Silk Road cocktail | Photo by Sara Crocker Can a cocktail evoke a sense of place and memory? It’s the ambitious question that underpins the experience at Khla, a new Roosevelt Row-adjacent alley bar fronted by the team that brought Phonecians the playful cocktail-slinging camper Baby Boy. “At the end of the day, we were chasing childhood ingredients, stuff that we grew up eating that wasn’t as popular then as it is today,” co-owner Tyka...
How many of us would love to go back to that carefree feeling of frolicking around the playground as a child? Indeed, it would be pretty cool to relive those memories as an adult – perhaps even with a cocktail in hand. Good news for the young at heart: Recreo, a new playground-themed restaurant in downtown Chandler, is serving up inventive eats and playful cocktails with a serious side of nostalgia. The expansive patio and...
When Espiritu opened last January, it was cast as a bar not a restaurant, a let’s-get-crazy play place for drinkers unashamed to admit they like getting a little toasty. Under the short cocktail menu (five regular cocktails and one daily special) is a section called “Shots & Other Mistakes,” featuring nine possibly bad decisions (their verbiage, not mine). Here, you’ll find wild concoctions given hilarious names and descriptions, including Yeetlejuice (Jaeger cold brew, pineapple amaro,...
‘Tis the season for holiday imbibing! Eat, drink and be merry at these four festive pop-up concepts at local bars and restaurants. Feliz Navidad Cantina at Salt and Lime Modern Mexican Grill This over-the-top pop-up concept was first introduced last year. It’s even bigger and better in 2021, complete with floor-to-ceiling Christmas decorations, festive food and drinks, servers decked out in holiday garb and weekly visits from Santa and the Grinch. The pop-up will run...
Photo courtesy Tarbell’s When you dine at Tarbell’s, you will embark on an odyssey of opposites. This, you’ll soon learn, is a large part of its lasting charm. Mark Tarbell opened the restaurant in 1994 to immediate acclaim. The eatery soon became synonymous with fine dining in the Valley, attracting a welter of well-heeled patrons and possessing a certain je ne sais quoi that generated a positive buzz. Nearly three decades later, the Tarbell’s...
Both Aioli Gourmet Burgers and Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour are all about being innovative and ever evolving. The two award-winning concepts are now joining forces to bring an expanded menu of elevated street food to Downtown Phoenix. Aioli’s executive chef, Vicktor Velez, has taken the reins as the head of B & T’s in-house food program, introducing a gourmet, globally influenced menu that pairs perfectly with the cocktails at the lauded Downtown lounge. Bitter...
Photo by Leah LeMoine THE SCENE To stay connected during the pandemic – and to nurture our shared love of cooking – my friend Kristy suggested a weekly FaceTime cooking date. Her proposal: We’d take turns selecting recipes to cook along with the other, virtually. A cooking club for two? I said yes without hesitation. We started Quarantine Culinarians in July 2020 and have miraculously kept it up since, with a few skipped weeks and a brief hiatus this past summer. (I promise this will lead to a happy hour write-up – just stay with...
Blue Hound Kitchen & Cocktails at the Hotel Palomar in Downtown Phoenix has long been lauded for its creative cocktail program and deftly executed New American dishes. Now, the restaurant has a new chef, who recently revamped the menu to reflect the vibrancy and energy of its location and quality ingredients from local farmers. Blue Hound also launched an all-new drink lineup, a coterie of cocktails that pair perfectly with the thoughtful fare coming out...
Rough Rider interior | Photo by Madison Rutherford This Theodore Roosevelt-themed bar/restaurant fits in with its surroundings. For starters, a colorful portrait of the former president adorns one side of the Ten-O-One building where Rough Rider resides, not to mention its position in the heart of the Roosevelt Row arts district, which also houses Roosevelt-inspired beer bar The Theodore. The area is rife with homages to Roosevelt, most of which are done in tasteful...
The Mix Up Bar interior | Photo by Nikki Buchanan The Mix Up Bar, tucked away to the left of T. Cook’s at the Royal Palms Resort & Spa, is one of my favorite places to hang out over a cocktail. Like the lovely old resort in which it’s nestled, the room is gracious, intimate and — if you time it right — blessedly quiet, the kind of place where you might strike up...
When UnderTow, Phoenix’s premier underground cocktail lounge, moved from below Sip Coffee & Beer in Arcadia Lite to Century Grand next door, we’ve all been curious about what would occupy the intimate, 600-square-foot subterranean space. Would it be something equally as immersive? Would it offer similarly unique cocktails? Our questions were answered in early July when 36 Below, a Walipini greenhouse-inspired speakeasy officially opened. The new bar is the brainchild of Sip owners Josh Katz...
Photo courtesy Buck &Rider THE SCENE “I don’t eat seafood in landlocked states.” That sentence – along with its cousin, “Seafood in the desert? Pass.” – is up there on the list of trite refrains I regularly field from friends and relatives about dining in the Valley. When I hear someone say it, I have to fight a visceral urge to shake them and bellow, “Do you think we’re still in the 1950s?!” In a time before overnight shipping and advanced packing and cooling techniques, sure, you would have...
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 courtesy Studio Alcott For fans of creative cocktails with sweeping Valley views, the highly anticipated Don Woods’ Say When rooftop lounge is finally open in Uptown Phoenix. Cocktailian Ross Simon (of Bitter & Twisted and Little Rituals fame) heads up the beverage program at this vibrant retro rooftop bar. If you live in the Uptown area, you have probably driven by the enticing dark neon sign for more than a year, anticipating its...
Stay cool and start your summer off right with these fresh and fortifying libations from local bars and restaurants. Photo courtesy The Maggiore Group The Big Hash Tequila Sunrise from Hash Kitchen It takes two to make a thing go right – team up with a pal to partake in this chilled cocktail for two ($26) and cheers to the long weekend. Made with 100 percent blue agave tequila, muddled orange and pomegranate...