{"id":9589,"date":"2022-10-21T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9589"},"modified":"2022-10-21T00:54:50","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T04:54:50","slug":"arizona-eats-fall-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/21\/arizona-eats-fall-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona eats, Fall 2022."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The best new place I ate on the trip was the first: CRUjiente Tacos<\/a>, an upscale taqueria just east of the Biltmore and north of Arcadia, featuring tacos with non-traditional fillings. I went with three \u2013 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 ch\u00e8vre and a jalape\u00f1o 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phoenix Coqui<\/a> 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 \u2026 but I\u2019ve had mofongo multiple times in Puerto Rico, and I have realized it\u2019s just too heavy for me. So I went for two of Coqui\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sushi Sen<\/a> popped up on an Eater list of the best sushi places in Phoenix, which, yes, I understand that\u2019s 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\u00ad <\/em>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\u2019d go out of my way to eat, and it\u2019s definitely better value than quality. I think it\u2019s better than \u201caverage\u201d sushi, but I also think average sushi isn\u2019t worth eating (or depleting the oceans), so take that for what it\u2019s worth. The non-sushi items were a mixed bag \u2013 the cucumber salad with octopus was solid, the calamari tempura was rubbery \u2013 while the various nigiri <\/em>I had were all about the same except for the maguro<\/em> (tuna), which had a flavor I couldn\u2019t identify but that I definitely did not like. The portions on the nigiri<\/em> 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\u2019t just the scrapings off the skin of a tuna loin but much larger pieces (and I didn\u2019t detect that same off flavor, so maybe the sauce muted it); and the yellowtail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took one for the team and tried Caf\u00e9 Lalibela<\/a>, a modest Ethiopian caf\u00e9 and shop in Tempe that has shown up on multiple best-of-the-Valley lists. Ethiopian food isn\u2019t always my friend, and after eating it I feel like I am sweating berbere <\/em>out of my pores, but I love the food \u2013 it just doesn\u2019t love me back. It\u2019s also a tough cuisine if you don\u2019t eat (most) red meat, so I went with the one chicken option, doro wat<\/em>, along with their spicy collard greens (gomen<\/em>), along with injera<\/em>, the teff-flour pancake that you use to eat the food, tearing off pieces and wrapping bits of the food in it. I\u2019ve 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\u2019s been a while. I thought the doro wat<\/em> was fantastic, a little spicy but nothing I couldn\u2019t handle, with a deep, earthy flavor from the berbere<\/em>\u2019s coriander and caraway. I found the collards to be too bitter, though, in part because they had so little salt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tampopo Ramen<\/a> is a tiny ramen bar in Tempe, not far at all from the Cubs\u2019 ballpark, and after CRUjiente it was the best new place I tried. Their tonkotsu ramen is mellower than most I\u2019ve tried, in a positive way \u2013 same flavor profile, but less overwhelming. I might have done with more salt, but if you haven\u2019t noticed, that\u2019s a thing of mine. Anyway, the noodles are the real standout, as they\u2019re made fresh in-house every day. I added wakame and kikurage (mushrooms) to the main tonkotsu ramen, but when I go again, I\u2019d like to try the miso ramen to see if it gives me more of that salty kick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to sneak into Pizzeria Bianco for lunch on my last day there, but Chris Bianco\u2019s appearance on Chef\u2019s Table: Pizza<\/em> has generated new interest in his flagship restaurant, so I ended up at Blanco, a mostly-in-Arizona chain of Mexican restaurants. I wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for places I went that I\u2019d been before: Hillside Spot, Cr\u00eape Bar, Matt\u2019s Big Breakfast, Noble Eatery, Soi4, Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee, Frost Gelato. Sometimes, it\u2019s good to just play the hits, and they didn\u2019t disappoint. I was disappointed I couldn\u2019t slip over to FnB, my favorite restaurant in the Valley, but I would have been pushing it on time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2013 their Korean fried chicken taco, a fish taco, and a garlic mushroom taco. To my surprise, the last one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[566,587,176,235,1262,823,263,270,291,292,655],"class_list":["post-9589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arizona","tag-ethiopian-cuisine","tag-japanese-cuisine","tag-phoenix","tag-puerto-rican-cuisine","tag-ramen","tag-restaurants","tag-scottsdale","tag-sushi","tag-tacos","tag-tempe","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9590,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions\/9590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}