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Dom Ruggiero has two superpowers. One is cooking; the other is sniffing out dodgy restaurant neighborhoods and making them cool. Case in point: his first restaurant, Hush Public House, set in a nondescript strip mall on Scottsdale Road near Thunderbird. Before Ruggiero showed up, who headed to that intersection for a fantastic, creative meal? Ever? Precisely no one. Now, customers haul butt to get to Hush when it opens at 5 p.m. to snag a...

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Photo by Nikki Buchanan    Sugar Jam, The Southern Kitchen is the inevitable next step for pretty Dana Dumas, who began baking sugar cookies with jam for friends and co-workers when she worked for NASCAR back in the early aughts. Their effusive praise encouraged her to start selling her cookies at farmers markets when she moved to the Valley with her husband over a decade ago, opening her own bake shop near Scottsdale Airpark in...