At long last, Desert Ridge scores a culinary bullseye with this sexy, modern Southwestern restaurant from celebrity chef Angelo Sosa.
Like so many of us during this never-ending pandemic, the bigwigs at JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa felt the need to make a dramatic life change – specifically, to elevate the resort’s food and beverage game and make the property a dining destination. The result of their brainstorming is Tía Carmen, a breathtaking new Contemporary Southwestern restaurant capable of singlehandedly putting Desert Ridge – long a restaurant wasteland, let’s admit it – on the Valley’s culinary map. The honchos knew that playing with the big dogs would mean finding a chef with star power, and to that end, they recruited Angelo Sosa – famous for his multiple appearances on Bravo’s Top Chef and HBO Max’s Selena + Chef – to be the executive chef and photogenic celebrity face of Tía Carmen. In fact, the restaurant is named for Sosa’s Dominican aunt, who apparently fostered her nephew’s love of cooking. During his career, Sosa has worked for influential chefs (Ducasse, Vongerichten, Morimoto), opened Mexican restaurants on both coasts and written two cookbooks. He continues to consult in California, and the buzz around his first Arizona venture, a partnership with friend and restaurateur Mark Stone, has been nonstop since February.
For the most part, the hype is justified, beginning with the impressive dining space itself, a series of monochromatic rooms where arches, curves and muted earth tones evoke the wind-swept vastness of the desert. Meanwhile, aromas of wood smoke and meat waft from the wood-fired grill near the entrance, offering an olfactory aperitif before customers are even seated. To further advance the Southwestern ethos, mixologist Mitchel O. Bushell (Gran Blanco, Accomplice) makes effective use of local and artisanal spirits, enhancing them with Southwestern herbs and spices. Succinctly, pretty cocktails to complement Sosa’s pretty food. Sosa draws primary inspiration from Mexico and the American Southwest, partnering with local farmers, ranchers and food artisans to create a menu that reflects both time and place. He also adds small touches – Thai basil here, Sichuan peppercorn there – to convey our inevitable connectedness to other food cultures. This is not the Contemporary Southwestern of the ’80s, but rather his modern, personal take on it.
Every dish begs for an Instagram post, including Sosa’s already-famous tuna crudo. Silky bites of scarlet fish are set afloat in a golden corn broth, creamy with coconut. The broth is dotted with chile oil, the fish embellished with crunchy jicama, dill, cilantro and edible flower petals. Each bite is exactly as the menu promises: “light, bright and fresh,” though I wouldn’t mind a bit more chile heat or acid to balance out the sweetness.
Another ode to summer is found in the heirloom tomato salad set atop a swirl of smoky-sweet corn purée and sharpened with basil, pickled onions and serrano chile. It’s tangy, sweet and faintly spicy at once, brimming with juicy umami flavors.
Lamb ragu, a savory-sweet mixture of lamb, pork and carrots, blended with springy mesquite noodles, doesn’t seem summery at all, but it’s wonderful just the same, a rustic, earthy tribute to Arizona’s sheepherders.
Tostadas, heaped with pickled onions and fresh herbs, are infinitely better than I expected – true both of the ahi tuna version, smeared with guacamole and deepened with smoked chile oil, and the “taco night” beef tostada, a playful homage to the homestyle tacos of childhood. Amped up with bone marrow, it packs a fabulous umami punch. The first main dish of the evening, Baja striped bass, is gorgeous, topped with an airy Thai basil foam and mantled in a mahogany crust of tomatillo-based mole verde, crunchy with seeds and herbs. (Sadly, it’s a bit overcooked.) Chicken guisado, based on the real Tía Carmen’s own recipe, is a garlicky, Chimayó chile-sparked stew, studded with buttery green olives – tasty and homey, but ultimately unexciting. A Southwestern-spiced New York strip – topped with a glob of bone marrow butter and smoothed with chocolatey tepary bean mole negro, which is aged for 30 weeks – offers smoke, spice, fat and char, but a side of creamy yucca brûlée evokes the bigger “Wow!” Think burnished mashed potatoes, starchy to the nth degree.
Believe it or not, the most stunning dish of two visits is vegetarian: ember-roasted purple yams and tepary bean mole negro – essentially sweetness and earth – enveloped in an ivory queso sauce so luscious I want to lick the bowl. Dessert is just as mind-blowing. Creamy vanilla flan, set atop a puddle of tequila-spiked caramel, is blanketed in finely grated Manchego, adding a savory, salty quality I never knew I’d missed. I’ll admit, I was initially skeptical about Tía Carmen. After all, Sosa lives elsewhere and leaves the heavy lifting to his chef de cuisine, so I’m impervious to heart-warming narratives about “cooking with love.” But if the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the flan: Desert Ridge has its first destination restaurant.
Cuisine: Southwestern
Tía Carmen
Contact: 5350 E. Marriott Dr., Phoenix, 480-293-3636, tiacarmendesertridge.com
Hours: M-Su 7-11 a.m.; Su, Tu-Th 5-9 p.m.; F-Sa 5-10 p.m.
Highlights: Tuna crudo ($21); Taco Tuesday tostada ($20); ember-roasted purple yam ($22); lamb ragu and mesquite noodles ($20); vanilla flan ($13)
