Food & Drink

Forest Hamrick, the chef de cuisine at La Hacienda, has a thing about tacos: keep it simple. “As long as you have the flavors that just kind of explode, the simpler the better,” Hamrick says. “The more stuff you pile into it, it really takes away and you don’t really know what you’re eating.”

Today, he shares his simple but delicious recipe for tacos de langosta, but make sure to get quality ingredients so the taste pops.

With the sweet smell of caramelized sugar floating from his white catering truck, Chef Eric Ireland plays with fire on a daily basis.   In fact, when he’s not concocting next week’s flavors or updating his faithful followers about his next stop, that’s pretty much all he does. As a…

For years, I’ve been keeping a mental checklist of things I’d like to see in downtown Phoenix, especially in the way of restaurants. So much seems ripe for the taking — there’s no French, no Vietnamese, no Spanish. Being a shameless Japanophile, I’ve longed for an authentic izakaya where I…

The Jamaican oxtail soup at Starlight Cuisine is nothing short of a religious experience — tender meat falling off the bone, with lima beans and thick, doughy pods called “spinners” bathed in a rich, spice-filled gravy that regulars order by the cupful. But for Janet and Trevor Brown, owners of…

Classic Caribbean fare with a little help from above? It’s got to be Starlight Cuisine. “People will just order the gravy,” owner Janet Brown tells me of the spice-filled sauce she uses in her oxtail soup. “They take cupfuls of it home and just pour it over their regular food.”…

Hungry yet? We’re working up our appetites for our huge Best of Phoenix issue, out September 30, with daily servings of Chow Bella’s 100 Favorite Dishes from across the Valley — in no particular order Leave your suggestions for upcoming favorites in the comments section. Visit our sister blog, Jackalope…

It was only a matter of time before the gastropub craze hit Tempe. Don Lococo, one-time executive chef of Pennsylvania’s Eden Resort and former owner of Appetitos and The Hideaway, is readying to open Spitfire Grill & Tavern at 1706 E. Warner Rd. in south Tempe.   “We have completely redone the…

Chef Forest Hamrick, a nursing school dropout, abandoned the sickly when he was tired of school and has been feeding the healthy flavorful modern Mexican at La Hacienda for five years (well, seven, minus the two-year hiatus).

Watching actress Drew Barrymore chow down on some Buffalo wings in her latest rom-com Going the Distance — her face slathered in sticky orange goo and creamy white sauce — got me all hot and bothered. Hot for some crispy, golden wings, that is. Offered in varieties from grilled and dry rubbed to deep-fried…

Earlier we listed for you a Challah round up including bakeries, delis and markets around town to find Rosh Hashanah fixins’. For us, a holiday meal just isn’t the same without the aroma of home made food pulling us to the table. The scent of freshly baked bread ranks right…