When you’re a first-time restaurant owner, it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of humor. And for Chaka Chaka’s Charlie Blonkenfeld, a banana will do nicely. “I was experimenting with my jerk chicken sandwich, and my roommate wanted to put cheese on it,” Blonkenfeld says. “I told him, ‘Screw that…
Read: all of Zach Fowle’s battles in “Feasts of Fury.” We begin with a burger. A foot tall it stands, each of its nine third-pound patties thick and glistening with gristle, cheese spilling out from every layer like molten gold. Hefty slices of tomato, pickles, onions, and lettuce sit softy…
There’s a reason why Food Network’s Man vs. Food and our own Zack Fowle’s Feasts of Fury are so popular. People love BIG food. We’re amazed by dishes so large that one order could feed Bill Paxton’s Big Love family or provide a starving college student with leftovers for two weeks. For this week’s Battle of the Dishes, we dared…
Mother-and-son restaurateur team Pat and Dustin Christofolo are proof that cooking ability is genetic (and don’t believe the hype about it skipping a generation, either). The Christofolos opened their family’s first third-generation restaurant this October: The House at Secret Garden.
Football meets the footlong? Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch, especially when it’s a Tex-Mex Footlong. But if Friday Night Lights has taught me anything, it’s that Texas loves its football and 30-year-old actors who play teenagers. Sonic’s new Tex-Mex Footlong Quarter Pound Coney, available for a limited time,…
Just got off the phone with famed Chef Chris Bianco, who confirmed that Chef Claudio Urciuoli, who announced his departure from Prado last week, will be working for his team in an as yet undetermined capacity. Stay tuned for more details on Chow Bella…
Chef Dustin Christofolo is a natural-born restaurateur, even if he didn’t fully embrace it until his early 20s. His mom, Pat Christofolo, is the owner of Santa Barbara Catering and The Farm Kitchen at The Farm at South Mountain, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit behind the Farm’s Morning Glory Café and Quiessence (the latter two she’s since entrusted to Chef Greg LaPrad).Now the mother-and-son pair are taking their relationship with food and each other to a whole new level: They’re business partners running The House at Secret Garden, another South Phoenix restaurant aiming to inject some life and culture into the area.
Right in time to feed the holiday cookie exchange frenzy, Brady Breese of Urban Cookies shares his Cocomint cookie recipe. Lucky for us we found Shaun, Brady’s wife and business partner, handing out cookie samples Saturday, at The Local First Fall Festival. We tasted chocolatey-minty goodness, a perfect holiday combo!…
Today is the day Jack in the Box gives away two free tacos after 2 p.m., thanks to Jack’s visit to the dentist, where, hopped up on laughing gas, he makes the announcement. Note to dentists everywhere: More laughing gas for fast-food mascots, please! According to my e-mail from Jack…
Andrew Levi Hiller The singer/songwriter for Wizards of Time, who also loves to paint, is currently working on the band’s first 12-song album, called Will the Soft Curse Plague On?, to be released in early 2011. You can hear a teaser with three 15-second song clips here. He also plays in…
A while back, we blogged about The Center Bistro re-opening (sans Damon Brasch) after a two year hiatus. This last Friday, the official Grand Opening Celebration re-christened this Tempe establishment. An abundance of locally-sourced and organic small bites, freshly prepared pork tacos, and delicious honeydew martinis were all on hand…
The business: Paradise Melts What they’re packin’: Comfort food-grade grilled sandwiches that will kick crappy grilled cheese’s butt — Must-trys include the Veggie (provolone, tomato, basil, arugula, roasted red pepper, and balsamic on sourdough) and the Ruben (pastrami, swiss, cole slaw, and 1000 island on marble rye). Other menu items…
It’s true. Pie is love. At least, it’s true that people in Phoenix love pie. You turned out in droves for the first-ever Pie Social, this past Saturday, co-sponsored by Chow Bella and Roosevelt Row, to raise funds for after-school programs. We loved seeing you, and tasting your pies! An…
True Food Kitchen brings health-conscious food approved by integrative wellness guru Dr. Andrew Weil to Scottsdale Quarter. We grabbed a seat on the heated wrap-around patio and checked out the lunch menu at the second Arizona installment of this Fox Restaurant Concepts’ joint this weekend. The ambiance and the menu fit the good-and-good-for-you bill, but the entrées especially didn’t wow us.
Lisa Bedford wears many hats — she’s a local blogger, mother of two, and a survivalist. She combines those hats regularly by running TheSurvivalMom blog, where she dishes out advice on how to prepare for everything from a natural disaster to financial crisis. One survival technique Bedford is a big…
Let’s face it, there’s going to be a ton to see and do at the Pie Social on Saturday. But more important, there are going to be even more people that have the same goals in mind: Drop off the pies (optional), get the tasting tickets, find the best pies,…
About a year ago, Charles Phoenix, awesome connoisseur of all things pop-culture and especially vintage, was inspired to invent the Cherpumple, a massive and ultra-American dessert made of three pies (cherry, pumpkin, and apple), each cooked inside a layer of cake, all stuck together with cream cheese icing. The really…
The newest battleground for the fast-food giants is breakfast. McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks have turned up the griddle on joints like Dunkin Donuts, forcing them to fight back. Said Dunkin Donuts to the breakfast bullies, “Suck on our Sausage Pancake Bites!” Last week, for a limited time only, Dunkin…
How much is that doggy in the window? First you need to find the window. Dog Town Chili Dogs, the new fast-food joint that opened up a few weeks ago in Tempe, seems to be doing everything it can to make sure you don’t. If you do happen to stumble…
Yesterday Chef Charleen Badman at FnB told us about her “research and development” trips, i.e. travel eating marathons. Today she shares her recipe for the New York eatery-inspired “Green” Salad.
There’s trouble in Dog Town. Big trouble. The chili dog joint that opened a few weeks ago in Tempe seems to be doing everything it can to secure a place in the land of fast-food fails. For starters, there’s the location: positioned off Mill Avenue, in a back-of-a-building storefront, with…
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Four years ago — when the economy was booming, the housing market was white-hot, and the dining public was insatiable for things like upscale steakhouses and stylish sushi joints — there was a major new player in the CenPho restaurant scene, a big, bustling…
