High on celebrity chefs after stellar visits at Kembara and Uchi, our critic rolls the dice on two Richard Blais restaurants in Scottsdale.
by Nikki Buchanan | Photography by Jill McNamara
I’ve historically taken a dim view of celebrity chefs who use their star power to build multi-state empires. Essentially, they operate corporate restaurants – usually places in which they sporadically set foot, and hardly the personal, chef-driven gems their name on the door implies.
After all, where’s the local focus or indie vibe when the chef owns a dozen other restaurants and doesn’t live within 100 miles of the place? Where’s the love?
But after a handful of often-great meals at just such restaurants – namely, Angelo Sosa’s Tía Carmen and Kembara in North Phoenix and Tyson Cole’s Uchi in Old Town Scottsdale – I’ve amended this position. My new theorem: The food can be great if the local chefs executing their boss’s vision have the talent and dedication to make it so.
Recently, I put this idea to the test at the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale Resort, where Richard Blais – a Top Chef All-Stars winner, Food Network regular, James Beard Award-nominated cookbook author and serial restaurateur – partnered with the property to open four restaurants and two poolside dining concepts. Two of the restaurants are original concepts with ambitious culinary programs, so I visited them both.
My first stop was elegant La Zozzona (7500 E. Doubletree Ranch Rd., Scottsdale, 480-483-5590, lazozzona.com) which offers a high-end version of rustic Italian food given the occasional Southwestern flourish. Set in the recently modernized space once occupied by the Golden Swan (the resort’s fine-dining option back in the day), it’s the kind of multi-windowed, bring-the-outdoors-in room that makes you feel as if you’re on vacation whether you are or not.
Blais’s approachable menu offers something for every inclination and budget: affordable cicchetti (small snacks), salads and house-made pastas; as well as pricy seafood dishes, chops and steaks. Meals begin with complimentary flutes of Prosecco and bouncy, herb-flecked focaccia sided with pesto, hospitable touches that have all but disappeared these days. However, I wish I’d skipped the Basilic Grand, an expensive, gold leaf-garnished cocktail I expected to love for the fresh basil and Lillet-balsamic foam but found to be sloppily rendered and strangely one-dimensional.
On the flip side, I can’t think when I’ve had better arancini than Blais’s ultra-crunchy version, which boasts earthy complexity and lushness from a mix of broccolini, garlic and fontina cheese. Swiped in lemon aioli, they’re perfect bites. Also from the cicchetti section and just as wonderful is grilled artichoke toast, brightened with salsa verde and preserved lemon, then smoothed with whipped mascarpone. I’ve never been impressed with toasts, but this one bursts with flavor.
A simple baby iceberg lettuce salad – served in crunchy wedges along with pickled red onions, crisped pancetta, a gooey six-minute egg and Gorgonzola dressing – is far more than the sum of its familiar parts, while spinach cavatelli, tossed in walnut-asparagus pesto and set atop whipped mascarpone, is like nothing I’ve ever had before. The walnuts bring savory depth as contrast to grassy asparagus, while curls of baked prosciutto add salt and crunch. Whipped mascarpone and a shower of grated Parmesan provide layers of richness.
The chocolate hazelnut is the kind of old-school hotel dessert that allows pastry chefs to strut their stuff, combining chocolate cake, hazelnut crème, caramel, stracciatella gelato and praliné-cocoa sauce. It’s a stylish presentation you eat with your eyes and then just eat – to the last luscious spoonful.
I’m less enthusiastic about the food at Tiki Taka (7500 E. Doubletree Ranch Rd., Scotts-dale, 480-483-5591, tikitakascottsdale.com), Blais’s fusion-y Japan-meets-Spain concept that sometimes works beautifully and just as often falls flat. However, complimentary cups of sake get the meal off to a great start. I follow that with a feminine, pistachio-tinged Yuzu Delicious cocktail, which comes with a tiny cone of pistachios clipped to the coupe. These little touches please me.
The first thing out: hamachi pizza, its thin spring roll crust fried to crackly crispness. Strewn with yellowtail, onions, jalapeños, shimeji mushrooms, pepperoni-cured egg yolk and katsuobushi (umami-loaded shaved bonito flakes), it’s fun and delicious.
Japan’s savory comfort-food pancake, okonomiyaki, skews semi-traditional at Tiki Taka, topped with bacon strips, fried egg, sweet pickles, pickled jalapeños and cabbage, then painted with squiggles of mayo and a sweet, jazzed-up oyster sauce.
Similarly, I’m not sure what’s particularly Spanish or Japanese about a crispy soft shell crab sandwich, served on toasty bread with onions, peppers and black garlic, but I like it – even if it is a bit of a bread bomb.
Then come a few minor disappointments. Chorizo gyoza in no way represents an improvement upon or yummy alternative to traditional gyoza. The salty meat just doesn’t work, while nicely caramelized octopus skewers, topped with onions and other finery, can’t obscure the fact that both the octopus and the preparation could be better. I blame myself for ordering the oddball Second Try, a sushi roll containing picholine olive, shiso and yuzu kosho dill – ingredients I love separately but not in this briny, off-base assemblage.
Luckily, kakigori (shaved ice) – served with ube ice cream, mango sauce and sugared cream – redeems my Tiki Taka meal.
Consider my new celebrity-chef philosophy half-proven. I’d go back to La Zozzona in a heartbeat, but I’m not entirely sold on Tiki Taka.
La Zozzona
Cuisine: Italian
Hours: M, W-Su, 5-10 p.m.
Highlights: Broccolini, spring garlic and fontina arancini ($18); grilled artichoke toast ($17); baby iceberg salad ($17); spinach cavatelli ($24); chocolate hazelnut ($15)
Tiki Taka
Cuisine: Japanese Fusion
Hours: 5-10 p.m. daily
Highlights: Hamachi pizza ($25); Japanese pancake ($17); mango-ube kakigori ($9); soft shell crab sandwich ($23)
