This news is bad enough to make any chocoholic ache with disappointment: Chatham Kitz, owner of Chatham’s Fine Chocolates, says he’ll be permanently closing the doors of his wonderful Camelback Road chocolate boutique by the end of this month. “We’ll be open ’til we sell all of our inventory, and that’s it,”…
Rumor has it that there’s been a split between Fate chef Johnny Chu (who recently opened Sens, the sake bar that I just reviewed) and owner/landlord Norman Fox, and that one of the key players involved in the restaurant has taken the liquor license. From the looks of the sign…
The first time I ever made coffee in my life, I almost killed somebody. It was my sophomore year in high school, and I was the “singer” in a punk/metal band called Legion of the Dead. The guitarist asked me to make coffee at practice one day, and, never having made coffee and with no frame of reference, I filled the coffee filter to the hilt with coffee grounds. The guitarist took one sip of the black brew and gasped. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
Eddie Matney Chef Eddie Matney is the owner of Eddie’s House in Scottsdale…
When I heard about Schreiner’s Fine Sausage — a family-owned business that’s provided Phoenix with fine meats since 1955 — I was ecstatic. As I approached the unassuming red-and-white building with retro-looking signs on Seventh Street, I felt like I was on a school field trip. Once inside, I gazed with salivating wonder at all the homemade meats in the deli case and fired off questions with carnivorous enthusiasm: “Is the Cajun Boudin sausage beef and pork?”; “Do you make your own veal loaf?”; “How spicy is the Jalapeno cheese sausage?” (The answers: No, yes, and not very).
David Johnson has wine on the brain. Why not? It runs in the family. He can trace his familial roots in the wine and spirits business back to 17th century Jacobite revolutionaries. As a sommelier in training, he spent years in Europe, honing both his palate and his craft. Now…
No, I’m not going to flash you my bum despite the headline up there. It’s much too cold out for that. Haven’t you heard that Winter is upon us? Naturally that means Christmas has come early in the form of the next round of seasonals. Today we’ll be looking at Full…
You’ve heard it before: Spend your hard-earned cash at local businesses, and that money will benefit your community a lot more than if you’d blown it at a national retailer or a chain restaurant. But there’s nothing wrong with a little reminder this time of year, when there’s too much shopping to…
I didn’t plan my Thanksgiving very well. The missus and I were due at the palatial Scottsdale estate of a distant cousin at 4, but it was 1 and we were starving and had no food in the house. We’d been foraging for an open restaurant in central Phoenix for…
Talk about filling a niche. When it comes to Asian food in downtown Phoenix, the offerings are definitely sparse, but now there’s a new restaurant that takes the scene a big leap in the right direction, catering to diners’ culinary wanderlust with Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese dishes. I’m talking…
Four of us — my sister-in-law and my brother and my dad — had just decided on pizza for lunch when another brother piped up. “Pizza?? I have a sore throat! I can’t eat pizza.” This is life in the Fenske family. There is never consensus. Nothing can ever…
As a pop-head, I’m not exaggerating when I say that one my favorite things about living in Phoenix is the availability of Mexican sodas. Mexicans are the only people who drink more soda per capita than Americans, and they have a truly amazing array of flavors: usually fruity, a little…
To raise money for the Chaparral High School Band, the three-day-old Scottsdale location of Jersey Mike’s is offering free regular subs to customers who donate $1, from December 3 through 7. Located at 10392 N. Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale (480-992-6493), it’s the third Arizona location for the East Coast-style sandwich…
They had me at “country-fried” steak. A friend tipped me off to The Breakfast Joynt, a new, independently owned restaurant that just opened two weeks ago in north Scottsdale, and the menu of made-from-scratch fare looks tasty. Along with country-fried steak and eggs, there’s biscuits and gravy, stuffed apple pancakes…
Amy Silverman and I wondered that as we tried to figure out a time to hang out and catch up amid the stress of work, personal obligations, and the holidays. Then we realized that if we tag-teamed some holiday cooking — over Thai takeout and drinks, chez Amy — we’d get our…
Don’t worry, Canal still has its 30 Dollar Sandwich, comically priced at 29.99. The SouthBridge restaurant continues to dish up crispy parmesan fries, and you dirty-minded people can still have ahi three ways, too. But there are plenty of new dishes to check out on executive chef Justin Beckett’s new…
I’ve never been a huge fan of Sobe’s juice drinks, but the Sobe Adrenaline Rush energy drink is by far my favorite of all energy drinks (and I’ve tried tons). It’s delicious and loaded with caffeine, and a 16 oz. can of AR contains less sugar than a 12 oz. can of Mountain Dew.
By Eddie Matney Pecan Pie Martini…
Heading off into the great unknown world outside my office window glass on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, one thing was clearly set in my mind: beer. I needed one and a good one at that. I joined forces with my comrades from New Times at the local pub where we…
Eliot Wexler and chef Chris Curtiss have never explicitly told me that they’re trying to turn us all into NOCA addicts, but I’m convinced this is their grand plan. And you know what? It seems to be working. At a birthday party last weekend, I danced my ass off in a friend’s…
In less than five years, Matt’s Big Breakfast has become a downtown Phoenix institution. Every day but Sunday, the diner cooks up dozens of pieces of thick peppered bacon and pounds of olive-oil crisped potatoes in a kitchen smaller than an ASU dorm room. The teeny restaurant’s signature day-glow citrus…
one can only handle turkey served so many ways, and one can only stay awake for so long after ingesting so much tryptophan (the amino acid in turkey that makes ya sleepy). So I decided to mix up the excess poultry with some tasty pork – namely, the “Pratt’s” Pulled Pork BBQ Sandwich from Alice Cooper’stown, the “rock and jock” restaurant on 1st street and Jackson owned by namesake shock rocker Alice Cooper.
