→ March 6, 2012
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Delux, Bliss on 4th, Irish Wolfhound (Phoenix eats).

I tried three new spots in the last week, but unfortunately none of them was all that great; clearly I need to keep branching out.

Phoenix has a surprisingly strong contingent of high-end burger joints, including three of the best-reviewed ones all within one long block of each other on Camelback just east of route 51. I’ve been to Zinburger and raved about it, but haven’t tried The Grind yet and just got to Delux yesterday for the first time (even though I first heard about it three or four years ago). They’re known more for their fries and for the general vibe of the place than for the burgers themselves, which I’d say also summarizes my experience there.

The fries are clearly a focus, and it’s the sweet potato fries that really stand out. Sweet potato fries rarely live up to the potential of the root vegetable involved, as they’re often soggy or mealy inside and rarely crispy on the outside, but these were among the best I’ve had. They’re cut thin, the exterior is crunchy, while the interior is light and fluffy like a regular French fry would be; the dipping sauce, a mixture of mayo, sour cream, cayenne pepper, and a few other spices, is kind of a poor man’s remoulade but complemented the sweetness of the sweet potato fries well. The regular fries were fine, not greasy at all but also not that crispy, and of course next to the sweet potatoes the regular fries seemed mild.

The burger, while huge (10 ounces), was a disappointment, primarily because the meat itself was underseasoned. They use Niman Ranch beef in both burger options (there are just two, and a limited number of toppings you can add/subtract), but even good-quality meat needs seasoning, especially salt, and this didn’t have enough. The burger was crying out for sauce – ketchup, mustard, anything – to give some depth to the flavor of the meat, but to me, that’s an error in the burger itself. (The burger might be better with condiments, but it shouldn’t require condiments to taste good.) Delux has a pretty wide selection of beer and wines, including a number of beer-tasting “flights;” the menu has interesting sandwiches and salads; but at the end of the day, if I go to a great burger place, I want a great burger, and Delux’s would be behind Zinburger and Blu Burger among Arizona burger joints.

Bliss on Fourth was named one of Phoenix magazine’s 21 best new restaurants of 2011, although that’s a dubious honor since two others have already closed. The concept is “urban hangout” with high-end comfort food, and while the menu hits that mark, the execution the other night wasn’t great.

Their two signature dishes are the pot roast with mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese (available with or without bacon); I went with the pot roast, which had clearly been out of the braise too long and had started to dry out, while the potatoes underneath were somewhere between lukewarm and cold. We ordered an appetizer of pretzel bread with three dipping sauces, but had to remind the server to actually serve it to us, and even when it came it was a little disappointing, since the bread was served in very thin slices – isn’t the point of pretzel bread to get the salty crust contrasting with the thick, spongy center? I wish the execution had been better, as it’s a cool concept in a great indoor/outdoor space, but watching the food come out of the kitchen from where we sat, I could see dishes sitting half-plated, waiting for the final ingredient and getting cooler by the second. Maybe they just need a better expediter, since the food itself tasted fine, but I can’t say I’m jazzed to go get cold potatoes again.

And speaking of mashed potatoes, I tried a reader suggestion (actually a reader’s friend’s suggestion) in Surprise, an Irish pub right near the ballpark called Irish Wolfhound. The interior is caught somewhere between a pub and a sports bar, but more concerning was the mash in the bangers-and-mash, which had a weird texture that I can only assume either came from a box or a freezer bag. If you can’t get that dish right, you’re not an Irish restaurant.

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→ August 26, 2011
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Arizona eats, August 2011.

I made a side trip to Cave Creek en route back from Anthem on Friday specifically to try Bryan’s Black Mountain BBQ, allegedly the best Q in the Valley … and I have to say I haven’t found anything close to this good in the state. Both the pulled pork and the brisket bore modest smoke rings but were very moist with good smoke flavor, and the crispy edges of the brisket had a strong kick from the dry rub. The pork needed no sauce beyond the thin, slightly spicy, slightly acid sauce it’s served in, which didn’t mask the taste of the meat at all. The brisket did need sauce if only for some salt on the interior portions of the meat; their house sauce is sweet and smoky without any heat, although there’s a hot version available as well. A generous quarter pound of each meat – really, there had to be close to a pound of meat on the plate – plus two sides is $13.25 before tax; the sides were the lone disappointment, as the potato salad was absolutely covered in mayo and the cole slaw had green olives in it that overwhelmed everything else. But I would drive an hour just to get that smoked meat, especially with nothing close to it down our way.

bld in Chandler (Germann & Dobson, just south of the Santan Freeway) stands for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as they’re open for all three meals. (It’s unrelated to the bld in Los Angeles which I tried in 2008.) My wife and I went at lunchtime but both ordered breakfast, as that menu was much more appealing. Both portions were enormous, more than either of us could finish. I went with the short rib benedict, two halves of an English muffin each topped with a large chunk of braised short rib, a poached egg, and a red wine Hollandaise the color of black raspberry ice cream. The short rib was tender and still bore hints of the braising liquid (red wine-based) but was a little light on seasoning; the poached eggs were perfect, while the hollandaise brought some acidity and brightness to the whole dish, although I couldn’t quite convince myself that something lavender should be savory rather than sweet. The breakfast potatoes on the side were peppery but barely above room temperature. My wife ordered the “green chili pork tostada,” which is really chilaquiles with an enormous portion of braised, shredded pork shoulder, with refried beans, cotija cheese, and fried eggs on top. The pork was tangy, maybe a little too much, and I thought the ratio of meat to everything else was too high, but my wife (who ordered it without the beans) thought it was excellent. bld reminded me of the Hillside Spot, still my favorite place to eat around here, with the advantage of being much closer to the house than the Spot is even if the food isn’t quite as good.

I’ve tried two Vietnamese places in Chandler, Pho Chandler at Arizona Ave and Ocotillo (south of the Santan) and Cyclo on Chandler Blvd east of Dobson (right across from the Valley’s best gelato, Angel Sweet). I ordered roughly the same entree at both places, bún (rice vermicelli) with grilled pork and a fried egg roll, and Pho Chandler was the winner, with more flavorful meats and less fatty pieces as well as more greens underneath the noodles. Pho Chandler also has a pork short ribs appetizer that is a must-order – small pieces of pork still on the bone served in a sweet-spicy sauce with tamarind and Thai basil. The bún at Cyclo included pork and beef, and the beef could not have had less flavor if they’d boiled it without seasoning. One thing I found peculiar at both restaurants was the use of thicker noodles than I’ve had at Vietnamese restaurants elsewhere, mostly in Boston, which changes the texture of the final dish substantially. I’d also give Pho Chandler a nod over Cyclo for friendlier service.

In Scottsdale, I’ve now had lunch at Culinary Dropout, located just across Camelback from Fashion Square Mall, three times when meeting friends in from out of town or who work in the area, and it’s been a home run each time. The orecchiette with short rib meat and butter beans in a tomato sauce is bright and fresh but very filling with a late kick; I’m mildly obsessed with short ribs, by far my favorite cut of cow, and even with all of the other heavier elements in the dish the rib meat remains the clear star, accentuated by the acidity of the tomato sauce. The chicken hash with fried egg and black truffles is a rich and hearty if you’re into mushrooms, but was a little on the light side for lunch. The turkey pastrami on a pretzel roll was good but my least favorite of the three dishes, primarily because the meat is so salty and then comes on a salty roll with good yet also salty hand-cut fries on the side … I love salt and season aggressively when I cook, but this felt like a dish aimed at getting you to order another beer. (I could think of worse outcomes, though.) The place has kind of a funky gastropub look and feel, but the food is strong enough for a business lunch.

Zinburger is owned by the same restaurant group as Culinary Dropout and the eponymous dish there is so good I have now made my own version several times at home. Located across from the Ritz-Carlton in a small mall featuring a Cheesecake Factory – and really, how stupid do you have to be to go eat that garbage with Zinburger about 30-40 meters away? – Zinburger offers DIY burger options, but the version that bears the restaurant’s name is the winner: Zinfandel-braised onions, Manchego cheese, and a thin layer of mayonnaise. I’m not sure how Zinburger does their onions, but my version comes pretty close – I caramelize them in the traditional way, then deglaze the pan with wine and let the onions plump back up a little with the new liquid before serving. They also offer several types of hand-cut fries, including “double truffle fries” and sweet potato, both of which were excellent although I find sweet potato fries a little too sweet. (Sweet potato chips, on the other hand, are awesome.) I regret to inform you that I did not try any of Zinburger’s shakes.

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→ August 19, 2011
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Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, & San Diego eats.

MB Post in Manhattan Beach is set in a former post office and, despite a trying-way-too-hard hipster vibe, the food is excellent. It’s a tapas bar in practice, although they use the tired “little plates” euphemism, bringing together Spanish, American, and southeast Asian influences; every dish we ordered was enough for two to share but would have been stretched for three, except for the Brussels sprouts (with hazelnuts and Emmentaler) which was roughly a week’s supply. The first winner was the warm pretzel with hot horseradish-mustard, a sinus-clearing (that’s good) dipping sauce that probably should be served at every decent burger joint in the country. The confit pork belly with Swiss chard and corn agnolotti, one of the nightly specials, was soft enough to spread on toast and very generous with the chard, although I found the agnolotti almost dessert-sweet. The menu includes a number of vegetable dishes that highlight the star ingredient (as opposed to just satisfying the demand for vegetarian options), like the marinated cucumbers with peppadew peppers and crunchy roasted and fried chickpeas and the aforementioned Brussels sprouts – and the giant “fee fi fo fum fries” are stellar, brown and salty and not greasy with a mayo-based dipping sauce. The menu changes daily, though, so the vietnamese caramel pork or the yellowtail sashimi with yuzu may not be there if you head over. It’s one of the best and most fun upscale meals I’ve had in a while.

Over in Long Beach, I tried the tiny, family-run (I presume) Korean place Sura, sparsely furnished but featuring the dish I was after, bibimbap. (They also have short ribs and bulgogi, which are the only other authentic Korean dishes I really know.) The bibimbap was good by my ignorant standards, with fresh ingredients and the egg brought tableside for me to crack directly into the hot bowl. Service was a little weird – the meal came with four small plates of “sides,” mostly pickled and/or fermented vegetables, which I tried, but since I hadn’t cleared them my server said, “oh, you haven’t even touched them.” I guess I missed the pre-meal contract obligating me to clean every plate. But I’d go again for the food.

Moving on to San Diego … I finally got to Neighborhood, which many of you recommended last year when I was taking the family there while I covered a Padres series. I love their philosophy, but wasn’t sold on the execution. The Local Animal sandwich is a good microcosm of the problem – what’s not to like about two kinds of pork (sausage and braised pork, presumably shoulder), caramelized onions, and gruyere on a crusty roll? Well, the fact that it’s not a sandwich, for one, but has the remaining ingredients, including a mustard/molasses glaze, sitting on top of bread that can’t be picked up or closed. And the piling of flavors just left the whole thing muddled, sweet and slightly tangy but with the pork, which should be the star of the show, left somewhere in the second or third row. The fries, which come with garlic mayo (they claim to have no ketchup on the premises), were extremely hot and so greasy that a package of Viagra wouldn’t have helped them. Neighborhood does have an outstanding beer selection; I went with the Alesmith Speedway Stout, which at 12% had its intended effect rather quickly.

I also met up with a couple of readers for lunch at the Burger Lounge location in Hillcrest on University. It’s a solid-average burger, made from high-quality local beef (their site claims it’s all from one farm where cows are grass-fed and are “well treated”), but without many choices for toppings (just two cheeses, white cheddar, which I don’t like, and American, which is just nauseous). The fries were solid-average as well, crispier a garlic-herb mixture sprinkled on top. And they have ketchup. I do actually like ketchup on my fries, crazy American that I am.

I can still vouch for breakfast at The Mission in North Park – rosemary bread, rosemary potatoes, perfectly cooked eggs, and a great atmosphere – but a return visit to the downtown Cafe 222 after many years was disappointing – their pumpkin pie waffle was just a mushy mess and tasted of stale spices, not pumpkin or pumpkin pie.

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→ November 18, 2010
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Hillside Spot & Barrio Cantina.

Busy day today. I’ll be chatting at 1 pm EST, on the Scott Van Pelt Show on ESPN Radio at 2:05 pm EST, and on Outside the Lines on ESPN shortly after 3 pm.

My latest post at mental_floss covers the histories of eight classic board games, with another post on the history of Settlers of Catan coming later today. And my last two posts over on ESPN.com broke down the Joaquin Benoit signing and the Uggla trade and John Buck signing.

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I’ve mentioned Hillside Spot before, but let me recommend it again: If you live anywhere near the Ahwatukee region of Phoenix, or pass through it on I-10, you need to try this place, because the food is outstanding.

I’ve been for breakfast and lunch and can vouch for both meals. The “El Gallo” torta with eggs, chorizo, and avocado was tremendous, with the eggs cooked to order (they’re not that quick – that would be my only warning, but I will wait for food like this); bright, fresh avocado; just the right amount of mayo; and a fresh, soft, square roll from La Sonorense Tortilla Factory in downtown Phoenix. It’s a steal at $6. Their pancakes have earned some acclaim around here, for good reason – they’re eggy and buttery, like a thick, soft crepe, with one order more than my wife could finish even with some serious help from me. It looks like they rotate their coffees but try to offer something from a local roaster, such as one from Tempe’s Cartel Coffee Labs the day I was there.

I went back for lunch because I’d seen a pulled pork sandwich on their menu, with the pork first braised then finished over mesquite on their rotisserie grill. The pork was perfect, falling apart but with good browning on the outside, with a good background smoke flavor. It comes with a spicy cole slaw and, oddly enough, sliced fresh pear, which was a new combination for me but worked well, giving the sandwich a little bite and providing a small amount of natural sweetness to balance the acidity in the slaw. It comes on the same bread as the torta (telera bread), and the French fries, one of four side options, were hand-cut and just-fried.

Hillside Spot uses a lot of local vendors (including all of their eggs) and has that great funky cafe vibe I love to find in a local restaurant – like the Mission in San Diego or Blue Moon Cafe in Baltimore. Other than the Angel Sweet gelateria, I haven’t found anything as exciting as this place since we moved. It’s located on Warner and 48th, behind the McDonald’s, in the same strip mall where the Sunday farmer’s market is held.

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We found Hillside Spot because it was mentioned in Phoenix magazine as one of the best new restaurants of 2010. We also tried another one, Barrio Cantina, in Scottsdale on Cactus right by the Tatum mall. The food was good, but on the heavy side, not just in fat content (that doesn’t usually bother me) but in the chef’s hand, adding sauces and flavors that end up detracting from the dish. But the core ingredients were all very strong, particularly their meats.

They offer a strong selection of taco plates, all available with corn or flour tortillas or as a torta. I went with the torta – that’s a new dish for me since we moved out here, so I’m indulging – made with machaca short ribs, braised to the point of collapse, with a full, satisfying, beefy flavor. It comes with shredded, slightly wilted cabbage and a crema that was probably unnecessary with the fattiness of the short rib. The dish came with a scoop of a strange, earthy rice and corn mixture that was slightly overcooked but tasted good, a solid neutral note to give me a break from the strong flavors of the machaca.

My wife went with a carnitas enchilada that came in a small cast-iron skillet and was served with the tortillas open, so the sauce and cheese (browned slightly under a salamander) were directly on the meat. She enjoyed it, although the presentation within the skillet was a mess.

We tried one appetizer, the “mini chimis” – small chimichangas where the ratio from dough to meat is way too high. I peeled a few of them open and ate the carnitas and machaca inside, to reduce the doughiness and get away from the tangy crema sticking to the outside like wallpaper paste. Someone there really knows how to slow-cook meat; they just need to work on how they serve it.

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→ December 3, 2009
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Pops Restaurant & the Top Chef semifinal.

Klawchat today at 1 pm. I’m on Rumor Central today talking Donavan Tate’s broken jaw and Polanco to the Phils. Top Chef spoilers at the bottom of this piece.

I had dinner with a friend last night at Pops Restaurant in Boston’s South End, a small place that serves fine-dining-caliber food with prices one level down from what fine-dining places in the South End or Back Bay would charge. I’d recommend it, as the meal was well above-average despite some small issues.

Once I saw the crispy confit duck on the menu, there was no shot I’d order anything else, as duck confit is probably my favorite meat dish and it’s not something I’ve made at home. The duck was close to perfect, with crispy skin with a little bit of spice (I think five-spice, but there was too little for me to say for sure) and outstanding texture; duck skin needs very little seasoning since it has so much flavor of its own. The meat inside was perfect, tender and moist, falling apart like a braised pork shank. The duck comes with a mixture of asparagus, wild rice gnocchi, and a ‘red wine chocolate sauce’ that was astringent and overly salty and that didn’t do much to complement the duck; duck and rice do go well together, but something like a risotto with asparagus would have worked better. The side also contained lardons that were excruciatingly salty – and really, when have you ever known me to say a bad word about any form of bacon? – and weren’t listed on the menu, which, given how many people don’t eat pork for religious reasons, is a little customer-unfriendly. We also ordered a side of French fries at my friend’s suggestion – they’re lightly seasoned with herbs (thyme and rosemary?) and perfectly fried with virtually no grease, reminiscent of the fries at the defunct Back Bay restaurant Excelsior, which made probably the best fries I’ve ever had and served them with a rosemary aioli.

We started with the truffled butternut squash ravioli with sage brown butter and fried egg; the egg was more of a garnish but the ravioli were excellent, just a little too soft, with the squash allowed to come through as the star of the dish. The arugula around the dish seemed like an afterthought but, softened slightly in the brown butter (which was mixed with a little pasta water), it was worth fishing out.

Service was good, not great; the waitress brought me the wrong beer, and it took over an hour from seating to the arrival of the entrees, although I imagine that would have been shorter without the appetizer. On the plus side, I had started at the bar and ordered sparkling water, and forgot about it when my friend arrived, but the bartender brought it back to the table for me after realizing I’d disappeared. The restaurant has two sections; we sat in the back, which is quieter but dimmer and lacks the visual appeal of the tables in the front near the bar and kitchen. The limes from the bar were dried-out, which isn’t a big deal for me but raises a small question about quality control in the back of the house.

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Quick thoughts on last night’s Top Chef semifinal:

* Is Padma trying to be condescending, or is it just that her natural way of speaking comes off that way? My wife said last night, “I can’t picture her as a mother.” Growing up with a mother who is hot, famous, and sounds incredibly disappointed at the most minor of things is a recipe for a lifetime of therapy, no?

* We need to get Gail Simmons on “What Not to Wear.” It was like someone decided to add melons to the crush party menu. I feel bad for her – it’s not like she’s unattractive, but that dress – and it’s not the first – was not working in her favor.

* Have to try Bryan’s idea of cooking figs with short ribs and then pureeing them with the braising liquid to make a sauce. I’m thinking a dry red wine with good body but not too much fruitiness, but since I know jack about wine, I’m open to suggestions from the oenophiles in the audience.

* Jennifer undercut herself by, in effect, apologizing for making duck confit instead of grilling it. Play it up, talk about how you improvised, you love how it came out, spin it positively. Telling the judges you wish you’d done it another way isn’t going to make them like your food more. Of course, there’s a limit, since Kevin’s line about the undercooked didn’t go over well.

* This elimination was predictable, although I wonder (again) if the decisions are based on the dishes in that specific challenge or on the broader body of work. The weakest remaining chef was sent home; the three best from when I picked up the show about six episodes ago are going to the finals. I’m still sticking with my pick – Bryan.

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