Western Europe

Developed in the kitchens of both monarchs and paupers, the food of Western Europe is woven into the fabric of American life and has largely dictated the course of “modern” cuisine worldwide. From Irish pub grub to French molecular gastronomy, the Valley is replete.

by Nikki Buchanan, Leah LeMoine, Craig Outhier & Madison Rutherford

Austria is to Germany as Eritrea is to Ethiopia, culinarily speaking: So similar that most people don’t care to distinguish them. To find quote-unquote Austrian food in the Valley, you’ll definitely have to scour some German menus – like that at Haus Murphy’s in Glendale (hausmurphys.com), which serves käsespätzle, a dish jointly claimed by the two Teutonic countries, in which the egg noodle is smothered with melted Emmentaler cheese and sprinkled with fried onions.

It feels like the Valley should have a dedicated Belgian restaurant, doesn’t it? The country has given us so many gifts (Trappist beer, mussels, chocolate). Sadly, the best you’re likely to muster is a random moules frites. Or, more inventively, you can embark on a crawl of three Roosevelt-area breweries that specialize in Belgian beer styles: Roses by the Stairs (rosesbythestairsbrewing.com), Pedal Haus Brewery (pedalhausbrewery.com) and Grand Avenue Brewing Co. (grandavebrew.com).

Thank the whiskers of Odin for The Coffee Builders (thecoffeebuilders.com). If it wasn’t for the six-month-old Downtown sandwich shop and roastery, the Valley would have zero options for Danish cuisine. But because owner Thomas Porter is a bit of a Nordophile, we have smorrebrod, a traditional Danish open-face sandwich. Porter offers five versions, including the Avocado Dream, which arrives as a colorful explosion of microgreens, heirloom tomatoes and edible flowers, with a side of dill Havarti. It will ease you into another great Danish import: hygge (coziness).

Our global food sleuthing turned up nothing in terms of Finnish cuisine. No blood dumpling soup, no sautéed reindeer, no “squeaky cheese.” Stick to saunas, Finland friends.

glossary

waterzooi /wah-ter-zoo-OY/
A Flemish/Belgian stew of fish or chicken and vegetables, thickened with egg yolk and cream. We had no luck finding one in the Valley.

Arguably the world’s most exacting, academic food culture, France embarked on its modern culinary journey in the 17th century, when visionary chefs steered the country away from foreign influences adopted during medieval times and toward a distinct, indigenous style. Hardly just the sum of its heavy cream sauces, regional Friench variety can be found throughout the Valley.

Map It: France

Where to find French regional culinary treasures in the Valley.

Centre-Val de Loire

Cointreau was invented in the fancy Loire Valley. So were rilettes – pâté-like meat spreads preserved in their own fat. Chef Brandon Gauthier at Confluence (restaurantconference.com) in Carefree is known to play around with them, including luscious guinea hen rillettes with caperberry and cherry mostarda.

Burgundy

If you don’t cook it with wine, it doesn’t come from Burgundy. That axiom holds true with such Burgundian classics as coq au vin, pauchouse (seafood stew) and beef Bourguignon, a mainstay at Vincent Market Bistro in Phoenix (vincentsoncamelback.com/bistro).

Alsace

This Riesling-making eastern region is intermittently annexed by Germany, so sausages are a big deal, along with terrine, a kind of fatty meatloaf. Voila French Bistro in Scottsdale (voilafrenchbistro.com) serves a duck foie gras terrine with onion marmalade.

German food is often characterized as German people are characterized: hidebound, indelicate, too much pounding. We beg to differ! (About the food, not necessarily the people.) When you have good German cooking, you realize just how deep and artfully contrasted it can be. By our count, circa 2024, the Valley has five German restaurants, so opportunities are there.

“Irish people actually don’t eat much corned beef and cabbage… that’s an Irish-American thing,” says Ciara Archer of the Irish Cultural Center in Phoenix, dropping a giant truth-bomb right into the lap of our Irish food coverage. So, what do actual Irish people love? “Curry chips!” she says. “But they’re hard to find in Phoenix.” So warned, we stayed with the classics.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Archer says there has been a modest boomerang effect with the iconic dish. “You actually see it in Ireland more, because of how popular it’s gotten here.” The version at Downtown pub Seamus McCaffrey’s (seamusmccaffreys.com) is our gold standard.   

Cottage Pie

Usually, this is what you’re ordering when you think you’re ordering shepherd’s pie (it’s made with ground beef, while the latter is made with lamb). Irish Wolfhound Pub (irishwolfhoundpub.com) in Surprise gets our vote, because the mashed potato layer undergoes an additional broil to give it a toasty potato pate.

“Full Irish” Breakfast

Archer says this is the most underappreciated of Irish food traditions in the U.S. “Bacon, sausage, eggs, mushroom, tomatoes and – quite critically – black and white pudding,” she says, referring to blood sausage and its bloodless counterpart. Fibber Magee’s (fibbermageespub.com) in Chandler does a fine one.

No Valley restaurant to our knowledge sells or makes bitterballen, Holland’s uquitous, vinegar-kissed meatballs, found in any pub or restaurant worth its guilders. Nor could we find a rijsttafel, or “rice table,” which the Dutch owe to their colonial adventures in Indonesia. What we did find: stroopwafels at Valley coffee chain Press Coffee Roasters (presscoffee.com) – dense little sugary pastries to dip in your joe. Hey, what can we say? The Dutch don’t do food great. But their trains and bike lanes are nonpareil.

Longtime Uptown deli Cheese ‘n Stuff had a lutefisk sandwich on it menu at one point – but when we went down to try it, we were informed it didn’t survive the pandemic. Crushing!

For a country that partly lies inside the Arctic Circle and is icebound much of the year, Sweden does A-OK in the food department. Game meats like reindeer and bear are widely consumed in the frozen north, where many residents descend from the Sámi, a Finno-Ugric tribe; while the temperate south can lean more into vegetables and fruits – most notably, their beloved lingonberry.

The concept of “British cuisine” is sometimes used as a punchline – and let’s be honest, sometimes it deserves to be a punchline. (“Jellied eels”? WTF?) But plenty of highly edible stuff has come out of the country, too – particularly if you expand the net to include all of the U.K.

Cornwall

Pasties originated in this rugged Southern county, don’t you know? And pasties don’t get more Cornwallian than the Oggie at Cornish Pasty Co. (cornishpastyco.com): steak, potato, onion and slightly peppery rutabaga, encased with gravy in a toasty turnover.

Yorkshire

Does anything come out of Yorkshire besides Yorkshire pudding? Uh, asparagus? Get a roll at Phoenix pub fixture George & Dragon (gndphx.com).

Scotland

Braveheart Country is the birthplace of shepherd’s pie and, perhaps more impressively, tikka masala, a sweet, ocherous curry concocted by immigrant chefs to beguile Scottish tastebuds. Order one at India Palace (indiapalacephoenixaz.com) and tell ‘em how much you “lo’ Scottish scran.”

London

Jewish immigrant Joseph Malin opened the first fish-and-chips shop in East London in 1860, and we remain grateful. Locally, Hundred Mile Brewing Co. (hundredmilebrewing.com) in Tempe does a nice version with rockfish and beer vinegar.

Wales

One thing they do well in Great Britain’s Celtic stepchild: leeks! The onion-ish plants are turned into a nice leek soup at Cornish Pasty Co. Enjoy it with your Oggie

glossary

stargazy pie /star-GAY-zee pie/
A pastry-based seafood pie endemic to Cornwall in which the baked fish, a small, salty breed known as pilchards, poke out the top of crust, as if looking at the sky.