Pigtails Downtown interior | Photo by Nikki Buchanan Maybe I’ve read The Great Gatsby too many times, but I’m fascinated by the speakeasies of the ’20s and early ’30s — back when bars, liquor and the drinking of liquor were made illegal by the Volstead Act, which, of course, just encouraged people to seek out illegal bars selling illegal liquor, where they could happily drink illegally as long as they did it quietly...
Photo by Mirelle Inglefield If you’ve fallen in love with Chula Seafood and its many-splendored oceanic options — the poke bowls, the confit tuna sandwich, the Hatch chile tuna melt, the CA burrito, the chowder, the oysters, the daily specials — then you’ll be thrilled to know there’s a third location in the works. The new Chula will be in the former Hi-Health space in Hayden Peak Crossing at Hayden and Thompson Peak Parkway....
I went to Flagstaff for a few days and, as always, loved everything about it — the weather, the NAU campus, the little shops and most of all, the fantastic restaurants. Here’s what I ate and loved. Tinderbox Kitchen 34 S. San Francisco St., 928-226-8400, tinderboxkitchen.com Owner Kevin Heinonen took advantage of the downtime during the pandemic to kick things up a notch at Tinderbox, refurbishing his cozy space and upgrading the menu. I had...
For many of us Westerners, the word “Babel” conjures the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, erected by Babylonians who aimed to reach for the heavens and incurred God’s wrath for their arrogance. But that’s not where Marwan Kandeel, the owner of De Babel — an upbeat Middle Eastern fast-casual in North Scottsdale — was going with the name at all. “Babel” is also the Hebrew word for Babylon, one of the ancient world’s...
If you made it to Sherpa Kitchen in 2020, before the pandemic caused Subash and Chandra Yadav to close their doors in November of that year, then you know what a wonderful addition to the food community it was: a small, inviting Nepali restaurant born of a food truck (Everest Momo) beloved for its handmade Nepali dumplings called momos. Steamed or deep-fried, they were a revelation, whether set afloat in nourishing broth or tossed in...
I fell in love with the Hawaiian plate lunch back in the ’80s. Not in Hawaii, where I somehow missed it, but at Aloha Kitchen in Mesa, the first Hawaiian fast-casual in town, if memory serves. Of course, nowadays, island cuisine can be found all over the Valley, and one of the newest places for an excellent Hawaiian plate lunch is Maui Hawaiian Grill in Tempe. It’s a clean, well-lit place, but I can’t help noticing that men outnumber women here by something like 10-to-1, and I’m pretty...
Tiki-inspired but not cloyingly tiki, this tall poolside sipper combines premium white rum and Brazilian cachaça with rosy-hued Ramazzotti Aperitivo Rosato.
Valley super chef Christopher Gross emerges from a three-year hiatus to lead a wildly decadent multi-course odyssey.
Dining critic Nikki Buchanan lists her Best of the Valley food picks for 2021.
Photo by Nikki Buchanan I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but somewhere along the line, “namaste,” considered nothing more than a respectful greeting of “hello” in India, evolved into something much more profound here in the States. Routinely repeated in yoga classes across the land, it’s come to represent spirituality and deep reservoirs of calmness and peace . . . and then SNL and social media got ahold of it. Here’s a typical...
Photo by Debby Wolvos I love Flagstaff. Love the weather, love NAU, love the funky stores and, most of all, love the growing food scene. Obviously, executive chef/partner Rochelle Daniel of Fat Ox in Scottsdale sees the potential there, too. She’s opening a Modern American restaurant called Atria in downtown Flag late this summer (August, if we’re lucky), moving into the intimate, airy space that most recently housed La Vetta Ristorante Italiano. Daniel says...
Got a dream of opening your own restaurant? Start with a pop-up. That’s the savvy direction budding restaurateurs are taking these days, given that pop-ups offer an inexpensive way to test locations, menu items and concepts, generate buzz, build an audience, and gain credibility. Cassie Shortino is following that very path, having recently left her position as the executive chef at Tratto to start Shorty’s Charpit, a pop-up she will hold once or twice a...
When Tony Andiario left Tratto four-ish years ago, I worried that the place would not be the same without him. Then Cassie Shortino, who had been working for Cullen Campbell at Crudo before it closed, stepped in and filled those shoes like a boss. I remember arguing back then with a food-loving pal of mine about the virtues of Andiario’s elegant chicken liver mousse versus Shortino’s far more rustic seared chicken livers with strawberry jam...
Que Chevere — the brick-and-mortar Venezuelan restaurant in downtown Mesa that evolved from a popular food truck of the same name — has been around almost a year, and I marvel that I never found it before. Maybe I’ll just blame that little lapse on the pandemic. Owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Orvid Cutler and Maria Fernanda (he manages, she cooks), it’s a plainly furnished but charming little spot whose good vibes come from...
There was a day when Mexican food here in Phoenix meant just one thing — an Americanized hybrid cuisine that generally involved globs of yellow melted cheese. I’m not complaining. I grew up on the stuff, and I still love it to this day. But it’s pretty cool that over the past 20 years or so, we’ve been introduced to more and more regional specialties that demonstrate the vastness and nuance of Mexican cooking —...
