The Reign of Spain: It not only wasn’t broke, it was running in tip-top condition. But the culinary team at the Scottsdale Princess resort decided to fix it anyway. And I’m crushed. What’s been “fixed” is the swanky Marquesa, one of the best restaurants in this time zone. Over the…
Coronado Cafe, 2201 North Seventh Street, Phoenix, 602-258-5149. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Lunch, Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday. “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” wrote the poet, “or what’s a heaven for?” The proprietors…
News You Can Use: Here comes the holiday season. How can you make yours a little more memorable? • The American Heart Association doesn’t want you eating your heart out. So it’s presenting a series of classes/dinners, presided over by some big-name Valley chefs. All the recipes adhere to the…
Central Bistro, 5202 North Central, Phoenix, 602-234-2768. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday, 2 to 11 p.m. Closed Sunday. Real estate experts know that certain businesses and certain locations don’t mesh. You shouldn’t put a fine chinaware…
Book Notes: A new restaurant guidebook should be hitting the stores any time now: 100 Best Restaurants in Arizona, 2000-2001, by Harry and Trudy Plate (Kelton Publishing, $9.95). The guide has appeared biennially since 1977. The current edition should make a decent stocking stuffer, if you’re interested in an undemanding…
Madera Grille, 6601 West Bethany Home, Glendale, 623-847-1847. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The west-side restaurant scene could use some help. Fine dining? You’d have better luck scouring the avenues looking for the Loch Ness monster. Meanwhile, every chain restaurant on the planet…
Gourmet Goofs: Every October, Gourmet magazine puts out its annual restaurant issue. Readers in North America’s major cities are polled, and the results trumpeted across the pages. As you might expect, the poll tells you a lot more about the readers than it does about the restaurants. I should know,…
Seasons Rotisserie & Grill, 10050 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, 480-443-1300. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 5:30 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. When a bunch of jocks get together and open a restaurant, you can usually count…
Fish Story: On one visit, Seasons Rotisserie & Grill (see this week’s Cafe review) offered a tempting seafood special: pan-seared escolar, served with a calypso bean-cremini mushroom ragout, watercress and lemon-sage aioli. Fashionable and delicious, escolar started showing up on Valley menus about five years ago. Found in the tropical…
The man in the black fisherman’s cap reminds you at once of Timothy Leary in his later years — minus the drugs. Mind-altering substances, to be sure, do not define the life of Hans Traulsen. Rather, he marks his own 86-year-long “trip” with much more laudable escapes. The first, his…
I’m going to say something that goes against my own conscience and the warnings of the U.S. surgeon general. You single women out there: If you want to be a player in the Valley mating dance, you’d better be holding something like a Macanudo Petite between your fingers. I’ve recently…
Ten years is a long time. When I moved here from California a decade ago, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I was thrilled with the affordable housing. I was thrilled that my kids could walk to school unescorted. I was thrilled that my car insurance rates…
LEO the Delicatessen, 5101 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, 480-941-4477. Hours: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, Tuesday through Sunday, 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Call me the Deli Lama. Like my Tibetan counterpart, I’ve spent a long time in exile, far from the native foods of the Brooklyn streets of my youth…
Cell-ibate: Attention, restaurant owners! It’s time to take a stand. Right next to the “No Smoking” sign, please put up a big picture of a cell phone surrounded by a circle, with a red slash running through it. I find it astonishing that diners who wouldn’t otherwise dream of, say,…
Edward’s of Scottsdale, 9619 North Hayden (Mountain View Plaza), Scottsdale, 480-9223567. Hours: Dinner, Monday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to close. “There is no new thing under the sun,” according to Ecclesiastes. So much for unerring Biblical certainty. Obviously, the man has never been to Scottsdale. How else can you explain…
Give Me a Pizza Your Heart: No one in America had thought to put exotic toppings on pizza until two decades ago, when Wolfgang Puck pushed the envelope at Spago. Suddenly, pizzas heaped with barbecued Thai chicken, goat cheese and escargots became the rage. Still, after all these years, the…
Cafe Express, 2525 East Camelback (Shops at the Esplanade), Phoenix, 602-522-9199. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. Self-service restaurants have never had much of a culinary reputation. Who can think of cafeterias without recalling the dreaded high school lunch hour? Remember reluctantly pushing…
Bay Tripper: It’s easy for food lovers to leave their hearts in San Francisco. It’s even easier for them to leave their wallets there. But when I visit, I don’t blow big bucks eating in this town’s world-class restaurants. I head for North Beach and Chinatown, in search of the…
Tequila Grill, 4363 North 75th Street, Scottsdale, 480-941-1800. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week; bar stays open until 1 a.m. Almost 500 years ago, Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado led an expedition through the American Southwest, searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola…
Rules of the Game: One of the great benefits of this job is all the perks I’m offered: fabulous weekends at first-class resorts, stacks of invitations to dine on the house at the swankiest restaurants, bottles of fine wine in my mailbox. And one of the great drawbacks of this…
In New York City, there are more Jews than in Tel Aviv and more Puerto Ricans than in San Juan. Guatemalans in Los Angeles outnumber those in every Guatemalan city except the capital. Count just L.A.’s Iranians, and the city’s population would still top Baltimore’s. Only Warsaw has more Poles…
Witness for the Prosciutto: Should a restaurant reveal a dish’s every ingredient on its menu? That’s the question a reader asked me, after an upsetting experience at an Italian restaurant. It seems the couple, neither of whom ate red meat, ordered chicken parmigiana. They expected a chicken breast draped with…
