LOCAL PRODUCTS
Realtor Judy Jones started JJ’s Brownies in 2009 after she realized the brownies she was baking for open houses were helping her close deals.
“I actually closed a million-dollar home because of the brownies,” she says. A husband toured the home, ate some brownies, and brought his wife back
Drink This
If you can’t spend your summer whiling away the days on an island paradise, Mastro’s City Hall Steakhouse mixes up a fleeting taste of the tropics with its Get Kraken cocktail. One sip, and you’ll be transported to a chaise lounge under a palm tree or palapa-roof hut, the waves lapping at the white shore while you’re spritzed by a salty sea breeze.
SWEET SPOT
Looking for a low-risk investment with a high-flavor yield? Bank on the peach financier ($9) from J & G Steakhouse. Upgraded with Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s trademark Asian accents, this blue-chip French pastry (pronounced FEE-nan-cee-AY) epitomizes simple elegance.
Italy itself might close for business in August, but around the Valley, you can nosh all afternoon on bargain bruschetta, well-priced pastas and buono vino.
LOCAL PRODUCT
When husband-and-wife team Alberto della Casa and Letizia de Lucia – who have 35 years of combined food experience in the U.S. and Italy – decided to launch a new gelato shop, they collaborated with a champion Italian gelato artisan. Della Casa even attended Carpigiania Gelato University in Bologna, Italy. The result is an elegant Italian dessert shop located adjacent to the Scottsdale Center for the Arts.
Perfect rice and pitas propel this fast-casual mini chain to the upper cut of kebaberies.
As the tortilla is to Mexican food, the pita is to Middle Eastern and Mediterranean fare: the foundational, make-or-break breadstuff. Sadly, mediocre pitas often taste like a decade-old, two-ply paper towel. That’s blessedly not the case at Zaytoon, where pillowy, pliable pitas capably uphold the Platonic ideal.
From the owners of gourmet burger bastion The Grind comes this next-door paean to posh poultry.
I’m still dreaming of the chicken and dumplings at Chick. During my first visit, the mercury hit 112 degrees – hardly prime dumpling-ordering weather. But I ordered them anyway, and was rewarded with two softball-sized, dense-yet-pillowy buttermilk orbs, swimming in rich velouté with tender torn chicken ($8). I can still smell the heady perfume of rosemary, taste the slight sting of pepper, and feel the crunch of
Fine microbrews, portly portions, smooth service and a fun alfresco scene make a winning a combination at this Arcadia acronym.
O.H.S.O. is an acronym in search of meaning: It was originally slated to stand for “Our Homebrew Society,” but the owners realized O.H.S. looked like an abbreviation for a high school, so they added an extra “O.” Now, waiters say it means “oh so good,” and that’s as close to the truth as anything.
Contrary to popular belief, "eating well" and "spending little" can be synonymous. From $4 meatball hoagies to low-dollar delicacies from the best local kitchens, we present this definitive guide to the Valley's most bodacious bargain cuisine.
DRINK THIS: No. 9 Horchata Cocktail
Cream rises to the top, they say – as old adage that proves deliciously correct in the case of Windsor mixologist Matty Helland’s No. 9 cocktail, a milky-white concoction that beat out a bevy of contenders to win the critics’ pick at the Third Annual Devour Phoenix and Arroyo Vodka Bartending Competition in March. Helland starts with 1 ½ ounces of locally-made Arroyo Vodka infused with coriander seed,
Get a buzz off our Things to Do margarita-making primer in the July issue of PHOENIX magazine? The mixologists at haute-Mex-hotspot Mission in Scottsdale offer this avocado-boosted whistle-whetter.
Sweet Spot
Take a spoon, crack the Goldbrick, and it shatters into fragments that melt on the tongue, leaving creamy pools of milk chocolate. The best part of the pecan-studded topping, which hardens like glazed brick over ice cream, is just inside the icy goblet, where the sauce gathers into chunky ores. Rich vanilla ice cream is the perfect foil for malty-chocolate. This simple sundae is simply addictive.
LOCAL PRODUCT
Another wing sauce? Don’t roll your eyes until you’ve tasted this one. It’s blow-your-socks-off good. Kay Weldon, originally from South Korea, owned a Japanese restaurant in Albuquerque for 10 years in the 1990s. To compete with chain restaurants, she launched a lunch buffet, and there was one item on the menu that always sold out: glazed chicken wings.
After moving to the Valley, Weldon took a job as a dealer at a local casino, but she couldn’t stay out of the kitchen. She took her sweet and spicy wings to parties, where everyone asked for the recipe, and when she wouldn’t part with it, they told her she should “bottle and sell it.” So she did.
These chilly adult milkshakes, kissed with a bit of liquor, deliver the ultimate brain freeze.
