→ March 25, 2008
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Phoenix eats, 2008 edition.

We’re leaving Arizona on Thursday, but since I doubt I’ll hit anywhere new before we go, here’s my workup of new Phoenix restaurants. I’m going to start with the best recommendations, and then proceed to the neutral reviews and then the trashing.

We had two real hits for dinner on the trip. One is a two-location mini-chain called Blu Burger, which offers gourmet burgers with significant choices to customize your meal. You have your choice of seven burger types, but there’s not much reason to go here and order something other than the ½ pound burger made from American Kobe beef, also known as Wagyu, from the name of the breed of cattle. The result is the best burger I’ve ever tasted, due to the higher fat content of the beef (although the beef is higher in unsaturated fat and oleic acid than most beef), resulting in a buttery texture and a mellow, rich beef flavor. From the choice of burger, you move to four choices of bun, more cheese options than I care to think about, at least sixteen toppings and thirteen sauce/condiment options, as well as a choice of French fries, cole slaw, field greens, sweet potato fries, or onion rings as your side. I’ve tried the French fries (they’re beer-battered, which is just weird) and the sweet potato fries (blah, and a little soggy), but the attraction is the burgers. My personal favorite combo so far is fresh mushrooms, pickles, red onion, romaine lettuce, goat cheese, ketchup, and Dijon mustard. They do have other sandwich options, but who cares?

The other hit dinner spot is Los Sombreros, a Mexican restaurant in south Scottsdale, south of Old Town and disturbingly close to Zorba’s Adult Video Shop. Los Sombreros serves authentic Mexican cuisine with a healthy selection of margaritas and a sizable wine list. The standard chips/salsa package includes two salsas, one mild with chunks of roasted peppers, the other spicy with tomatillos and smoked hot peppers. Their carnitas dish is delicious and overgenerous – it’s too much pig for me to eat in one serving, and comes with a scoop of fresh guacamole, a side of their peppery Mexican rice (with none of that gritty tomato-sauce nonsense you get in most crappy Mexican joints), and their black beans, which have never seen the inside of a can and come with a sprinkling of queso fresco. The best part of the carnitas dish is the inclusion of all of the ends of the pork, which is always the place for the best flavor. I also tried their puerco en chipotle, a similar cut of pork in a spicy green salsa, with a little bit of queso Oaxaca melted on top; the pork was moister in this dish, although I missed the guacamole from the carnitas platter, while the salsa was identical or close to the great smoky/spicy version that came with the chips. I tasted the mole poblano but found that the spicy/earthy mole flavor completely overshadowed the chicken. My wife went for the chicken enchiladas on both visits and raved about them, while my daughter was happy just to eat the rice. I’m not much of a drinker, but I decided to try their basic margarita, which contains tequila, triple sec, and sour mix, and liked the balance of lime/lemon flavors against the tequila, which was present but never overwhelming. (The last time I tried straight tequila was almost twenty years ago, in college, shortly after which I nearly blinded myself by forgetting to close the top of the photocopier before pressing Copy. Good times.)

We also found a solid gelateria in north Scottsdale, just south of the intersection with 101, deep in the shopping center that contains a Borders and a movie theater. Called The Sweet Life, it was founded by two men whose grandfather owned a gelateria in Italy, and they’ve really nailed the texture of true gelato, which is very hard to find in any U.S. gelateria. Their caramel gelato was outstanding, not too sweet, with a solid balance of that burnt-sugar flavor that all caramel ice creams should have. The chocolate had a good cocoa flavor but tasted shallow to me, as if the gelato itself was too low in fat, which is possible since gelato is typically made with egg yolks and milk but not cream.

The last stop among the top recommendations was in Tucson, at a bakery/sandwich shop called Beyond Bread. This is the place Panera wishes it could be, but never will, with fresher ingredients, outstanding bread, and a pretty solid chocolate chip cookie, although I have to confess that Paradise Bakery, for all its flaws, is still the chocolate chip cookie champ for m.e

On to the neutral reviews … Near ASU’s campus is a small, poorly labeled barbecue joint called Urban Campfire. I went with their pulled pork sliders – three small sandwiches overflowing with pulled pork, with a small side of beans. The pork’s texture was great, but I have no idea how it tasted, because it came drowned in a very hot barbecue sauce. That’s hot in terms of temperature – it had to be boiling when the pork was added – and spice, which crushed my taste buds by the time I’d gotten halfway through the plate. If you try the place, ask for the sauce on the side, or just try the beef ribs, which looked like a better choice.

Sushi Dozo is located in an old fast-food building on Miller Rd in Scottsdale, between Camelback and Indian School. The sushi here was solid-average, but not great, and given the cost of good sushi, I generally don’t go back to any sushi place that wasn’t great. The salmon in the nigiri was fresh, but had a very, very faint off taste to me, as if there was a small bit of mayonnaise mixed in with the wasabi that was holding the fish to the rice. I tried a few different rolls but wasn’t blown away by their spicy tuna or their unagi. It’s passable in a pinch, but Sapporo in north Scottsdale is still better, and several people told me to try Stingray nearer to Old Town for better sushi.

The Old Town Tortilla Factory is fine for what it is, which is an attempt to fuse Mexican cooking with upscale American cuisine, although I was surprised at their inability to cook pork properly. I ordered one of their “signature” dishes, a ten-ounce pork chop served with a raspberry-ancho chile sauce over garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed vegetables. The veggies turned out to be 90% zucchini and squash, which doesn’t rank high in either taste or nutrition. The sauce was very good, better than I expected given the weird nature of the combination, but the heat of the chiles kept it from becoming too sweet. The problem was the pork chop, which was well-done; you can’t cook pork chops or pork loin past medium if you want your customers to be able to chew it. My wife ordered a pork in chile verde sauce and had a similar problem – the meat wasn’t the typical pork shoulder, but was a loin chop that had been roasted and sliced. Her meal came with flour tortillas that had clearly been made by a machine. The best part of the meal was the thick, freshly-made potato tortillas that came in lieu of chips and salsa.

On to the duds … Cantina Laredo in the Kierland area of North Scottsdale is trying to do what the Tortilla Factory is, providing upscale Mexican cuisine in a fancy atmosphere. The food sucks. I can’t remember the last time I had a meal that bland, and I certainly didn’t appreciate paying that much for it. I ordered an enchiladas mole dish, and all it lacked was salt, flavor, and spice. My wife had the same complaint. And they get extra points off for offering guacamole made at your table for $9. Guacamole should be made ahead of time and given a chance for the flavors to develop. Table-side guacamole will either be a disappointment or loaded with salt to mask the mistake.

The 5 & Diner made a list of the area’s best burgers that I found in one of those local magazines aimed at tourists, but unlike Blu Burger, it didn’t measure up. The beef was nothing special, the burger was dry, and the fries had come out of a freezer bag. Next.

Blue Agave is another kicked-up Mexican joint, located in the same shopping center as The Sweet Life, and while their food tasted fine, their service is a huge problem. The sides on both of our plates were lukewarm at best. The refried beans on my dish had a skin on them, which comes from overcooking or sitting at room temperature or both. The salsa had been puréed. Even the fish tacos weren’t quite right, with red cabbage and too much cilantro – I didn’t know cilantro could taste bitter, but it didn’t – instead of the standard green cabbage and sauce.

Apple Café is a local, health-oriented deli behind the Scottsdale airport. Their food was fresh, but really lacking in flavor, and we weren’t thrilled that the pancakes weren’t labeled as buckwheat, although to my daughter’s credit she still did some damage to them. They’re trying hard, but low-fat often does mean low-flavor.

Finally, I want to give an honorable mention to Chloe’s Corner, a little upscale corner-deli place in the tony Kierland Commons shopping center. I didn’t eat there, but my wife and daughter both loved their grilled cheese sandwiches, and they offer coffee for 25 cents a cup. We didn’t do breakfast out while we were here, but they do offer a number of hot breakfast options and it’s worth a try.

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→ February 7, 2008
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Hollywood eats.

Just a quick heads-up – no ESPN chat this week. I expect to do another one next week, on the 14th.

I had a short and uneventful trip to LA earlier this week, but I did manage to find one absolute gem of a restaurant, a sushi place in West Hollywood called Ajisai, right off of Santa Monica. It’s a tiny place, with maybe ten tables and a small sushi bar, but the fish is out of sight, to the point where I left thinking, “I wish I’d been hungrier, so I could have eaten more.” The salmon looked fabulous and was incredibly smooth and fresh. I tend to avoid fancy rolls, since they’re a bad value and inauthentic, but I was sucked in by the Dragon Roll, which was a shrimp tempura roll topped with spicy tuna and a bit of salmon roe. It turned out to be a great choice, at least taste-wise (as it wasn’t cheap at $14, and I’m sure it’s not an authentic dish), because the spicy tuna itself was just about perfect, with larger chunks of tuna than I’ve ever found in that dish, and sparing use of the very spicy sauce that let the texture and flavor of the fish come through. The only sour note was the unagi; one of the two pieces I ordered had a distinctly fishy taste.

Ajisai was a welcome improvement over the previous night’s sushi at Geisha House, on Hollywood Boulevard right in downtown Hollywood. It was late and I was exhausted, so I asked at the hotel about the nearest good sushi place, and of course, I was directed to a place that was pushing atmosphere over food and that probably has a deal with the hotel, since I was handed a preprinted card with directions. Geisha House’s sushi cost more and had far less flavor than Ajisai’s, and their special-roll menu was loaded with junk ingredients and ridiculous sauces. I ordered green tea when I sat down, and was brought a pot with fresh leaves in it, but when I took a sip of the brew, it was black tea that tasted of flowers. So when the bill came, and I saw $6 for “Kyoto Rice” (which, it turns out, was the tea), I pointed out that the tea wasn’t even what I’d ordered, saying, “I asked you for green tea.” Her response: “Oh, we don’t have green tea, we have other tea.” So if you’re in the mood for other tea, Geisha House is the place for you.

I had one other meal of note, at Lucky Devil’s, a high-end burger (and panini) place on Hollywood owned by Lucky Vanous, best known for his appearance in a Diet Coke commercial back when people actually watched commercials. The burgers are all made from Kobe beef, which is probably something of a waste. I ordered mine medium-well, which is also probably something of a waste, and it arrived well-done, which was definitely a waste, since the burger was dry. The potato roll it was served on was the star of the show, while the “crispy fries” were pre-cut and coated, which means I could have had better fries if I’d walked five minutes in the other direction and gone to In-n-Out. But I will say that a medium or medium-rare burger at Lucky Devil’s is probably a much better experience than what I had, since good-quality beef probably shouldn’t be cooked too much past medium.

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→ December 6, 2007
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Nashville eats.

So before I get to the food, let me talk about the hotel that Minor League Baseball likes to force down the throats of the major league clubs (you know, the ones who make minor league owners’ insane profits possible) and the media covering the event, the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. You’re probably familiar with Hell’s Kitchen; this place is Hell’s Outhouse. I’m a pretty hardcore capitalist, and even I’m offended by the existence of this hotel. It’s enormous, large enough to get its own ZIP Code, with more wasted space than a banana plantation in the Yukon, and it’s overflowing with fake plastic trees and fake waterfalls and other crap straight from the mind of a designer who was clearly very, very mad at society when he came up with the concept. It takes about fifteen minutes to make a full circuit around the hotel, and can easily take upwards of twenty minutes to go from the lobby to certain guest rooms. Every restaurant and shop in the hotel is outrageously overpriced – $2.75 for a 20-ounce bottle of Dasani – and non-guests are charged $16 to park with no in-and-out privileges. There’s no central lobby area for the winter meetings’ standard evening congregations, and the hotel itself is located a good fifteen to twenty minutes from downtown or any area with non-chain sit-down restaurants. I’m tempted to go for a career switch, train as a munitions expert, bribe a county official to condemn the building before the meetings return to this scar on America’s landscape and culture in 2012, and (with the government’s permission, of course) blow the damn place to oblivion. I have yet to find a front-office exec, scout, or writer who likes the place. But hey, outgoing Minor League President Mike Moore loves it, so it’s been there every four to five years for forever now, and we may be stuck with it even after the door hits Moore square in the ass on his way out. Thanks for nothing, Mike.

First meal had to be quick, so I stopped by Fat Mo’s, a small Nashville-area fast-food chain along the lines of In-n-Out and Five Guys. The burger was excellent by fast-food standards, a wide half-pound patty with plenty of salt and some black pepper in it; it was well-done, of course, and it would have been nice if my “no cheese” request had been followed. (It wasn’t a big deal – I just peeled off the one slice of yellow crap.) Their French fries are very good, although not up to the hand-cut standard of the other two chains, although again Fat Mo’s gets credit for understanding the culinary value of salt. A burger and fries plus a bottle of water came to just over $6.

Whitt’s Barbecue shows up on a number of “best barbecue in Nashville” lists I found online, and their Q was solid. It’s a bare-bones joint and the menu is sparse. I ordered the cornbread dinner with pork, which comes with one side and fried cornbread, a Nashville specialty that elsewhere seems to be called a “corn cake.” The pork had a mild smoke flavor and no hint of dryness, meaning that very little sauce was required. The beans were fair, perhaps a bit too sweet, and the corn cake had a good crumb and savory taste but wasn’t very hot, so it had started to dry out.

Swett’s is a classic meat-and-three joint (which means you pick one meat item and three sides) in southwest Nashville that’s been open since 1953. Service is counter-based – you stand in line, get your order, pay at the end, etc. There’s a full list of items sitting on the top of the counter before you get to the food. They offer five standard meat items plus a couple of items from a list of five non-daily meat items, including pigs feet (not available the day I was there, darn it). I ordered the turkey and dressing, one of the non-daily meat items, as well as just two sides – pinto beans and okra – and baked corn bread (a muffin), as well as blackberry cobbler for dessert. The turkey and dressing was over-the-top good; I’m a sucker for cornbread dressing, and theirs was moist with a great mix of cornbread, onion, celery, and herb flavors, while the turkey was moist and the gravy was smooth with a good but not overpowering chicken-stock flavor. The pinto beans were classic southern-style with chunks of ham hock, while the okra was steamed (I was hoping for fried and didn’t see the okra before ordering it) and had little flavor. The cornbread was too sweet but had a good crumb; the cobbler was probably made from frozen blackberries and the cobbler dough was greasy, although neither fact stopped me from eating almost the entire thing.

The Yellow Porch is a sort of casual fine-dining restaurant on the southern end of town, with a strong emphasis on fresh ingredients, local ones if possible. The menu isn’t long but the dishes are layered – Calvin Trillin’s “something served on a bed of something else” expression comes to mind – and despite the obvious quality of the inputs, my meal didn’t add up. A perfect example of their too-clever-by-half philosophy is the oil served with the bread (which was, by the way, an outstanding soft sponge bread): Olive oil with chopped fresh herbs, with a pool of balsamic vinegar (might have been a reduction, but it wasn’t sweet) in the middle, with a small pile of fresh feta cheese in the middle of that. It was a taste overload, and the tart-with-tart combo didn’t work that well for me.

For the entrée, I went with grilled shrimp with “grits custard,” sautéed spinach, roasted red pepper coulis, and a “caraway spiced napa cabbage salad.” That last part, the cabbage salad, proved the undoing of the entire dish. The shrimp were outstanding, fresh, Cajun-spiced (but not blackened as the menu said), and the coulis was delicious. But in the center of the dish was a ring-molded grits custard, which was grits mixed with beaten eggs and what I think was parmesan cheese (not the real stuff) and baked. The texture was a bit odd, not firm like custard or smooth like grits/polenta. But the killer was the cabbage, which was shredded and drenched in white vinegar, which dripped down into the grits below it, rendering both items inedible. (Vinegar and parmesan cheese ≠ good eats.) To the restaurant’s credit, when I told the server that I was “disappointed” and explained about the excess vinegar, he took the entrée off the check.

For dessert, I had a slice of flourless chocolate-espresso torte with a raspberry coulis. The coulis was excellent and the texture of the torte was great, but it could have been darker. They get big points for having a wide selection of loose-leaf teas.

The next day’s lunch was at another meat-and-three with my comrade-in-fork, Joe Sheehan, who is also a frequent comrade-in-pork. Arnold’s Country Kitchen seems to be the consensus pick for Nashville’s best meat-and-three, and once we saw a diner with the pork barbecue on his plate, our lunchtime destinies were sealed. I paired mine with black-eyed peas and green beans. (Note: If the menu was posted somewhere, we didn’t see it, but there’s an image of it on their website.) The pork is a Wednesday special, and we picked the right day to go, because it was amazing, moist with a good smoky flavor, and the sauce had a nice molasses base without overpowering the flavor of the meat. The black-eyed peas sucked; there was no hint of ham hock or salt pork or, frankly, any flavor other than onions. The green beans were a little bit overstewed but otherwise solid. Arnold’s serves both baked cornbread and fried cornbread with every meal, and these were probably the best I’ve ever had, with no sweetness, plenty of fat in the recipe to keep them moist, and an absolutely perfect crumb. For dessert, I tried their “chocolate pie,” a thick chocolate pudding that tastes a lot like brownie batter topped with meringue. The filling was delicious and the meringue helped cut the richness of the filling, although the crust was too greasy and not very tender.

Last stop – with Sheehan, Kevin Goldstein, and Will Carroll in tow – was Calhoun’s, a Tennessee-wide chain of barbecue restaurants. They’re known or claim to be known for their ribs, so I went with the half slab with smashed red-skin potatoes and beans on the side. The hickory-smoked ribs were smoky but didn’t have a lot of hickory flavor; the best part was the top and end bits, with that indescribable pork taste and just the right amount of tooth. The mashed potatoes were good but generic – definitely made in a huge batch – and the beans were more like a chili than baked beans, which made a fan of Joe but was a little less of a hit with me. Pre-meal cornbread was on the sweet side, although the buttermilk biscuit was solid-average. They do get points for having Newcastle Brown Ale, which was about the last beer I expected to find in Nashville.

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→ November 3, 2007
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Jupiter/West Palm Beach eats.

So I was down in Jupiter for a high school showcase event – bit of a dud, really, but I had to go at least once to check it out – and hit a few new places while revisiting two spots I went to in the spring.

En route to West Palm Beach airport, I had a layover at Reagan Airport in DC, and noticed a Five Guys burger stand, which was named the best food outlet at that airport in a recent Portfolio.com article. So I went. And I ate. For airport food, it’s off the charts, and I’d rate it above In-n-Out in the fast food burger category. The fries are the key – hand-cut, like In-n-Out’s, but thicker, and a regular order comes with more fries than I could eat in a sitting. The burgers are thicker than In-n-Out’s, of roughly equivalent quality, but because they only cook burgers well done, the patties start to dry out, which one can compensate for somewhat with extra ketchup, but it’s not the same thing. There is also a Five Guys in Palm Beach at the Legacy Mall, on PGA Blvd, which I hit on the way back to the airport to head home. (One side note: Five Guys was apparently named DC’s best burger by some publication that apparently doesn’t know its ass from its elbow. I can name two places within five miles of my house that serve better burgers – thicker, juicier, and cooked to order. There’s no way Washington doesn’t have some pub or diner that serves a quality half-pounder.)

Actually in Jupiter, then, I hit two new (to me) places in a strip mall right near the Cardinals’/Marlins’ complex, on the north side of Donald Ross Rd between Central Blvd and Military Trail. The better of the two was Pyros Grill, a funky, upscale fast-food place that serves “bowls” and wraps where you go down a checklist of ingredients, pick what you want, and it’s heated and served to you. The dishes are built around a “protein” – marinated steak, chicken, or black beans – and you can add various condiment-veggies (like scallions or cucumbers, but not more nutritious vegetables like broccoli) and choose a sauce. I went twice and ordered the same thing both times, the “Big Kahuna” bowl, which includes your choice of meats, scallions, cucumbers, onions, and a pineapple-teriyaki sauce. It was delicious, but a regular bowl wasn’t enough food for lunch, so I’d imagine most folks would want the large. I’d also like to see the food served a bit hotter; the meat is obviously cooked and chilled, then reheated before serving. Anyway, it was a boon to find a healthy option so close to the ballpark.

In the same strip mall is Thai Garden Palace (at least, I think that was the name, but Google Maps says it’s “Thai Grand Place”, so what the bleep do I know). I expected the place to be authentic, given the décor and the heavy accents of everyone working there, and maybe the food was authentic – but I’ve never had pad thai arrive as noodles sitting in a pool of sauce. The ingredients were fresh, and the chicken was cooked properly, but it was more like a noodle soup than a noodle stir-fry. The chicken-and-shrimp dumplings were large and full of both meats, but had very little flavor of their own and required both the “special” soy sauce that came with it (which tasted like every other soy sauce I’ve ever had) and a shot of the hot sauce on the table.

The revisits were a mixed bag. I went back to the Gelato Grotto in Palm Beach Gardens, and I was disappointed. I’m pretty sure the problem was that the freezer cases were too cold, so the gelato was hard and the flavors were dulled. I went with dark chocolate and toasted almond and just didn’t get a lot of taste. I also went to McCray’s II, the little barbecue stand on 45th Street in West Palm, at about 7 pm on a Thursday night, and they were out of pulled pork and BBQ beef, so I went with the ribs, which were very good – tender, could have come off the bone more easily, with a nice mild sauce with a hint of pepper to it. I’m still not sure why barbecue often comes with toasted white sandwich bread, though.

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