The latest from the Espiritu crew is not yet the well-oiled Mexican machine you might expect.
Seven years and multiple concepts removed from their humble taco shop beginnings, Armando Hernandez and Nadia Holguin score big-time with an ambitious Modern Mexican restaurant in Tempe.
Desert DigestFood & DrinkFirst Dish: Espiritu
Nikki BuchananApril 18, 2022
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,...
Desert DigestDiningOpenings/ClosingsChef Rene Andrade Opens Bacanora on Grand Avenue
Nikki BuchananFebruary 26, 2021
Great news for Downtown dwellers and the avant-garde peeps who appreciate Grand Avenue for its quirky coolness. Rene Andrade, the Nogales-born chef who garnered a following at Ghost Ranch, is opening his own Grand Avenue restaurant today in the tiny sunlit space that most recently housed Silvana Salcido Esparza’s Barrio Café Gran Reserva – and years before that, the historical Bragg’s Pie Factory and Bragg’s Pie Factory Diner. Andrade is calling his pie wedge-shaped place Bacanora, name-checking the little-known and underrated mezcal produced...