming and very reasonably priced restaurant serving Middle Eastern staples, including chicken shawarma, beef kofta, and lamb gyros. I got the shawarma, which came with hummus, basmati rice, tabbouleh salad, and Arabic bread (I would have called it a pita). The chicken was a little lean but very garlicky – that’s a compliment – and the bread and hummus were both plus. Tabbouleh just isn’t my jam, though; that’s a big pile of parsley, and as Thag could tell you, parsley is just for looks.

Pa’la is the new place from Claudio Urciuoli, formerly of Noble Eatery, as he’s taken his love of wood-fired cooking to another small place that serves incredible grain bowls, a flatbread option that changes daily, and a half-dozen or so small plates from cuisines around the Mediterranean. The grain bowl is just fantastic, and I say that as someone who doesn’t necessarily love that particular craze. It has a mixture of five grains, toasted seeds (sesame, pumpkin, sunflower), roasted vegetables (mine had mostly beets, which I love), olive oil, and vinegar, and is topped with grilled shrimp or halibut. Grain bowls often taste kind of flat and cardboardy, but this one was bright, flavorful, and very satisfying even though it seems light. The contents of the bowl will change with the season, as will the rest of the menu. It’s very much worth going out of your way to find this place, especially if you’re traveling and tired of one meal after another centered around heavy meat dishes.

Barrio Café Gran Reserva is a high-end offering from Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza of Barrio Café (and formerly of Barrio Queen, although she’s no longer involved with that project), offering a five-course tasting menu for $49 per person as well as several a la carte items. It just reopened in the fall after closing for a few months for a “retooling,” and I think they might still need to refine their product, which has a lot of great ideas but very inconsistent execution. The duck taco, for example, was both overcooked and lukewarm when it reached the table, while the halibut was perfect on the inside but overcooked at the edges. The chocolate mousse was by far the best part of the meal, only approached by the amuse bouche that started the evening of muscat-macerated watermelon and a dollop of goat cheese mousse.

New Wave Market is a breakfast/lunch café in Old Town Scottsdale, a new offering from the folks behind the Super Chunk bakery, serving, as you might expect, baked goods, along with some egg dishes, a ‘bagel bar,’ and a Hawai’ian bread French toast for breakfast and coffee from Chandler-based Peixoto. Most of my favorite breakfast spots in the Valley are down towards Tempe/Ahwatukee, which is also where I like to stay, so I’ve lacked recommendations for folks staying in Scottsdale. NWM isn’t up to the standard of those other restaurants (listed below), but it’s a better choice than the chain options in Old Town.

A reader of mine is one of the partners in the brand-new Starlite BBQ, located just east of Old Town in a strip mall along Indian School Road. It’s a sit-down Q joint, like Famous Dave’s but with food that’s actually good. (I have eaten in a Famous Dave’s twice, both times over ten years ago, and both times it made me horribly sick.) I went with Eric and Arizona institution Bill Mitchell, a photographer who also writes some prospect lists for BA, and is as food-obsessed as I am. We ordered a lot of food, and a few extras came from the kitchen, but we agreed the biggest hits were the warm cornbread in a cast iron skillet, the hot fried chicken (which was spicy but very tolerable), the crispy potatoes (baked and then flash fried), the braised collard greens with tomatoes, and the “brontosaurus rib,” a full short rib that is smoked and then grilled to crisp up the exterior. The only item I think we didn’t care for was the smoked brisket, which didn’t have a lot of flavor on its own, in part because the slab we got was too lean, but overall it just didn’t have much smoke flavor to it. Eric and Bill both liked the shrimp and cheese grits, but I skipped the latter part of that. The meat portions are large – the chicken, for example, is half a broiler-fryer, and the brontosaurus rib is quite big given how fatty short rib is – so I’d say order conservatively on the meat and then go heavy on sides.

Roland’s Market isn’t quite open yet, but they expect to open their doors officially in mid-April, possibly with a soft open before that. The new collaboration between Chris Bianco of his namesake Pizzeria and Nadia Holguin and Armando Hernandez of Tacos Chiwas (which I still strongly recommend) will be open from breakfast until late night, with a menu during the day that will combine some elements of each side’s cuisines. I had the chance to sample some of their breakfast offerings, which include breakfast sandwiches served on Bianco’s bread, with fillings like a frittata with carne seca or one with red peppers and onions, both served with an arbol sauce; an asparagus frittata (since that’s in season now) served with a salsa roja; a stack of thick house-made corn tortillas with asadero cheese, smothered in chile Colorado, and topped with a sunny egg; and a French toast-like dish with house-made bread sandwiched around Nutella and served with fresh fruit, no syrup needed. They plan to make their own flour tortillas in-house, as Chiwas does, and the late-night menu will feature Chiwas’ tacos. The space, in a building that was first built in 1917, will have seating for patrons who will be dining in, a large bar area, and a quick-service counter at the front with an espresso bar and pastries.

I also hit a number of old standbys, including The Hillside Spot, Crepe Bar (now using local Provisions Coffee for their espresso), Matt’s Big Breakfast, FnB (still the best restaurant in the Valley IMO), Pizzeria Bianco, Frost, Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee (now open on Apache in Tempe/Mesa, serving food as well), and Giant Coffee (which seems to have dropped Four Barrel?). I didn’t get to Gallo Blanco, an old favorite that has reopened after a two-year-plus absence because its old building was torn down, but friends of mine out there say it’s as good as it used to be.

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→ February 23, 2016
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Arizona spring training dining guide, 2016 edition.

I have lots of dish posts on food in the Valley, searchable via the search box above or by location tags like Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Mesa. This is now my fourth edition of the dining guide, and my second since moving back to the east coast last summer; I’ve done my best to keep up with restaurant news from out there, but I’m aware I’m likely falling behind. Nothing’s new in the structure and I’ve left the list of places in downtown Phoenix that aren’t close to any ballpark at the end. A lot of the text is unchanged from last year, so don’t be shocked if it seems familiar.

Scottsdale/Old Town (San Francisco):

* Virtu Honest Craft: Award-winning, including a James Beard nomination for best new restaurant in the country, with reason, as this might be the best restaurant in all of Arizona. Virtu is only a 12-minute walk from Scottsdale Stadium and offers inventive, attractive, and most importantly delicious food that plays with textures and flavors in unexpected ways. I went there in October and wrote up the meal in depth.

* Citizen Public House: This was my birthday dinner spot each of the last two years we were out there, if that gives you some sense of how much I liked it. I love the pork belly pastrami starter with rye spaetzle, shredded brussels sprouts, and mustard vinaigrette. I love the short ribs with a dark cherry glaze. I loved the seared scallops on grits. I loved the bacon-fat popcorn and the chicken-and-waffles starter. The only thing I didn’t love was, surprisingly, the duck breast, which was so rare that I couldn’t cut it. Great beer selection as well as well as the best negroni I’ve ever had.

* FnB: I’ve had lunch and dinner here and never been disappointed at all; it rivals Virtu and crudo for the best restaurant in Phoenix, with a menu of smaller plates that often showcase produce of a quality I didn’t think you could get in the state of Arizona. Chef Charleen Badman was just nominated for the James Beard Award for Best Chef, Southwest, for the second year in a row.

* Pig and Pickle: Just outside of Old Town, and only open since November, they do things with pig and with pickles, like the braised pork belly, yam puree, and brussels sprouts slaw starter that was pretty special, as well as a great selection of cocktails.

* Barrio Queen: A spinoff of Barrio Cafe (reviewed below), Barrio Queen is all about the mini tacos, which you order on a piece of paper like you’d get at a sushi place. They range from about $2.50 to $6 apiece and everything I tried was excellent, especially the same cochinita pibil that is a signature dish at the original Cafe.

* Culinary Dropout: A gastropub of sorts, located right near Old Town across from the Fashion Square mall. Definitely a good place to go with pickier eaters, since the menu is broad and most of it is easily recognizable. The chicken truffle hash and the turkey pastrami are both very good.

* Arcadia Farms: Farm-to-table breakfast dishes and sandwiches. Not cheap, but you are paying for quality and for a philosophy of food. I have been there twice and service, while friendly, was leisurely both times.

* Grimaldi’s: Local chain, related to the Brooklyn establishment of the same name. Very good (grade 55) thin-crust, coal-fired pizzas, including nut-free pesto, and similarly solid salads in generous portions. Not terribly cost-effective for one person for dinner, although they’ve finally introduced a more affordable lunch menu.

* Distrito: Inside the Saguaro hotel is this cool, upscale Mexican place, an offshoot of the restaurant of the same name in Philadelphia, serving mostly small plates at a slightly high price point but with very high-quality ingredients, including the best huitlacoche dish I’ve had, and an excellent questo fundido with duck barbacoa. I also liked their Sunday brunch … except for the coffee, which was like molten lead. I haven’t been here since the makeover, however.

* Cartel Coffee Lab: Best coffee in Arizona. Full writeup below in the Tempe section. This shop is on 5th street right across from Citizen Public House and FnB.

* Los Sombreros: A bit of a drive south of Old Town into the only part of Scottsdale that you might call “sketchy,” Los Sombreros does high-end authentic Mexican at Scottsdale-ish prices but with large portions and very high quality.

* Defalco’s Italian Market is a great spot to grab an authentic Italian (specifically New York-Italian) sandwich while you’re on your way to a game anywhere in Scottsdale. I prefer it to Andreoli’s, which offers a similar menu and is much closer to Salt River Fields.

* I should mention Franco’s Italian Caffe, right on Scottsdale Road, as it’s very highly regarded by locals, but I was very disappointed. Authentic Italian cuisine is light, focused on simple recipes with big flavors but rarely heavy, while Franco’s menu skews toward what I think of as New York-Italian cuisine, with heavier dishes including lots of heavy cream and salt. It’s not my thing, but I won’t judge you if it’s yours. I also tried The Upton, a new small-plates-and-cocktails kind of place just off Scottsdale road south of Camelback, but their execution was very uneven (e.g., the fried oysters’ batter was inedibly salty) and the service was just kind of weird. I ate at EVO in Scottsdale in October and had a uniformly awful experience.

Scottsdale central/north (Arizona/Colorado):

* Soi4: upscale Thai and Thai-fusion, very close to the park. Owned by the same family that runs Soi4 in Oakland. Full review of my first visit. I’ve gotten pad see ew as a takeout item from here a few times and it was always excellent, full of that crunchy bitter brassica (similar to rapini), and smoking hot.

* Il Bosco: Wood-fired pizzas, cooked around 750 degrees, at a nice midpoint between the ultra-thin almost cracker-like Italian style and the slightly doughier New York style I grew up eating. Their salads are also outstanding and they source a lot of ingredients locally, including olives and EVOO from the Queen Creek Olive Mill. I’ve met the owner and talked to him several times, and he was kind enough to give my daughter a little tour behind the counter and let her pour her own water from their filtration machine, which she loved.

* ‘Pomo Pizzeria: This location is in the same shopping center as Soi4, with others in downtown Phoenix and out in Gilbert. Authentic, Neapolitan-style pizza, not as good as Bianco, but in the running for the second-best pizza in Arizona along with cibo. Toppings include a lot of salty cured meats designed (I assume) to keep you drinking … not that there’s anything wrong with that. Full review.

* Press: In that same shopping center is a small coffee shop where they roast their own beans and will make you a cup of coffee using your method of choice (vacuum, French press, pour-over), as well as the usual run of espresso-based options. There’s apparently also a location at Sky Harbor in Terminal 4 by the B gates (USAirways), although I haven’t visited that one.

* Butterfields: The lines are crazy on the weekends, but if you like a basic diner and want good pancakes or waffles this is one of the better options in the Valley.

* Sweet Republic: I actually find this place to be a little overrated, but if you prefer traditional New York ice cream to gelato or custard, then it’s a good bet, and not far north of the park, just east of the 101 on Shea.

* Andreoli’s Italian Market is a decent spot for New York-Italian sandwiches, although I prefer Defalco’s in south Scottsdale.

* Perk Eatery: West of Scottsdale road and the Kierland mall, on Greenway, probably stretching the definition of what’s near Salt River Fields, but Phoenix doesn’t have a ton of good breakfast spots and this is one of the few. It’s a diner by another name, open for breakfast and lunch, with a slow-roasted pork option along with the regular array of breakfast meats, and rosemary potatoes that are a must with any egg dish.

Tempe (Angels):

* Hillside Spot, Ahwatukee (Phoenix). My favorite place to eat in the Valley, right off I-10 at the corner of Warner and 48th. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I recommend the pulled pork sandwich, the chilaquiles, the grilled corn appetizer, the house-cut French fries, the pancakes (best in Arizona), and the coffee from Cartel Coffee Lab. The Spot sources as much as they possibly can from local growers or providers, even providing four local beers on tap, and you can get out for under $15 including tax and tip. I’ve written about it more than once; here’s one of my posts, which talks about that pork sandwich. They’ve also added an evening menu called “Cocina 10,” including (on some nights) a really great take on fried fish tacos. For breakfast and lunch they’re outstanding, but I have found dinner service to be a little less consistent – but still usually great.

* Crepe Bar: Amazing savory and sweet crepes, and expertly pulled espresso shots using beans from heart coffee roasters, one of the best micro-roasters I’ve come across. They use a lot of local ingredients, including produce from Agritopia Farms (which also hosts Joe’s Farm Grill in Gilbert, seen on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Douche), and bake their own brioche if you’re not in the mood for a regular or buckwheat crepe.

* nocawich. Nestled right off University within the heart of ASU is this fantastic sandwich shop serving breakfast and lunch, with the Dolly, a fried chicken sandwich that is so good I’ve scheduled layovers at this airport just to eat it at their Terminal 4 location. (I’ve done the same to get coffee at Cartel, too.) They also offer an amazing patty melt sandwich, triple-cooked fries, and H&H bagels for their enormous breakfast sandwiches.

* Cornish Pasty Company: Just what the name says – large, hearty Cornish pasties with dozens of traditional and non-traditional filling options. I’ve eaten one for lunch and then skipped dinner. Convenient to the A’s ballpark. Second location in Mesa isn’t too far from the Cubs’ park and is bigger with more parking, and there’s one within a mile of the Giants’ place in Scottsdale.

* Four Peaks Brewery: One of the best local microbreweries with surprisingly solid food as well. You’ll see their beers all over the place, but the restaurant is absolutely worth hitting. Parking is very difficult on Friday through Sunday nights, though. Also very convenient to the A’s ballpark.

* Cartel Coffee Lab: Among the best coffee roasters in the Valley, and now in an expanded place that doesn’t feel so much like a fly-by-night operation. They’re also in the C wing of Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor, in downtown Phoenix, and right in Old Town Scottsdale near Citizen Public House.

* I haven’t tried Moroccan Paradise yet, where they serve Moroccan (duh) and French food, but it’s garnered some nice reviews, as has BP Street Cafe for its Malaysian food.

Mesa (Cubs):

Most of the places I suggested for Tempe are also quite close to here, including Crepe Bar, Cartel, and the Revival.

* The best smoked brisket I’ve ever had outside of Franklin BBQ in Austin is at Little Miss BBQ on University Avenue in Tempe, right near the airport. If you’ve been to Franklin or read about it, you know what to expect: Get in line by 10:30 or so if you want to eat before 1 pm; they start serving at 11 and they stop when they sell out of meat; and don’t expect a lot of variety. The menu is short but amazing, with all meats smoked over oak and pecan. The brisket is amazing, the sausage is excellent, but everything’s good, and it’s a great place to go with a group because you can only order some items – like the occasionally available smoked lamb neck – by the pound.

* Republica Empanada offers outstanding empanadas, small plates, a few entrees, and beer. I loved everything I tried here but particularly recommend a side of maduros.

* Chou’s Kitchen: Just over the line in Chandler, at the intersection of Alma School (north-south) and Ray (east-west), this hole-in-the-wall place does dongbei cai, the cuisine of northeastern China – what we used to call Manchuria – which is heavy on dumplings, mostly fried and generally delicious, with large portions designed for sharing and vinegar on the table for dipping. I also love their lao hu cai or “tiger salad,” a vinegary mix of shredded vegetables, scallions, cilantro, jalapenos, and peanuts.

* Pros Ranch Market: A Mexican/Latin American grocery store south of the ballpark (at Stapley and Southern) with a large quick-service department offering some of the best burritos (including, hands-down, the best carnitas) I’ve had in Arizona. The enchiladas are solid, my daughter loves their quesadillas, they make great aguas frescas in eight to twelve flavors, and there’s an extensive selection of Mexican pastries. You can stuff yourself here for under $10. There’s another location near the A’s ballpark in Phoenix as well.

* Thai Spices: In a strip mall of Asian restaurants, Thai Spices is among the best Thai places I’ve found around here, just doing a great job with the basics of Thai (or perhaps Americanized Thai) cuisine. I really loved their soups, both tom yum (clear, sour/spicy soup with lemongrass) and tom ka (sweeter, with coconut milk, and also lemongrass), as well as the green curry.

* Tia Rosa’s: A bit east of the ballpark, Tia Rosa’s is a taqueria that offers a few other Mexican dishes in a casual setting; the large, high-end restaurant that used to be here burned down, although they offer that menu at a location way out in east Gilbert.

Maryvale (Milwaukee):

* Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Don’t make it any worse by going here.

(Okay, fine, here’s an actual recommendation for this neighborhood: the Phoenix New Times just reviewed a place called Machete Azteca, which sells the machetes (like giant quesadillas) of the Distrito Federal region of Mexico.)

Goodyear (Cincinnati/Cleveland):

* Ground Control. In the Avondale/Litchfield Park area, but kind of between Goodyear and Glendale, this coffee-shop has upgraded its menu so it’s now a craft-beer paradise and upscale sandwich shop and coffee bar and even gelateria. I’ve been twice; the service can be a little spacey but the food is very good and I even liked the coffee. They do breakfast as well. This place should be so much more popular than it is, given the paucity of quality non-chain options in the area.

* Raul and Theresa’s: Very good, authentic, reasonably priced Mexican food, really fresh, always made to order. The guacamole is outstanding. It’s south of the stadium and doesn’t look like much on the outside, but I would call it a can’t-miss spot if you’re going to a Cincinnati or Cleveland game, since there isn’t much else out here that isn’t a bad chain.

Glendale (Dodgers/White Sox):

* If you’re headed here or even to Goodyear, swing by Tortas Paquime in Avondale. They do traditional Mexican sandwiches, with the torta ahogada – literally a “drowned” sandwich – covered in a slightly spicy red sauce, although that was a little over-the-top heavy for me. Solid aguas frescas here as well.

* For finer dining and good cocktails, try Cuff right in downtown Glendale, which does very unpretentious but fresh, high-quality food, including burgers, sandwiches, and salads that use much better inputs than most places that try that sort of menu. I’m underselling it a bit – it’s basic food, but done exceedingly well.

* You might also try Siam Thai, which is in Glendale on Northern but is at least 15 minutes away from the park, heading east. It is, however, superlative Thai food, perhaps the highest-rated Thai place in the Valley.

* La Piazza Al Forno: thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas that are not as good as Bianco’s or Cibo’s, but are certainly authentic Neapolitan pizzas with the wet center you’d expect. It’s a couple of doors down from Cuff.

Peoria:

* It’s a wasteland of chains out here; the best option I know is the local chain Grimaldi’s, mentioned above.

Surprise:

* I’ve got one good rec out this way, the new-ish Vietnamese place Saigon Kitchen up on Bell Road just north of the ballpark. There’s good Vietnamese food to be had out here if you work to find it, and this is the best, especially in presentation – the menu is familiar, the food is a little brighter and fresher, and the place is far more welcoming. I’ve yet to try Amuse Bouche, probably the best-reviewed restaurant in Surprise, which does a more casual sandwich/panini menu at lunch before shifting to fine dining for dinner.

Away from the parks: Downtown Phoenix and Camelback East

These places are no longer near any ballpark other than Phoenix Muni, which now houses Arizona State but no spring training teams.

* Pizzeria Bianco: Most convenient to Chase Field. Best pizza I have ever had in the United States. No reservations, closed Sunday-Monday, waits for dinner can run to four hours, but they’re now open for lunch and if you get there before twelve the wait usually isn’t too bad. Parking is validated at the Science Museum garage. There’s now a second, larger location just off route 51 in the Town and Country shopping center, serving a few pasta items as well as the signature pizzas. By the end of March, a trattoria serving house-made pastas with locally grown wheat will open in the space next to that Town and Country pizzeria.

* Welcome Chicken and Donuts: Located in a former KFC location, this spinoff of the Welcome Diner serves “Asian” fried chicken, lots of donuts, and not a whole lot else. You can get one of three sauces on the chicken; I don’t recommend the Vietnamese option unless you really love fish sauce. I thought the chicken was plus and the donuts were Hall of Fame-worthy.

* Noble Eatery: Artisan European-style breads from the Noble Bread Company, with 3-4 sandwich options each day in a tiny (“intimate”) cafe. It is truly some of the best bread you’ll ever have this side of Italy.

* Barrio Cafe: About 15 minutes west of Phoenix Muni via the 202/51. Best high-end Mexican food I’ve had out here, edging out Los Sombreros in Scottsdale. Table-side guacamole is very gimmicky (and, per Rick Bayless, suboptimal for flavor development), but the ingredients, including pomegranate arils, are very fresh. Great cochinita pibil too. There’s now a location at Sky Harbor’s Terminal 4, past security near the D gates. Chef Silvana has also opened a cocktail bar with lots of small plates, serving three meals a day, at The Yard in Phoenix.

* The Grind: The best burger I’ve had out here, far superior to the nearby Delux, which is overrated for reasons I don’t quite fathom. (Maybe people just love getting their fries in miniature shopping carts.) The Grind cooks its burgers in a 1000-degree coal oven, so you get an impressive crust on the exterior of the burger even if it’s just rare inside. Their macaroni and cheese got very high marks from my daughter, a fairly tough critic. They have photos of local dignitaries on the wall, including Jan Brewer and Mark Grace, which might cause you to lose your appetite.

* Chelsea’s Kitchen: I’ve only been to the airport location, in the center of Terminal 4 before security, where the food was excellent but the service a little confused. The short rib taco plate would feed two adults – that has to be at least ¾ of a pound of meat. Their kale-quinoa salad sounds disgustingly healthy, but is delicious despite that. Both this and The Grind (and North Fattoria, an Italian restaurant from the Culinary Dropout people) are near Camelback and 40th, about 6 miles/13 minutes west of Scottsdale Stadium.

* crudo: There isn’t much high-end cuisine in Phoenix – I think that’s our one real deficiency – but Chef Cullen Campbell does a great job of filling that void here with a simple menu that has four parts: crudo dishes, raw fish Italian-style, emphasis on tuna; fresh mozzarella dishes, including the ever-popular burrata; small pasta dishes, like last fall’s wonderful squash dumplings with pork belly ragout; and larger entrees, with four to five items in each sections. The desserts, like so many in the Valley, are from Tracy Dempsey, the premier pastry chef in the area. Like the previous two spots, it’s about 12-13 minutes west of the Giants’ ballpark. This is now my go-to rec when someone wants a splurge meal in Phoenix or wants more adventurous cuisine.

* Zinburger: Not the top burger around here but a damn good one, especially the namesake option (red zinfandel-braised onions, Manchego, mayo), along with strong hand-cut fries and above-average milkshakes. Located in a shopping center across the street from the Ritz. Try the salted caramel shake if you go. There are also two locations in Tucson, and two in New Jersey that are licensed but independently owned and operated.

* cibo: Maybe the second-best pizzas in town, with more options than Bianco offers, along with a broad menu of phenomenal salads and antipasti, including cured meats, roasted vegetables, and (when available) a superb burrata.

* Pane Bianco: Sandwiches from the Bianco mini-empire, just a few options, served on focaccia made with the same dough used to make the pizzas at Pizzeria Bianco. My one experience here was disappointing, mostly due to the bread being a little dry, but the cult following here is tremendous and I may have just caught them on a bad day.

* Otro Cafe: The chef behind Gallo Blanco (which is now closed) has a new place, with a very simple menu – a few taco items, a few tortas with the same meats you’ll find on the taco menu, a few Mexican street-food starters, and a full bar. There’s a bit more focus on local fare here, and the guacamole is my favorite in the Valley.

* Matt’s Big Breakfast and Giant Coffee. Owned by the same guy, located a few blocks apart, but not otherwise connected as Matt’s doesn’t use Giant’s coffee. Matt’s is the best pure-breakfast place in the Valley, and one major reason is that they use the black-pepper bacon from Queen Creek’s The Pork Shop. Everything here is good, but the veteran move is breakfast at Matt’s original location with coffee or espresso afterwards at Giant. (Matt’s uses ROC, from Cave Creek, a popular roaster with Valley restaurants but nowhere near Giant’s quality.) Giant uses direct-trade beans for its espresso from Four Barrel and usually has three or four single-origin options for pour-overs. Matt’s recently opened a second location that should take some pressure off the lines at the first spot.

* Federal Pizza. Federal’s was the best Brussels sprout pizza I’d ever tried until I found Motorino in NYC, and even then it was close. I’ve tried a few of their pizzas and their roasted vegetable board, loving everything, and their crust is a great compromise for folks who want more chew and less of the cracker-thin crust of a place like Bianco.

* The Gladly. The second location from the folks behind Citizen Public House, the Gladly’s location and menu are built more around the alcohol – I think the atmosphere they’re going for is cocktail party, or upscale happy-hour, with smart food to go with the booze. I had a mixed experience in my one meal there, loving the chicken-liver pate starter but finding less success with the duck ramen (which I’m told is a dish they frequently tweak). Given their track record at CPH, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

* Blue Hound. Another great cocktail bar that happens to offer good food, mostly sandwiches and other items you’d expect at a quality bar, although I’ve only been here for drinks and bar snacks (like the tater tots, which I highly recommend).

* Frost Gelato. Located at the Biltmore, right by Zinburger, Frost has the best gelato or ice cream anywhere in Phoenix. The sea salt caramel is their top seller; I suggest you pair it with the dark chocolate. They also have locations in Gilbert and Tucson.

* The larder + the delta, the new place from former Blue Hound exec chef Stephen Jones, specializing in southern cuisine, located inside the Desoto Market downtown.

Some of the places I’m hoping to try on my spring training trip this year: Okra, the new place from the folks behind crudo; Forno 301, serving thin-crust pizzas and salads plus daily pasta specials; Couscous Express, another Moroccan place, this one on East McDowell in Phoenix; Craft 64, serving pizza and beer, which is like the meaning of life; TEN, serving simple, well-done pub food in the Biltmore area; and Ocotillo, a combination coffee bar, beer garden, and restaurant serving lunch, dinner, and weekend brunches.

Feel free to offer your own suggestions for places I haven’t listed or tried in the comments below. I believe everything I’ve listed here is still open, but if you know that one of these restaurants has shut its doors, again, please let me know.

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→ October 26, 2015
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Arizona eats, October 2015 edition.

My second and final Arizona Fall League post for this year is up for Insiders, covering Dom Smith, Clint Frazier, Jake Reed, Jason Garcia, and more.

The biggest news in Phoenix food has been the arrival of the Noble Bread Company, crafted artisan loaves of classic European breads, so good that every restaurant I tried all week that served bread bought it from Noble. (One such restaurant: the estimable FnB, still outstanding and one of the best bets in town if you want to eat a lot of vegetables and still feel like you had a real meal.) Noble now has a second spot, the Noble Eatery on McDowell, where the menu changes daily and includes two or three sandwiches, a flatbread option, and a salad. I went with their open-faced tuna salad sandwich, made with olive oil rather than mayo and including chickpeas and potatoes, served on a dark, crusty peasant loaf; with three slices and a huge portion of the tuna it was more than a meal for me, closer to two. The bread is just to die for – this ranks among the best breads I’ve ever tasted, with the texture expert bread bakers describe as “creamy” inside a crackling crust.

nocawich reopened in a new location in Tempe on College Avenue, right in the heart of ASU’s campus, this summer, with their justifiably renowned fried chicken sandwich still on the menu, as well as a giant patty melt served on good rye sandwich bread and triple-fried French fries that are out of another world entirely. On this trip I tried their breakfast, getting an oversized egg and chorizo sandwich with arugula, avocado, tomato, mayo (not much), and cheese on a sesame bagel from H&H in New York City. Everything Elliott creates there is amazing, and if I wasn’t behaving myself a little bit this week I would have grabbed one of the incredible pastries available – he has a pastry chef fly in from Portland to make them weekly. Other than nocawich I stuck to morning favorites on this trip: crêpe bar, the Hillside Spot, Matt’s Big Breakfast, Cartel Coffee Lab, and Giant Coffee.

My frequent dining partner-in-crime Nick Piecoro introduced me to a new taco/burger place in Arcadia called the Stand, where the menu is very simple: a burger, three types of tacos, hand-cut fries, and shakes. I tried all three tacos, for research purposes of course, and would recommend the short rib and chicken tacos but not the vegetable taco, which couldn’t hold the fillings in and was decidedly flat in flavor, with a lot in it (mostly quinoa and some sort of winter squash) but nothing that really popped in flavor. It needed something with umami to bring it together.

Speaking of that fifth taste, Umami in Tempe (very close to nocawich, at 7th and Mill) does ramen, and a few other things, but mostly ramen, customizable to order with five choices of broths and about a dozen or so toppings or add-ons, including chicken, roast pork, and pork belly. I went with the pork and chicken bone broth, roast pork, and a soft-cooked egg, all of which came out perfectly – the broth itself was a little salty but full of body and depth of flavor. They could probably stand to use better noodles, though; these tasted like they came right out of the package, even though more hip ramen joints in other towns have gone with fresh ramen noodles instead. The ramen, a small seaweed salad, and an iced tea ran about $13 before tip, and it was plenty of food for one.

La Piazza al Forno isn’t new – it’s been open since around the time I first moved to Arizona in 2010 – but its location in downtown Glendale, next to Cuff (one of my favorite spots on the west side), isn’t that convenient to any of the ballparks, so I hadn’t tried it till this week. Their specialty is Neapolitan-style pizzas, and they have the VPN certification that is supposed to go only to places that correctly follow the standards of Neapolitan pizza … although in my experience the VPN designation means virtually practically nothing. La Piazza’s pizzas are thin and they use top-quality ingredients, including San Marzano tomatoes and the option of using mozzarella di bufala, but the pies’ centers aren’t wet as they should be in Neapolitan pizza, and they put the basil on before baking the pizzas so it comes out very dark and loses its bright, faintly sweet flavor. Still, if you’re looking for pizza on the west side of Phoenix it’s this and Grimaldi’s and nothing else I’d recommend.

My one real disaster meal of the week was at a new modern Italian restaurant in Old Town called Evo, where the focus is on handmade pastas but not on service or even execution. The concepts for the dishes are sound, but neither item I ordered was well-constructed, and one of them came out wrong (spinach, which I can’t eat, instead of the promised escarole, an essential ingredient in the dish). The white-bean hummus with the roasted cauliflower was too thin and coarse, and didn’t add anything to the cauliflower itself, which was beautifully caramelized. The house-made orecchiette in the main course were shaped incorrectly – more like thimbles, so that the individual pieces couldn’t pick up any portions of the sauce or the other items in the dish. Even the fennel sausage in the dish was off, cut into inch-long rectangular blocks rather than broken up into smaller pieces when cooked. My meal also took forever; I don’t think my main course was fired until I reminded my server about it, a half hour after I ordered, despite the fact that the restaurant was almost empty. I would guess that EVO will be gone before I get back in March given the food and the rent at that location.

Still good: FnB, especially their socca with pickled butternut squash and cultured butter, and their salad of persimmons, pecans, pomegranates, and shaved Parmesan with mixed greens; and Welcome Chicken and Donuts, although I think the next time I go there I’ll try the chicken without any sauce at all. I tried a chocolate-glazed donut with pistachios and what I think were rose petal-flavored marshmallows; it was good but the donut tasted a little past its peak. Crêpe Bar in Tempe (Elliott and Rural) appears to be expanding, and they still bring out all kinds of little bites that the kitchen has thrown together. I can also verify that Citizen Public House still makes a mean negroni. The Revival in Tempe has closed; however, former executive chef Kelly Fletcher is now at Phoenix landmark El Chorro as chef de cuisine.

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→ March 23, 2015
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Arizona spring training dining guide, 2015 edition.

I have lots of dish posts on food in the Valley, searchable via the search box above or by location tags like Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Mesa. This is now my fourth edition of the dining guide, and my second since moving back to the east coast last summer; I’ve done my best to keep up with restaurant news from out there, but I’m aware I’m likely falling behind. Nothing’s new in the structure and I’ve left the list of places in downtown Phoenix that aren’t close to any ballpark at the end. A lot of the text is unchanged from last year, so don’t be shocked if it seems familiar.

Scottsdale/Old Town (San Francisco):

* Virtu Honest Craft: Award-winning, including a James Beard nomination for best new restaurant in the country, with reason, as this might be the best restaurant in all of Arizona. Virtu is only a 12-minute walk from Scottsdale Stadium and offers inventive, attractive, and most importantly delicious food that plays with textures and flavors in unexpected ways. I went there in October and wrote up the meal in depth.

* Citizen Public House: This was my birthday dinner spot each of the last two years we were out there, if that gives you some sense of how much I liked it. I love the pork belly pastrami starter with rye spaetzle, shredded brussels sprouts, and mustard vinaigrette. I love the short ribs with a dark cherry glaze. I loved the seared scallops on grits. I loved the bacon-fat popcorn and the chicken-and-waffles starter. The only thing I didn’t love was, surprisingly, the duck breast, which was so rare that I couldn’t cut it. Great beer selection as well as well as the best negroni I’ve ever had.

* FnB/Cafe Baratin: One restaurant with two concepts, a minimalist lunch, where the menu comprises just six items (one salad, one sandwich, one starter, one veg, one potted/pickled item, and one dessert), with more open-ended haute cuisine at dinner. They appear to have retired the Baratin name and merged the two concepts into one space and under one name, FnB. I’ve had lunch and dinner here and never been disappointed at all.

* Pig and Pickle: Just outside of Old Town, and only open since November, they do things with pig and with pickles, like the braised pork belly, yam puree, and brussels sprouts slaw starter that was pretty special, as well as a great selection of cocktails.

* Barrio Queen: A spinoff of Barrio Cafe (reviewed below), Barrio Queen is all about the mini tacos, which you order on a piece of paper like you’d get at a sushi place. They range from about $2.50 to $6 apiece and everything I tried was excellent, especially the same cochinita pibil that is a signature dish at the original Cafe.

* Culinary Dropout: A gastropub of sorts, located right near Old Town across from the Fashion Square mall. Definitely a good place to go with pickier eaters, since the menu is broad and most of it is easily recognizable. The chicken truffle hash and the turkey pastrami are both very good.

* Arcadia Farms: Farm-to-table breakfast dishes and sandwiches. Not cheap, but you are paying for quality and for a philosophy of food. I have been there twice and service, while friendly, was leisurely both times.

* Grimaldi’s: Local chain, related to the Brooklyn establishment of the same name. Very good (grade 55) thin-crust, coal-fired pizzas, including nut-free pesto, and similarly solid salads in generous portions. Not terribly cost-effective for one person for dinner, although they’ve finally introduced a more affordable lunch menu.

* Distrito: Inside the Saguaro hotel is this cool, upscale Mexican place, an offshoot of the restaurant of the same name in Philadelphia, serving mostly small plates at a slightly high price point but with very high-quality ingredients, including the best huitlacoche dish I’ve had, and an excellent questo fundido with duck barbacoa. I also liked their Sunday brunch … except for the coffee, which was like molten lead. I haven’t been here since the makeover, however.

* Los Sombreros: A bit of a drive south of Old Town into the only part of Scottsdale that you might call “sketchy,” Los Sombreros does high-end authentic Mexican at Scottsdale-ish prices but with large portions and very high quality.

* Defalco’s Italian Market is a great spot to grab an authentic Italian (specifically New York-Italian) sandwich while you’re on your way to a game anywhere in Scottsdale. I prefer it to Andreoli’s, which offers a similar menu and is much closer to Salt River Fields.

* I should mention Franco’s Italian Caffe, right on Scottsdale Road, as it’s very highly regarded by locals, but I was very disappointed. Authentic Italian cuisine is light, focused on simple recipes with big flavors but rarely heavy, while Franco’s menu skews toward what I think of as New York-Italian cuisine, with heavier dishes including lots of heavy cream and salt. It’s not my thing, but I won’t judge you if it’s yours. I also tried The Upton, a new small-plates-and-cocktails kind of place just off Scottsdale road south of Camelback, but their execution was very uneven (e.g., the fried oysters’ batter was inedibly salty) and the service was just kind of weird.

Scottsdale central/north (Arizona/Colorado):

* Soi4: upscale Thai and Thai-fusion, very close to the park. Owned by the same family that runs Soi4 in Oakland. Full review of my first visit. I’ve gotten pad see ew as a takeout item from here a few times and it was always excellent, full of that crunchy bitter brassica (similar to rapini), and smoking hot.

* Il Bosco: Wood-fired pizzas, cooked around 750 degrees, at a nice midpoint between the ultra-thin almost cracker-like Italian style and the slightly doughier New York style I grew up eating. Their salads are also outstanding and they source a lot of ingredients locally, including olives and EVOO from the Queen Creek Olive Mill. I’ve met the owner and talked to him several times, and he was kind enough to give my daughter a little tour behind the counter and let her pour her own water from their filtration machine, which she loved.

* ‘Pomo Pizzeria: This location is in the same shopping center as Soi4, with others in downtown Phoenix and out in Gilbert. Authentic, Neapolitan-style pizza, not as good as Bianco, but in the running for the second-best pizza in Arizona along with cibo. Toppings include a lot of salty cured meats designed (I assume) to keep you drinking … not that there’s anything wrong with that. Full review.

* True Food Kitchen: I’ve been to a TFK in Newport Beach and enjoyed the menu’s emphasis on fresh produce, not always healthful per se but more like healthful twists on familiar dishes. There are two in the Valley now, one downtown, and one located at the heart of a shopping center on the east side of Scottsdale Road, just north of Greenway and across from the Kierland mall. The same complex includes Tanzy, a Mediterranean (mostly regional Italian) restaurant and cocktail bar that gets strong reviews for its lengthy menu of salads, sandwiches, and pricier dinner entrees, although I just don’t think it’s good value for the cost.

* Press: In that same shopping center is a small coffee shop where they roast their own beans and will make you a cup of coffee using your method of choice (vacuum, French press, pour-over), as well as the usual run of espresso-based options. There’s apparently also a location at Sky Harbor in Terminal 4 by the B gates (USAirways), although I haven’t visited that one.

* Butterfields: The lines are crazy on the weekends, but if you like a basic diner and want good pancakes or waffles this is one of the better options in the Valley.

* Sweet Republic: I actually find this place to be a little overrated, but if you prefer traditional New York ice cream to gelato or custard, then it’s a good bet, and not far north of the park, just east of the 101 on Shea.

* Andreoli’s Italian Market is a decent spot for New York-Italian sandwiches, although I prefer Defalco’s in south Scottsdale.

* Perk Eatery: West of Scottsdale road and the Kierland mall, on Greenway, probably stretching the definition of what’s near Salt River Fields, but Phoenix doesn’t have a ton of good breakfast spots and this is one of the few. It’s a diner by another name, open for breakfast and lunch, with a slow-roasted pork option along with the regular array of breakfast meats, and rosemary potatoes that are a must with any egg dish.

Tempe (Angels):

* Hillside Spot, Ahwatukee (Phoenix). My favorite place to eat in the Valley, right off I-10 at the corner of Warner and 48th. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I recommend the pulled pork sandwich, the chilaquiles, the grilled corn appetizer, the house-cut French fries, the pancakes (best in Arizona), and the coffee from Cartel Coffee Lab. The Spot sources as much as they possibly can from local growers or providers, even providing four local beers on tap, and you can get out for under $15 including tax and tip. I’ve written about it more than once; here’s one of my posts, which talks about that pork sandwich. They’ve also added an evening menu called “Cocina 10,” including (on some nights) a really great take on fried fish tacos. For breakfast and lunch they’re outstanding, but I have found dinner service to be a little less consistent – but still usually great.

* Crepe Bar: Amazing savory and sweet crepes, and expertly pulled espresso shots using beans from heart coffee roasters, one of the best micro-roasters I’ve come across. They use a lot of local ingredients, including produce from Agritopia Farms (which also hosts Joe’s Farm Grill in Gilbert, seen on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Douche), and bake their own brioche if you’re not in the mood for a regular or buckwheat crepe.

* Cornish Pasty Company: Just what the name says – large, hearty Cornish pasties with dozens of traditional and non-traditional filling options. I’ve eaten one for lunch and then skipped dinner. Second location in Mesa isn’t too far from the Cubs’ and A’s parks and is bigger with more parking.

* Four Peaks Brewery: One of our best local microbreweries with surprisingly solid food as well. You’ll see their beers all over the place, but the restaurant is absolutely worth hitting. Parking is very difficult on Friday through Sunday nights, though.

* Cartel Coffee Lab: Among the best coffee roasters in the Valley, and now in an expanded place that doesn’t feel so much like a fly-by-night operation. They’re also in the C wing of Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor.

* I didn’t get to try Umami, the new ramen place near ASU, but I’ve read nothing but great things.

* A tentative recommendation: I went to The Revival in October, before the menu changed to modern Mexican and Chef Kelly Fletcher departed, so while everything I had was excellent I have no idea if it measures up. UPDATE: Several of you weighed in to say that it’s still top-notch despite the switch.

Mesa (Cubs):

Most of the places I suggested for Tempe are also quite close to here, including Crepe Bar, Cartel, and the Revival.

* The best smoked brisket I’ve ever had outside of Franklin BBQ in Austin is at Little Miss BBQ on University Avenue in Tempe, right near the airport. If you’ve been to Franklin or read about it, you know what to expect: Get in line by 10:30 or so if you want to eat before 1 pm; they start serving at 11 and they stop when they sell out of meat; and don’t expect a lot of variety. The menu is short but amazing, with all meats smoked over oak and pecan. The brisket is amazing, the sausage is excellent, but everything’s good, and it’s a great place to go with a group because you can only order some items – like the occasionally available smoked lamb neck – by the pound.

* Urban Picnic: In downtown Mesa, south and slightly west of the ballpark, and my favorite spot near the Cubs’ facility. They do a small selection of sandwiches on some of the best crunchy French bread you’ll find out this way, with the Caprese sandwich (fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil) and the roast beef with horseradish my two favorites. I will say that while the lavender lemonade might sound intriguing, it tastes like perfume.

* Republica Empanada offers outstanding empanadas, small plates, a few entrees, and beer. I loved everything I tried here but particularly recommend a side of maduros.

* Chou’s Kitchen: Just over the line in Chandler, at the intersection of Alma School (north-south) and Ray (east-west), this hole-in-the-wall place does dongbei cai, the cuisine of northeastern China – what we used to call Manchuria – which is heavy on dumplings, mostly fried and generally delicious, with large portions designed for sharing and vinegar on the table for dipping. I also love their lao hu cai or “tiger salad,” a vinegary mix of shredded vegetables, scallions, cilantro, jalapenos, and peanuts.

* Pros Ranch Market: A Mexican/Latin American grocery store south of the ballpark (at Stapley and Southern) with a large quick-service department offering some of the best burritos (including, hands-down, the best carnitas) I’ve had in Arizona. The enchiladas are solid, my daughter loves their quesadillas, they make great aguas frescas in eight to twelve flavors, and there’s an extensive selection of Mexican pastries. You can stuff yourself here for under $10.

* Thai Spices: In a strip mall of Asian restaurants, Thai Spices is among the best Thai places I’ve found around here, just doing a great job with the basics of Thai (or perhaps Americanized Thai) cuisine. I really loved their soups, both tom yum (clear, sour/spicy soup with lemongrass) and tom ka (sweeter, with coconut milk, and also lemongrass), as well as the green curry.

* Rancho de Tia Rosa: A bit east of the ballpark, Tia Rosa has a large, upscale yet family-friendly Mexican restaurant with a smaller take-out taqueria located on-site as well. I wouldn’t call it high-end, but it’s expensive relative to the typical crappy chain faux-Mex restaurants that seem to be everywhere out here (Macayo’s, Arriba, Garcia’s … avoid all of those).

* On my to-do list: Beaver Choice, a Swedish-Polish comfort food joint that, despite the comical name (“The turkey? Thanks, I just had it stuffed”) gets great reviews and even offers a gluten-free menu. Schnitzels, pierogis, gravlax … you’re speaking my language.

Maryvale (Milwaukee):

* Be careful when you go to a game here, as you might accidentally have to pick up the remainder of the Brewers’ lease.

* I did get a text from a scout last night suggesting Ta’Carbon, which isn’t too far from Maryvale and specializes in carne asada. So lock your doors and try it.

Goodyear (Cincinnati/Cleveland):

* Ground Control. In the Avondale/Litchfield Park area, but kind of between Goodyear and Glendale, this coffee-shop has upgraded its menu so it’s now a craft-beer paradise and upscale sandwich shop and coffee bar and even gelateria. I’ve been twice; the service can be a little spacey but the food is very good and I even liked the coffee. They do breakfast as well. This place should be so much more popular than it is, given the paucity of quality non-chain options in the area.

* Raul and Theresa’s: Very good, authentic, reasonably priced Mexican food, really fresh, always made to order. The guacamole is outstanding. It’s south of the stadium and doesn’t look like much on the outside, but I would call it a can’t-miss spot if you’re going to a Cincinnati or Cleveland game, since there isn’t much else out here that isn’t a bad chain.

Glendale (Dodgers/White Sox):

* If you’re headed here or even to Goodyear, swing by Tortas Paquime in Avondale. They do traditional Mexican sandwiches, with the torta ahogada – literally a “drowned” sandwich – covered in a slightly spicy red sauce, although that was a little over-the-top heavy for me. Solid aguas frescas here as well.

* For finer dining and good cocktails, try Cuff right in downtown Glendale, which does very unpretentious but fresh, high-quality food, including burgers, sandwiches, and salads that use much better inputs than most places that try that sort of menu. I’m underselling it a bit – it’s basic food, but done exceedingly well.

* You might also try Siam Thai, which is in Glendale on Northern but is at least 15 minutes away from the park, heading east. It is, however, superlative Thai food, perhaps the highest-rated Thai place in the Valley.

* I’ve never been to La Piazza Al Forno, which offers thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas that are reportedly good but not as good as Bianco’s or Cibo’s, just because the timing’s never worked out and there’s often a wait out front.

Peoria:

* It’s a wasteland of chains out here; the best options I know are both very good local chains, Grimaldi’s and Blu Burger. The latter is a family favorite of ours, since there’s something for the picky eaters of the family (hint: not me), and there’s a Blu Burger very close to our house; they offer several kinds of burgers with an impressive list of build-your-own options. My daughter loves their grilled cheese and zucchini fries.

Surprise:

* I’ve got one good rec out this way, the new-ish Vietnamese place Saigon Kitchen up on Bell Road just north of the ballpark. There’s good Vietnamese food to be had out here if you work to find it, and this is the best, especially in presentation – the menu is familiar, the food is a little brighter and fresher, and the place is far more welcoming. I’ve yet to try Amuse Bouche, probably the best-reviewed restaurant in Surprise, which does a more casual sandwich/panini menu at lunch before shifting to fine dining for dinner.

Away from the parks: Downtown Phoenix and Camelback East

These places are no longer near any ballpark other than Phoenix Muni, which now houses Arizona State but no spring training teams.

* Pizzeria Bianco: Most convenient to Chase Field. Best pizza I have ever had in the United States. No reservations, closed Sunday-Monday, waits for dinner can run to four hours, but they’re now open for lunch and if you get there before twelve the wait usually isn’t too bad. Parking is validated at the Science Museum garage. There’s now a second, larger location just off route 51 in the Town and Country shopping center, serving a few pasta items as well as the signature pizzas.

* Welcome Chicken and Donuts: Located in a former KFC location, this spinoff of the Welcome Diner serves “Asian” fried chicken, lots of donuts, and not a whole lot else. You can get one of three sauces on the chicken; I don’t recommend the Vietnamese option unless you really love fish sauce. I thought the chicken was plus and the donuts were Hall of Fame-worthy.

* Barrio Cafe: About 15 minutes west of Phoenix Muni via the 202/51. Best high-end Mexican food I’ve had out here, edging out Los Sombreros in Scottsdale. Table-side guacamole is very gimmicky (and, per Rick Bayless, suboptimal for flavor development), but the ingredients, including pomegranate arils, are very fresh. Great cochinita pibil too. There’s now a location at Sky Harbor’s Terminal 4, past security near the D gates.

* The Grind: The best burger I’ve had out here, far superior to the nearby Delux, which is overrated for reasons I don’t quite fathom. (Maybe people just love getting their fries in miniature shopping carts.) The Grind cooks its burgers in a 1000-degree coal oven, so you get an impressive crust on the exterior of the burger even if it’s just rare inside. Their macaroni and cheese got very high marks from my daughter, a fairly tough critic. They have photos of local dignitaries on the wall, including Jan Brewer and Mark Grace, which might cause you to lose your appetite.

* Chelsea’s Kitchen: I’ve only been to the airport location, in the center of Terminal 4 before security, where the food was excellent but the service a little confused. The short rib taco plate would feed two adults – that has to be at least ¾ of a pound of meat. Their kale-quinoa salad sounds disgustingly healthy, but is delicious despite that. Both this and The Grind (and North Fattoria, an Italian restaurant from the Culinary Dropout people) are near Camelback and 40th, about 6 miles/13 minutes west of Scottsdale Stadium.

* crudo: There isn’t much high-end cuisine in Phoenix – I think that’s our one real deficiency – but Chef Cullen Campbell does a great job of filling that void here with a simple menu that has four parts: crudo dishes, raw fish Italian-style, emphasis on tuna; fresh mozzarella dishes, including the ever-popular burrata; small pasta dishes, like last fall’s wonderful squash dumplings with pork belly ragout; and larger entrees, with four to five items in each sections. The desserts, like so many in the Valley, are from Tracy Dempsey, the premier pastry chef in the area. Like the previous two spots, it’s about 12-13 minutes west of the Giants’ ballpark. This is now my go-to rec when someone wants a splurge meal in Phoenix or wants more adventurous cuisine.

* Zinburger: Not the top burger around here but a damn good one, especially the namesake option (red zinfandel-braised onions, Manchego, mayo), along with strong hand-cut fries and above-average milkshakes. Located in a shopping center across the street from the Ritz. Try the salted caramel shake if you go. There are also two locations in Tucson, and two in New Jersey that are licensed but independently owned and operated.

* cibo: Maybe the second-best pizzas in town, with more options than Bianco offers, along with a broad menu of phenomenal salads and antipasti, including cured meats, roasted vegetables, and (when available) a superb burrata.

* Pane Bianco: Sandwiches from the Bianco mini-empire, just a few options, served on focaccia made with the same dough used to make the pizzas at Pizzeria Bianco. My one experience here was disappointing, mostly due to the bread being a little dry, but the cult following here is tremendous and I may have just caught them on a bad day.

* Otro Cafe: The chef behind Gallo Blanco (which is now closed) has a new place, with a very simple menu – a few taco items, a few tortas with the same meats you’ll find on the taco menu, a few Mexican street-food starters, and a full bar. There’s a bit more focus on local fare here, and the guacamole is my favorite in the Valley.

* Matt’s Big Breakfast and Giant Coffee. Owned by the same guy, located a few blocks apart, but not otherwise connected as Matt’s doesn’t use Giant’s coffee. Matt’s is the best pure-breakfast place in the Valley, and one major reason is that they use the black-pepper bacon from Queen Creek’s The Pork Shop. Everything here is good, but my veteran move was breakfast at Matt’s with espresso afterwards at Giant. (Matt’s uses ROC, from Cave Creek, a popular roaster with Valley restaurants but nowhere near Giant’s quality.) Giant uses direct-trade beans for its espresso and usually has three or four single-origin options for pour-overs.

* Federal Pizza. Federal’s was the best Brussels sprout pizza I’d ever tried until I found Motorino in NYC, and even then it was close. I’ve tried a few of their pizzas and their roasted vegetable board, loving everything, and their crust is a great compromise for folks who want more chew and less of the cracker-thin crust of a place like Bianco.

* The Gladly. The second location from the folks behind Citizen Public House, the Gladly’s location and menu are built more around the alcohol – I think the atmosphere they’re going for is cocktail party, or upscale happy-hour, with smart food to go with the booze. I had a mixed experience in my one meal there, loving the chicken-liver pate starter but finding less success with the duck ramen (which I’m told is a dish they frequently tweak). Given their track record at CPH, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

* Blue Hound. Another great cocktail bar that happens to offer good food, mostly sandwiches and other items you’d expect at a quality bar, although I’ve only been here for drinks and bar snacks (like the tater tots, which I highly recommend).

* Frost Gelato. Located at the Biltmore, right by Zinburger, Frost has the best gelato or ice cream anywhere in Phoenix. The sea salt caramel is their top seller; I suggest you pair it with the dark chocolate. They also have locations in Gilbert and Tucson.

* nocawich. Their downtown restaurant is closed, but there’s still a nocawich at the Phoenix Airport in Terminal 4, where you can get the Dolly, a fried chicken sandwich that is so good I’ve scheduled layovers at this airport just to eat it. (I’ve done the same to get coffee at Cartel, too.) A new location is coming in Tempe near ASU as well.

Other places that I’ve read or heard great things about, but haven’t tried yet, all in Phoenix or Scottsdale unless otherwise noted: Bink’s Midtown (high-end/experimental cuisine), O.H.S.O. Eatery and nanoBrewery, El Chullo (Peruvian food in downtown Phoenix), Carolina’s, Nobuo at Teeter House, Atlas Bistro (tried to eat at the latter two on my latest trip but both were closed those nights).

Feel free to offer your own suggestions for places I haven’t listed or tried in the comments below. I believe everything I’ve listed here is still open, but if you know that one of these restaurants has shut its doors, again, please let me know.

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→ October 15, 2014
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Arizona eats, October 2014.

I spent six nights in Arizona last week to scout this year’s crop of prospects in the Arizona Fall League, and wrote two long posts on what I saw, one focusing primarily on pitchers and a longer one mostly on position players.

The best new restaurant of the trip was Little Miss BBQ, a tiny spot on University Ave in Tempe, just south of the airport, that specializes in central Texas Q – meaning primarily brisket and sausage, although they do pulled pork as well. The brisket was among the best I’ve ever had, certainly the best I’ve had anywhere west of Texas, rivaling Florida’s 4 Rivers for the best I’ve had outside of Texas itself. I asked for fatty (or moist) brisket rather than lean, my strong preference because you get that fat that just melts in your mouth and provides its own sauce for the meat – and the brisket didn’t need any other sauce than that. Little Miss smokes over pecan and oak, so you get a clear presence of smoke in the meat without the dominance of a wood like hickory (better for pork, IMO), and you get to taste the beef itself and the rub, salty and peppery but not so assertive that it took over each bite. The sausage was above-average but not as spicy as I expected or would have liked. For sides, they offer jalapeno cheese grits and baked beans, but I went with the lighter sides, potato salad and cole slaw, rather than add two heavy items to the copious quantity of cow on the plate. Both were excellent because they were clearly homemade and weren’t doused in mayo, so you could particularly taste the cabbage in the slaw. On a rainy morning at 11:30 am, the line was about 30 people deep and took me 20-25 minutes to get to the counter, although the guy doing the slicing (I think it was the pitmaster) handed out a few free bites of the brisket and sausage to keep everyone happy. It’s just a stone’s throw from the Angels’ stadium and not even ten minutes from the Cubs’ new place.

Chef Kelly Fletcher was among the most highly-regarded local chefs in the Valley while at Tempe’s House of Cards, but the high price point kept me from going there while I lived in the area and Fletcher ended up leaving earlier this year to start his own place. The Revival, also located in Tempe, has a more casual feel and I think a better mix of menu options at the high- and low-ends. The roasted pork belly with Asian caramel, mirin poached potatoes, and scallions starter ($7) was ridiculously good from all angles – literally, as the dish was a gorgeous panoply of colors and textures, and the pork belly itself had tremendous balance of textures (but not too tough, which I’ve had in some pork belly dishes when the meaty layers are overcooked) and sweet/sour/salty levels. The duck confit on roasted corn polenta main ($21) with house-made date-maple syrup, bitter greens, and candied fresnos was plus but not quite a home run; the duck meat didn’t pull right off the bone as it usually does when prepared this way, and the candied fresnos were way so fiery I had to avoid them. The polenta used a coarse grind of yellow corn, so even with the long cooking times required for the dish it had some tooth to it, while the roasted corn kernels amped up the sweetness (thanks to caramelization) while adding a smoky component. The date-maple syrup was a natural pairing with the duck as well, although I may be biased (!) as I could drink real maple syrup right out of the bottle.

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Glazed pork belly starter from the Revival in Tempe AZ.

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Cuff is a rarity – a smart, high-end restaurant located in the west Valley, where chain restaurants abound. It’s in downtown Glendale, where it looks like there’s a quiet revitalization happening, great news if you head to Arizona to see any of the teams playing in the four stadiums on that side of town. (It’s about 15-20 minutes from Camelback Ranch because of all of the traffic lights you’ll have to pass.) Cuff just opened a few weeks ago and I was there on the fifth night since they began dinner service, so the strong execution across the board was very promising – you’d think they’d still be working some kinks out of their system. The menu is straightforward – a few salads and starters, a good cross-section of sandwich options to appeal to almost every eater, and a few mains that were quite generously priced.

The mixed greens salad ($7) was the ideal starter, especially since a few days of gorging on meat left me craving something plant-based. The mesclun mix (very fresh, nothing wilting or starting to spoil, a common problem in salads now) comes with crumbled fresh goat cheese, candied pecans, dried cranberries, and a delicate peach-shallot vinaigrette; that mix of leaves is slightly bitter, so three sweet elements, three tart ones, and two salty ones bring the balance the salad needs so that you don’t get that feeling that you’re chewing on lawn cuttings. The Amalfi-style lemon chicken, one of their main course options (at just $11!) was above-average but a little tricky to eat, served in a deep soup bowl with broth that made cutting the two pieces of chicken (an airline cut and a thigh) difficult. The lemon parmesan broth was fantastic, with a perfect balance of acidity, salt, and the umami of the cheese, providing flavor to the chicken itself (especially chicken breast, which has no flavor of its own no matter how it’s cooked) and to the baby broccoli in the bowl. The grilled ciabatta bread triangles are clearly there to spare you the indignity of tipping the bowl to your mouth to drink the broth, but I wouldn’t judge you if you did. Cuff also has a full bar including a variety of specialty cocktails.

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Amalfi-style lemon chicken at the brand-new Cuff in downtown Glendale.

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Sumo Maya is a new Scottsdale hot spot that has taken the trendy “Asian tacos” theme and applied it to the standard upscale drinking spot popular in that town. I liked the food, but hated the vibe. Their happy hour specials are a steal – four tacos for $7, practically enough for a whole meal and a good way to sample a bunch of the menu options. Of the four different ones I tried, including pork, chicken, fried fish, and vegetarian, the last one was the best, filled with small wild mushrooms and tossed with a sweet soy sauce and micro greens. The flavors on the chicken taco were outstanding, including avocado and a chile-guajillo salsa, but I think the chicken had been cooked earlier and was simply reheated for service. I also tried the kimchi fried rice, which was solid but not much different from fried rice you’d get at a very good Chinese restaurant. I just couldn’t see going back there to eat when so much of the crowd was there to drink and/or be seen.

One recommendation I didn’t get to was the new Arcadia restaurant Nook, only because it wasn’t that close to any of my destinations, but that’s on the to-do list for spring.

I never went to the Jamaican rum bar Breadfruit while living in Phoenix, but that was a pretty big mistake on my part given my affinity for the demon spirit. I adored their rum old fashioned, with Appleton Extra 12 year as its base, and liked their Hemingway’s Daiquiri, with Matusalem Platino (a triple-distilled, highly refined Dominican white rum) as its base, mixed with grapefruit and lime juices and demarara sugar, although the latter disguised the flavor of the rum too much. Nick Piecoro dragged me there – not that it required much convincing when I heard “rum bar” – after I’d dragged him to Citizen Public House for a postgame drink, only to discover they’re doing a late-night menu (after 11 pm) for “Porktoberfest,” including their bacon-fat popcorn and a twist on Chinese steamed pork buns (baozi) that paired well with their signature negroni and basically everything else we drank.

I went back to several favorites for breakfast – the Hillside Spot, Crepe Bar, Matt’s Big Breakfast, Giant Coffee, and Cartel Coffee Lab, all of which were just as I left them: good and busy. Crepe Bar has expanded its menu slightly, which might have been my only complaint about it before, and they’re still offering lots of little freebies along the way, like a tiny cup of their housemade granola, a dark chocolate and hazelnut amuse with your coffee (from heart roasters in Portland, Oregon), or a rose-water marshmallow and dark chocolate twist on s’mores after your meal. (Great idea, but the marshmallow left a perfume flavor in my mouth that I couldn’t get out for hours.) Saigon Kitchen in Surprise didn’t live up to my recollections, unfortunately, but Pig & Pickle in Scottsdale exceeded them, with a bigger menu that has more small plates and starters, including more vegetable-based options so your meal can have a better balance of pork and not-pork.

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→ March 24, 2014
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Arizona eats, March 2014 edition.

My last spring training dispatch went up Monday morning, and I’m reposting the link to my review of the awful Downton Abbey boardgame in case folks missed it.

I tried a handful of new (to me) restaurants on my two-week trip to Arizona, but was a little limited in choices because I had the family with me and we chose to stay further out of town to be closer to friends near where we used to live (and to save the company a little money too). I did get to a few spots I’d been dying to try, and have a few new recommendations for those of you still out there.

Isabel’s Amor is a brand-new authentic Mexican restaurant in western Gilbert, on the northeast corner of Williams Field and Val Vista, and it’s spectacular, offering what I interpreted as Mexican comfort food with very fresh ingredients. We went with two starters, starting with their salsa trio, featuring a fresh vegetable salsa, a tomatillo-avocado pureed salsa, and a chunkier mango-jalapeño salsa; all three were good, none as spicy as the thin red salsa that came gratis, with the mango salsa my personal favorite for the perfect sweet-sour-spice balance and brightness of the mango flavor. Their Mexican street corn (elotes) was outstanding, roasted corn kernels served with cotija cheese, chili powder, cilantro, and a dollop of mayonnaise on top; you’re supposed to stir it all together to form the sauce, which I found produced a better result than the standard version where it’s mixed in the kitchen and can end up very watery by the time it reaches the table. For the entrees, my wife ordered the chili verde, made with beef braised in a dark green chile sauce, mildly spicy, a dish my wife compared favorably (and accurately) to pot roast, Mexican-style. I ordered the pescado de la parrilla, a fillet of corvina drum (fish) heavily marinated in lime juice and tequila and then grilled, served with that same mango-jalapeño salsa, along with sides of rice and your choice of beans. The fish tasted of lime and tequila more than anything, and had the slightly translucent look of fish that has been marinated for a long time before cooking, so the flavors were amazing but the texture wasn’t quite up to the same level. I was very impressed by the black beans, which were al dente rather than the mush I’m used to getting even at decent Mexican restaurants, and the fresh flour tortillas are incredible – someone’s grandmother is clearly making these by hand every morning, probably with lard given how good they taste. I was shocked to find out that the family behind Isabel’s is also reponsible for Someburros, one of the many chains of mediocre Mexican food that pollute the valley, but it appears that someone grew a culinary conscience and decided to offer the public a higher-quality product.

The Welcome Diner is a hipster spot – there’s no other way to describe it, that’s not even an insult, it just is. There are a couple of seats inside at a counter but most of the seating is outside at picnic tables, and the menu is short, mostly burgers and fried-chicken-and-biscuit options. The fried chicken on a biscuit is a bit over the top, really, even the fairly simple option I got – local honey, mustard, and bread and butter pickles, piled on a huge chunk of fried chicken breast, served on a very rich biscuit that couldn’t hold together when I tried to cut the whole thing like a sandwich. The components were all good, but eaten together were too rich and very heavy. My wife ordered a burger well-done – I’ve told her that this is a cardinal sin, but she won’t listen – and received something short of medium. The fries were excellent, though, clearly just cut and fried to order. Remember to wear your vintage clothes, though.

Republica Empanada in downtown Mesa was the other great new find of the trip, serving a number of perfectly-fried hot pockets pastries filled with a variety of meats, traditional and otherwise. I stuck with the traditional options, one with pernil (slow-roasted pork shoulder) and one with chicken and vegetables. Both came with a green dipping sauce that I believe contained tomatillos, cilantro, and a little chili pepper. They also make wonderful maduros, the fried sweet plantains that are among my favorite foods on the planet, serving eight large pieces for just $5. The mere fact that the empanadas are fried and not greasy makes them above-average, and the fact that they had a chicken offering that wasn’t dry or bland pushes them even higher. Two of them and the maduros was a small lunch; three might have been a little too much for me.

I didn’t get to try noca, one of the best-reviewed restaurants in Phoenix proper, but did swing by to grab lunch at nocawich, where they offer a handful of artisan sandwiches every day, including the Dolly, a giant fried-chicken sandwich (thicker than a cutlet but still on the thin side) with house-made pickles and a very flavorful, tangy/creamy cabbage slaw. I shouldn’t have eaten the whole thing – it was at least a portion and a half for me – but I did anyway because it was way too good to let one bite go to waste. I’d really like to get to noca for dinner to try the house-made pastas, but it’s the location that gets me – we didn’t live close, we never stay close when we’re visiting, and it’s not really near any ballparks.

Defalco’s was one of two Italian markets I wanted to try in Scottsdale – the other, Andreoli’s, was a little more out of my way but I understand is very good – and it’s very convenient to Old Town, further south on Scottsdale Road, near Los Sombreros. Defalco’s offers a pretty long list of sandwiches, mostly traditional New York-Italian options. I’ll pretty much always choose a sandwich with fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, and roasted red peppers on it; Defalco’s has something like a half a dozen bread choices, and while the focaccia was really good (not too greasy on top), it couldn’t exactly contain what was in the sandwich. Service is a little strange, like they’re doing you a favor, although I wouldn’t anyone was rude, just not the norm for Arizona where, if anything, you get people who seem a little too happy to help.

Taco Haus, the new spinoff of Scottsdale’s Brat Haus, is a little more remote from Salt River Fields than I’d realized, all the way up at Scottsdale Road and Shea Blvd, worth a visit if you want to eat and drink, but not a destination if you just want good tacos – I’d send you to Otro or Gallo Blanco for that. Taco Haus’ tacos are small, street-style, and the various fillings are all high-quality but overdone, too many elements on the plate so that the meat, which should in theory be the star ingredient, gets overwhelmed by acidity or mayonnaise.

Among return visits, the most notable meal was one at crudo, one of the two best restaurants I’ve tried in Arizona (Virtu in Scottsdale is the other). I branched out a bit this time, and would specifically cite the squid-ink risotto with tuna as an absolute standout dish, one that transcends the gimmicky nature of squid-ink dishes (“oooh! black food!”) with the perfect combination of texture, flavor, and presentation. I also love their cocktail menu’s inclusion of many local products, including spirits from the AZ Distilling Company in Tempe.

We split our breakfasts between the Hillside Spot and Crepe Bar. The Hillside Spot has switched from using Cartel Coffee to another vendor, espressions, whose beans I don’t like as much, and we actually had one kind of disappointing meal of about seven breakfasts we had there – a busy Sunday morning when nothing was quite up to par – but every other time it was consistently excellent. Crepe Bar’s menu is more limited but they use heart coffee from Portland, Oregon, which is among my favorite roasters in the country. The regular staff at both places were great, especially once they saw us a few times and got to know my daughter.

I didn’t make it to several spots I wanted to hit, including Atlas Bistro (tried to go without a reservation but they were booked up past our daughter’s bedtime), Bink’s, El Chullo, Beaver Choice, and Draft House in Peoria. There’s always Fall League…

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