→ April 3, 2009
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Phoenix eats, 2009.

Before I get to the food, the BBC’s site had a somewhat scary article about a link between hot beverages and esophogeal cancer. Consuming beverages over 160 F – which would include black tea and drip coffee – was associated with higher incidence of that very nasty type of cancer. On the bright side, green tea should be brewed at 160, so it’ll be served around 150-155, and the milk in espresso-based drinks should only be heated to 160, meaning that it’s also consumed below that mark. Of course, almost any coffee place that serves green tea will serve it around 200 degrees, including Charbucks, so do what I do and ask the barista to throw an ice cube or two in there.

On to Phoenix eats.Havana Café is a local mini-chain of three restaurants, one on Bell near 64th in northern Phoenix. The food is Caribbean rather than just Cuban, with a lot of Puerto Rican dishes and, most importantly, maduros up the wazoo. The ingredients are clearly very high quality and the food aims for a somewhat “cleaner” look than typical Cuban joints. The pollo Cubano, a half chicken breast marinated in a lime-orange mojo and pan-seared, was bright and tangy, while the pollo ajillo had hints of garlic but probably wouldn’t give your neighborhood vampire more than a brief scare. Just about all entrees come with white rice, most come with black beans, and I think all come with maduros, which were spectacular. They also have a huge selection of tapas featuring foods from the same Caribbean islands as well as a few from Spain; their mofongo is good, as are the masas de puerco, but their tostones were coasters and their alcapurrías were very greasy. I recommend it for lunch, but not for dinner, when they charge fine-dining prices for what is more or less peasant food. It’s a solid 50.

A reader (sorry, I’m too lazy to see which of you it was) suggested the Cornish Pasty Company over by Arizona State, and it’s now a major Klaw recommendation. The concept is great – it’s a tiny place in a strip mall, dark and narrow … like the mines in which the Cornish men who ate the pasties their wives made would work. A Cornish pasty is a type of pocket pie, a flaky pie crust wrapped around a filling that usually contains meat and root vegetables. The Cornish pasty company offers a few dozen pasty varieties, but I went with the “Oggie,” with the classic Cornish pasty filling of beef, onions, and potatoes. The filling was rich and thick and peppery, and the meat was soft enough and cubed well enough that it didn’t require a knife, and the crust was flaky and buttery and perfectly browned. The pasty itself cost $6.50 (I think it’s the cheapest one on the menu) and I barely got past half of it. On a sample of two meals – plus a bit of a caramel apple dessert pasty – I’m giving it a 60.

Another reader suggestion, Los Olivos, was less successful. It’s somewhere between really authentic Mexican food and chain Tex-Mex food; the portions were generous but everything was overdone – oversalted, overflavored, and oversauced. My wife, usually less critical than I am, said that her food wasn’t bad so much as “a mess.”

One of our favorites from last year, Blu Burger, is still going and still serving amazing Wagyu (American Kobe) burgers, but their location in Scottsdale near Kierland closed on March 7th. They still have three other locations and are opening two more soon (according to our server) in Peoria and Chandler. We did hit the one in north Scottsdale twice, and everything was the same except for the fact that while they still offer sautéed mushrooms as a topping for $1 extra, they no longer offer raw mushrooms as a topping. When I pointed out the absurdity of this, the server told me that they cook all the mushrooms they get.

The Phoenix Ranch Market near Phoenix airport has a full-service restaurant, Tradiciones, that offers mostly different fare from the quick-service options available inside the market. (Speaking of which, the quick-service food is still excellent, but they seem to be slacking on trimming the carnitas before cooking; the last two times I went there I ended up having to remove large chunks of pork fat from my mouth. Pork fat is good for cooking, not so much for eating.) The best thing going at Tradiciones is the tortilla chips served before the meal – just made, not in the least greasy, and salted. The food itself was just average; I tried the pollo asado, which seems to be a signature dish of the restaurant and the market, and it was … roast chicken. Good roast chicken, but really, it was just roast chicken. The absence of carnitas or chili verde (the latter only in a burrito, I believe) on the menu was a disappointment. The food is better inside the market and much cheaper. Grade 50.

Brian from Laveen has been pushing Joe’s BBQ for years, and I finally had a reason to go out that far to try it. It was solid-average. The Q had good flavor – I went with pulled pork and brisket – but was kind of dry, which is odd since the place was busy. I often find dry Q is the result of low turnover, since Q is something you have to make in advance and try to keep warm until it’s ordered. BBQ beans were good, a little sweet but not too much so, and the corn was, well, corn. The homemade root beer is good but strong, almost spicy. It’s a fringe 50 for me.

Raul and Theresa’s in Goodyear is a little tough to find – you have to go past the stadium, behind the airport, and you might drive right past it as I did – but worth the trip. It’s straight-up Mexican food with the usual suspects on the menu, but the food is incredibly fresh. The guacamole was an easy 65 on the scale, maybe a 70, bright green, chunky, and tasting primarily of avocadoes, not of all the junk that usually gets layered into it. The rice that’s served with every dish was fresh, not too salty, with a good tooth. My entrée was chicken enchiladas with red sauce, obviously made to order, and probably about 10% more food than I really needed to eat. Again, the actual flavor of the chicken came through, enhanced by the red sauce, not drowned by it. Overall grade 60.

Butterfield’s was our one breakfast out, and it’s a zoo on Sundays, not helped by a server with two personalities (alternating between friendly and why-the-hell-are-you-bothering-me) and no ability to estimate wait times (he was off by 100%, and not in the good way). The food was mostly good – I had a waffle that was light with good crust and an almost cakelike flavor, and I tasted the pancakes, which were not heavy and had that same flavor, which I’m thinking was vanilla combined with butter. The chicken apple maple sausage wasn’t dry but also didn’t have much flavor beyond apple. My wife loved her whole wheat brioche French toast. The restaurant is a solid 50, but plays up because of the big menu.

Goldbar Espresso in Tempe seems to get rave reviews, and they talk a good game about the freshness of their coffee, but the espresso there is atrocious – they pull the most diluted shots I think I’ve ever had, with maybe twice the water that they should be using, so the result is something like what you’d get if you tried to make espresso using Maxwell House grounds. I sort of knew I was in trouble when I walked in and looked at the menu board and saw a caffe mocha as the first item; if a coffee place really prides itself on its coffee, shouldn’t espresso be the top listing? And they use Hershey’s syrup in their mochas, too. Hershey’s is to chocolate what McDonald’s is to beef and what Bud Light is to beer. Anyway, my wife went to Starbucks and I went a month without coffee.

I’ve mentioned Gelato Spot before, but having stopped there at least a half-dozen times last month I’m upping my grade to a 55. I had found in the past that they kept the gelato too cold, but they’ve fixed the problem, and their chocolate seems darker than it was in the past. The coconut gelato is still a favorite. I did try the chocolate caramel brownie flavor, but it was too sweet, and there’s something about their caramel that I don’t like, a sourness that shows up in the caramel gelato too.

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→ March 14, 2009
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Pizzeria Bianco.

Links first – my blog entries on Team Japan are here and here, the latter featuring a writeup of Yu Darvish.

Last night, I finally made it to Pizzeria Bianco, perhaps the best pizzeria in the United States. Chef/owner Chris Bianco won a James Beard Award for “Best Chef in the Southwest” in 2003. His restaurant earned a 29 rating (out of 30) from Zagat’s. Food writer Ed Levine called Bianco’s creations the best pizza in the United States. Jeffrey Steingarten called it the best in the world. Peter Reinhart echoed these sentiments in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

Who am I to argue? It was otherworldly.

The first bite I took of his margherita pizza – tomatoes, homemade mozzarella, and basil – was a Proustian moment, where memories of my last trip to Italy, made ten years prior, all came rushing back so fast that they were crowding each other out to take center stage in the theater of my mind. One bite and I was there, in Genova eating outside in an osteria, in Firenze in a trattoria one level below ground, in Rome, in Assisi, there and everywhere. I have never in my life had a food experience bring back such a torrent of memories.

The pizza nearly defies description; it must be tasted to be understood. The crust is amazing, puffy and blistered at the edges yet soft and airy inside, reminiscent of great naan in texture but thinner with that ideal near-cracker texture in the center of the pizza. The fresh mozzarella was firm, smooth, and – thank God – sufficiently salted, also the best we’d ever had. The tomatoes were bright red and sweet, and the olive oil that came both with the bread and with the insalata caprese was bright and fruity and drinkable straight from the bowl, although I admit I didn’t do this for fear of making a scene. We also tried the Biancoverde pizza, featuring mozzarella, Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and ricotta cheese and topped with peppery arugula; it was more of a knife-and-fork pizza because the dough couldn’t support all of the toppings, but the combination of creamy mozzarella, salty Parmiggiano-Reggiano, tangy ricotta, and spicy arugula was sublime.

The restaurant itself is tiny, with around a dozen tables and a bar with a handful of seats, and a good chunk of the real estate in the building is taken up by Chris’ kitchen and brick oven, which means that you can shower him with gratitude after you’ve experienced his pizza. From chatting with him and reading about him (here and here and here), I understand now that that is what he wants – to have you not just eat the food or enjoy it, but to experience it, to leave having had a magical experience that reminds you – as it did me – of how wonderful food can be.

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→ 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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→ October 13, 2007
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Phoenix revisited.

Not much new to report on for this trip to Phoenix. I made another visit to the Phoenix Ranch Market – still the best burrito with carnitas I’ve ever had, for just under $5, as well as phenomenal Mexican cookies (40¢ each) and aguas frescas, to Honey Bear’s BBQ, and to the Gelato Spot (try the coconut gelato), as well as the obligatory stop at In-n-Out. The new spots I hit weren’t much to rave about:

• Cien Agaves is a sort of upscale tacos-and-tequila place in Old Town Scottsdale that opened just over a week ago. I was there during Happy Hour, when all of their tacos are $3. The lobster taco is supposedly their best (ordinarily $7), but the lobster meat is chopped rather finely and is heavily spiced, so the delicate flavor of the lobster is obliterated. The fish taco was excellent, with the fish perfectly fried with a cornmeal breading and just a small amount of the lime-cilantro sauce. The shrimp taco carried some of the same spices as the lobster, but shrimp can better withstand that level of flavor and heat. But the main problem with Cien Agaves is their lack of quality control. I ordered a grilled corn side dish – one ear at $3 – and what came was a bland ear of corn, grilled inside the husk, then opened and doused in butter with a heavy dose of cayenne pepper. And the first corn that came out had a rotten spot on it. The server took it back, brought another one out five minutes later, and explained that he had to throw three others out that had similar rotting issues. Not exactly a confidence-booster – and the corn wasn’t taken off the check. They’ve been open for a week; they won’t be open for a year.
• Tacos al Caporal is a tiny Mexican place in a strip mall on Country Club Rd in Mesa. It looks like a family-run operation, and no one there speaks English, although all of the items on the menu will be familiar to anyone who’s eaten at an Americanized Mexican place. The tacos here are $1-$1.50 each and are very small; they’re served just as meat on corn tortillas, and you can fix the tacos yourself at a small “salsa bar” that has green and red salsas, chopped onions, and shredded lettuce, all sitting on a bed of ice. The taco al pastor was a particular hit, although the carne asada and carnitas tacos were also good. They offer two or three flavors of aguas frescas, including a not-too-sweet tamarind. The only worry here is that the place was empty on a Wednesday night around 6 pm.
• Bandarang, in Mesa on Country Club near Route 60, has received some positive writeups online, but the food was bland and their lunch special setup leaves a lot to be desired. The chicken in sweet basil sauce had a lot of red chili flakes in it, but no heat, and no real basil flavor other than the leaves served as garnish. The white jasmine rice that came with the dish had been cooked at least a half-hour previously and kept warm, and the side dishes that come with the lunch special (fried rice, fried wontons, and vegetarian pad thai) are all kept lukewarm on a side table to be served buffet-style. They seem to draw a good crowd, so there’s some turnover, but my rule of thumb is that if it’s not hot, it’s spoiled.

But seriously – go to Phoenix Ranch Market. It’s cheap, it’s authentic, and it is ridiculously good.

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→ November 5, 2006
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Four days in Phoenix.

The trip to Phoenix didn’t produce any story gems like the St. Louis trip did, but it definitely had its share of good eats, even if I did make a few heretical stops at chain restaurants.

I arrived too late to get to Scottsdale Stadium in time for batting practice, so I shot up Scottsdale Road to a sushi place called Sapporo that I’d been to three times before and considered one of the better sushi joints I’ve been to in the U.S. (It’s also the place where I was when I learned that Darryl Kile had been found dead in his hotel room, something that came back to me when I walked over to the spot in the restaurant where I stood when I took that phone call.) I sat at the sushi bar, figuring I wanted to eat as quickly as possible to get to the game on time, and ordered Too Much Sushiâ„¢, a problem I tend to have when eating alone at sushi restaurants. I also went for their house salad, which turned out to be a lot more ornate than the typical green salad you get in sushi places but with the same ginger dressing, which is really all that matters. The sushi was good but slightly disappointing; I thought the sake (salmon) was a little bland, and the unagi(freshwater eel) wasn’t slightly warm like it usually is. The spicy tuna rolls were very good, but could have been a bit spicier. Anyway, I was pretty sure I’d exceeded my per diem – I’m responsibly for anything I spend over that amount – on just one meal, but when I got the bill, it was $21. Turns out that everything is discounted for happy hour, making that meal the best sushi deal I’ve ever gotten. I know Tony Bourdain warns people to run away from “discount sushi,” but this particular discount is OK.

Café Carumba, a rare high-end restaurant that serves all three meals, was a major find for breakfast, and I wish I’d had a few more days there to work my way through the breakfast menu. I hate doing the eggs/sausage-or-bacon thing every day while I travel – once per trip is usually enough – but it’s hard to find an alternative. (The hotel wanted $10 for its crappy buffet; I wasn’t warm to the idea of giving them $10 for a container of yogurt and a stale pastry.) At Carumba, I did do the eggs-sausage-toast bit, since it’s my usual test dish for a breakfast spot. The sausage patties were delicious, probably house-made, lightly spiced and not too porky. The eggs were overcooked, although I have to admit that they were generous with the portions; apparently the menu’s reference to “two eggs” meant ostrich eggs. The rosemary potato wedges were a little dry, but the flavor was excellent. But what caught my eye was the yogurt-and-granola dish for $5, enough to pull me back the next morning. I don’t know where the granola came from, but it was superb, not too sweet (since the yogurt is already sweetened – I don’t need a sugar rush at 9 a.m.) and with a little cinnamon, and the bowl was topped with a sliced fresh strawberry. That, an English muffin that turned out to be free because the server forgot to bring it out with the yogurt dish, and a cup of hot tea (they serve Tazo) ran $9 with tip. Whenever I get back to Phoenix, my first breakfast stop will be at Carumba for their migas, which they make with chorizo sausage; my failure to try them stands as my major food regret of the trip. Heavy, spicy food isn’t really the ideal breakfast in my book, but this is the sort of sacrifice one has to make from time to time.

Wednesday’s lunch was a trip to Phoenix Ranch Market, something of a religious experience for people who like to cook; it’s a huge Mexican grocery store that also features a large food court. Any time I walk into an ethnic restaurant or store and find it packed with members of that ethnicity (and, therefore, not with people who look like I do), I figure I’m in the right spot. Indeed, despite the fact that the woman who took my order was so flustered by the prior customer’s inability to make up her mind that my burrito ended up an all-carnitas version instead of carnitas with rice and beans, I’m still a huge fan. That plus an enormous tamarind juice that I couldn’t finish ran $7, and I left with three Mexican cookies that cost $1 – two were just like oversized Italian butter cookies, and the third was a cocol, a sort of Mexican sweet bread (not sweetbread) flavored with anise seeds that didn’t thrill me. The food court also offered ice cream, cakes and other pastries, and plenty of other lunch options like enchiladas, tacos, etc. The carnitas, by the way, were served without any sauce (which may be traditional, but it was new to me), but had all the flavor of an excellent barbequed pulled pork.

Wednesday’s dinner and Thursday’s lunch were at chain restaurants. I was in Peoria and options were limited. We’re just going to pretend that those meals never happened.

Friday was the best eating day of the trip, which is typical, since it was also the last eating day of the trip. Breakfast was the aforementioned yogurt meal at Carumba. Lunch was an unusual plate at the Blue Adobe Grill in Mesa, less than a mile from their ballpark. The food is New Mexican cuisine (as in, from New Mexico), and the quality was extremely high. But apparently I’m not a huge fan of the red chile, at least not the varieties used in the cuisine of New Mexico. The carne adovada enchilada had a perfectly good piece of slow-roasted pork that came in an extremely bitter and somewhat spicy red adobo sauce. I’m told that this is normal. Why people would willingly eat something so bitter is beyond me; the only things that should taste that bad are medicine. The bitterness overwhelmed the spiciness and the sweetness that I think lay hidden underneath. I don’t think this is a fault of the cook; I think this is how it’s supposed to taste, and suddenly I’m not so sure that a week in Santa Fe is on my list of vacations to take. The red chile rice was better, with less bitterness but less heat, and the “shredded” beef taco (served on two soft corn tortillas with shredded cabbage) was excellent; the beef was more pulled than anything else, and it was a pleasant surprise to have a taco that wasn’t made with ground beef cooked within an inch of its life. The meal’s highlight was actually the smoky green salsa that came with warm tortilla chips to start the meal. I was tempted to take the salsa with me, but my only potential vessel was a pant pocket, and I thought the salsa might ruin my cell phone.

Friday’s dinner was my one meal with companions, Jeff Erickson of Rotowire and my occasional comrade-in-forks Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus. Looking for a quick meal between BP and the game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, we hit Honey Bear’s BBQ, a rather, um, unassuming little building on Van Buren just west of the 202. Smoke was pouring out of the back of the building, and once I determined that the place was not on fire, I took it as a good omen. I got greedy and went for the pulled pork, baked beans, and peach cobbler, which ran about $9 including a drink. The pork was excellent, very tender with good smoky flavor, and Joe and I had an extended discussion on the sauce, eventually concluding that the cook was going for a pan-American sauce, with some vinegar (North Carolina), mustard (South Carolina), and sweet (Memphis) flavors coming through. The beans were also plus, with bits of their hot links inside; Joe had a hot link sandwich, and gave it a thumbs up. Their links are hot but not killer-hot and were extremely juicy. The cobbler was good, although the layers of dough ended up a little gummy from sitting there while I ate everything else. Jeff got the ribs and thought they were good, but not as tender as promised (they claim “You don’t need no teeth to eat our meat!”). It was an incredible find by way of Google Maps and Chowhound, and I was still full three hours later.

Next year’s goal will be a chain-free trip to Phoenix. I’m optimistic; there are a lot of good eats to be had in that town, and I think I only scratched the surface of the Mexican scene.

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