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.