Gastropub has the word "pub" in it and frankly that should be enough to grab your attention. Of course a little professional direction as to where one may experience the best gastropubs Phoenix has to offer couldn't hurt either.
Food Critic Michele Laudig on Culinary Dropout, Mabel's on Main, and Mad Chef Gastropub:
I'm feeling ornery at the moment, thinking about how national culinary trends don't always play out successfully here, if they ever get off the ground at all.
Take gastropubs. What's a gastropub, you wonder? Last year, the Washington Post wrote, "Not quite a bar and not quite a restaurant, the gastropub is a British hybrid of sorts, offering a casual-meets-refined atmosphere that welcomes beer drinkers and wine snobs, non-fussy eaters and foodies alike."
New York's The Spotted Pig kicked off the phenomenon in the States several years ago. Recently, its sister restaurant, The Breslin, has become a de rigueur pitstop for every foodie hipster friend who travels to Manhattan, thanks to a menu that takes comforting pub grub into brashly rustic territory: fried head cheese with sauce gribiche, skate and potato terrine with aioli, braised shin of beef...full story