This wily, jungle-toned Tempe restaurant tops our short list for the year’s best new restaurant.
by Nikki Buchanan | Photography by Melissa Valladares
I don’t know what “filthy animal” conjures for you (I think Home Alone), but it’s the name dining impresario Teddy Myers (Wren & Wolf, Carry On) has given his new jungle-inspired restaurant in downtown Tempe, and the edgy moniker fits. Opulently decorated with animal prints, tropical plants and a life-size stuffed jaguar, the primal yet elegant space offers an immersive dining experience unlike any other in the Valley.
To echo this aura of adventure, executive chef Rene Vargas conjures a far-ranging global menu, teased with cuts of hanging meat in his open kitchen, waiting to be cooked on a wood-fired grill. Cocktails by beverage director Jax Donahue lend a similar whiff of exoticism. Especially good is the geeky, tiki-inspired Jungle Thyme and a potent but refreshing French 75 spin-off called the St. Laurent.
For the meal, we start with clover-shaped milk bread, crowned with miso-tomato butter – an irresistible combo. To follow: raw oysters, topped with refreshing aguachile foam and Fresno chile relish. Grilled oysters, submerged in gochujang butter and stretchy Chihuahua cheese, are heavier but no less delicious, while silky slips of yellowtail, dotted with avocado crema and edged with crispy quinoa, offer a summery take on tiradito, sweetened with grilled peaches in habanero-sparked passion fruit aguachile.
I especially love beef tartare served with crispy plantain chips. Lightly smoked in the wood fire, the raw beef comes scattered with capers, green onions and dots of yuzu kosho egg gel. A salad of smoked greens and charred avocado, sprinkled with black sesame seeds, is deliciously different, too. And who would have thought a vegan dish of wood-fired Napa cabbage, charred to a fare-thee-well and spiced with numbing mala, could be this ridiculously good? Like almost everything else, ancho-chile-glazed pork chop with linguiça fried rice brings the sweet and the heat together.
Finally, deconstructed, faintly savory miso cheesecake is fantastic, served with a mound of crunchy crushed graham cracker and a dollop of whipped white chocolate ganache, then given a tableside pour of sweet dulce de leche.
Under his Pretty Decent Concepts banner, Myers just keeps churning out hit after hit. And if you don’t believe it, you can “suck brick, kid.”
Filthy Animal
Cuisine: Modern American
Contact: 740 S. Mill Ave., Tempe, 480-397-1046, thisisfilthyanimal.com
Hours: M-Th, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; F, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sa, 4-11 p.m.; Su, 4-9 p.m.
Highlights: Milk bread ($7); grilled oysters ($19); beef tartare ($21); wood-fired Napa cabbage ($21); ancho chile pork chops ($36)
