The Valley is home to a wide range of exotic cuisines, with everything from Ethiopian to Afghan and Pakistani restaurants at the ready to feed wanna-be global gourmets. For a city our size, though, we’ve traditionally been pretty short on French food. We can recite the big players without breaking…
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a restaurant customer comes up with a new complaint that’s beyond bizarre. Apparently, some folks think Origami’s, a pleasant little Asian fast-food place at Scottsdale and Shea, serves too much food, and they’re not going to take it anymore.Really. Stopping in for…
Lunch with a Bosnian, if you don’t know any Bosnians, isn’t the easiest thing to arrange. I wanted someone to guide me through the cuisine at Bosnian Cafe Sarajevo, just east of 35th Avenue on the south side of Northern, and also to tell me what life is like here…
It is the ultimate cold-weather comfort food, a baked turnover filled with meat, onions and potatoes. The humble Cornish pasty (pronounced “pass-tee”) was brought to Arizona and the rest of the New World by immigrant miners from Cornwall, that Celtic land of tin mines and fishing villages in Britain’s extreme…
Lady Luck has opened a kitchen just east of Scottsdale. The new Casino Arizona on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is home to Cholla, an upscale restaurant, and Salt River Cafe, a casual eatery. While there’s no guarantee of a payoff with the casino’s slots, cards, off-track betting, keno…
It’s what we all look for when choosing a pizza parlor: whether the chef holds a Guinness World Record. The folks at the New Wise Guys in Scottsdale must think so, given the way they emblazon the honor bestowed on chef Robert Tripi in their ads and on the back…
If it’s true that some guys have it and some guys don’t, then these guys unquestionably have it. Ladies are all around them in the lobby of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, gazing at them as if they were the Rolling Stones. Indeed, some of these very women –…
Lewis Bottomly is not given to exaggeration.”I’ve met some very good chefs,” he says, and indeed he has: among them, Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. But when Bottomly goes on to describe himself as “not so much a chef as a technician,” his talent for understatement takes him too far…
What would a casino experience be without that must-have, the all-you-can-eat buffet? This isn’t typical food in trough, however — Casino Arizona caters to higher tastes with Eagle’s Nest. Put this place on your list of where to eat well, eat a lot, and eat cheap. There’s no mistaking we’re…
Who goes to an airport to eat unless they have to? Apparently, more people than we realize. There’s a national trend brewing of airports supplementing hot dogs with stuff we actually want, including a new Wolfgang Puck eatery at Chicago’s O’Hare, Sylvia’s Soul Food of Harlem at JFK International Airport,…
Where’s the beef? It’s on our plates at local restaurants, but it’s costing us more, particularly for the prime, dry-aged cuts of cow Valley restaurant diners so treasure.Americans suddenly can’t get enough of the fleshy food, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association reporting that…
Polish sausage covered with bright-yellow mustard, melted Swiss cheese and onions, with eggs, potatoes and an English muffin on the side — that’s the composition of the dish called the “Saint John” on the menu at First Watch in Scottsdale. It sounds very Chicago, and very Catholic, so that’s what…
On a busy evening before the holidays, I entered Houston’s without a reservation. There was an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I approached the exquisite creature standing behind the podium. She was looking down; her hair was like a Pantene commercial, her skin like porcelain, and I could have…
There’s a lot to detest about The Breakfast Club, that 1985 movie about the group of high school kids who, forced to serve a day’s detention together, come to realize that despite their apparent differences, they’re all just people. Awww. The film introduced us to Judd Nelson, an actor skilled…
It’s the latest dining game in New York: Show up at a packed restaurant without a reservation, and lie through your teeth to get in. Hot spots like Nobu and Pastis are increasingly frequent victims of surprise parties insisting — often loudly — that they called to stake out a…
Her hair is exactly the color of copper electrical wire, freshly stripped of its insulation. Her jacket is decorated with little cutouts of puppy dogs. And then, of course, there are the trademark eyes — gazing at me, girlish and mirthful, through harlequin ovals of mascara and eye shadow. Tammy…
It looks like a cooking class, and it smells like one. But this is not a cooking class. And Tanya Ferguson, who is wearing an apron and slicing carrots, is not a cook.”There are three things that come with most kitchens that I think are not necessary,” Ferguson says, as…
Arizona’s dining scene is exploding at record levels, bringing unheard of variety and competition to every corner of the Valley. Last year, in fact, Arizona experienced the nation’s third-largest increase in restaurant revenues, and is projected to be among the country’s top three again in 2001. With more than 8,300…
What a difference 15 years makes. It was 1986, and the Valley’s cuisine consisted of steak, spaghetti and, on a wild night, maybe a burrito or nachos. But that same year, Vincent Guerithault hit the scene, opening Vincent’s on Camelback, and bringing with him such never-heard-of French-Southwestern tastes as duck…
In show business, it borders on an axiom that the actors who play the villains tend to be the nice guys in real life. If it’s true, then Len Lesser should be one of the sweetest guys you’d ever want to meet. Nasty, rotten human beings are this veteran character…
I’m a longtime restaurant person. I’ve been the dishwasher, the head waiter and the manager. I consider myself a good evaluator of service.My passion is dining out at all types of restaurants. I don’t look for the Mary Elaine’s touches when I eat at Carlsbad Tavern. Each level of restaurant…
Western Pizza In most circles, any person venturing out of the house after midnight invites suspicion. Little good can come from folks rambling about at this dark hour. Late-night frolickers are getting drunk, they’re cruising the opposite sex with purely physical intent, or they’re looking to pick a fight. How…
