A monthly look at Arizona wine with Valley dining impresario Pavle Milic.
If you’re looking for a reason to leave the Phoenix metropolitan area for a day, Maynard James Keenan just gave us another one. In addition to his hilltop trattoria and Queen B Vinyl Café on Pima Street, the Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards winemaker is opening a sushi restaurant, aptly named Queen B Sushi and inspired by his travels in Japan.
It lands at 816 N. Main Street in Cottonwood – the old 48 Wine Works building at the base of the trattoria – and opens September 4.
Chef Brett Vibber, culinary director for Maynard’s restaurants, leads the concept. Vibber spent nine years with esteemed Japanese restaurant Roka Akor – five coming up through the kitchen, four as executive chef in Chicago – and opened every one of their U.S. locations. Japanese cuisine has been the center of his cooking for 20 years.
To source his fish, Vibber’s answer is Chula Seafood, which runs product north now, plus Organic Ocean out of Vancouver, where he has spent a dozen years going out on the boats with the Canadian salmon and spot prawn fleets.
As per usual, and part and parcel with Maynard’s places, the vegetables come out of Merkin Gardens. He tells me they’re also running about six varieties of mushrooms – enoki, oyster, two kinds of lion’s mane – and pulled 60 pounds out of a single container last week.
What he’s pouring: All the Queen B wines, plus sparkling, mead, botanical spritzer, cider and Arizona Sake from Holbrook.
For the full swing, Queen B will have an omakase option: $125 a head with the whole table in, built on rare seasonal seafood, Merkin Gardens produce and Indigenous foraged wild foods.
Speaking as someone who toils in the food and wine business himself, I don’t believe Arizona has a one-two punch that sounds better than this.
Queen B Sushi
816 N. Main St., Cottonwood queenbsushi.com
