When you’re trapped in North Scottsdale but would rather be sitting Oceanside, head to PrimeBar and order the Coconut Lime Mojito. You’ll get all the island flavors in a glass without feeling like you’re ingesting Banana Boat, plus people-watching that rivals St. Barts sans tacky beach-themed motif.
Gasper Manno is known for his Neapolitan pizza at Gasper’s Casual Italian Dining/Pizzeria, but today he divulges the recipe for another Italian classic that doesn’t require a wood oven: Bruschetta Pasquale.
No Shave November traditionally started the day after the polls closed when men retired to their hunting lodges to shoot game, camp, eat one-pot meals, and stop shaving ’til they returned home at the end of the month. Today we bring you the five best beards for inspiration, and the five worst you should break your shaving celibacy to avoid.
Uncork the issue: How do I even begin to learn about the world of wine?
Spill the juice: “Don’t think of it as the ‘world of wine,'” suggests David Johnson, the wine director at Oakville Grocery Co. “It becomes daunting. People think they have to know about everything. The truth is that it’s an inch-by-inch-proposition.”
Gasper Manno and his wife Maria grew up in towns 20 minutes apart on the Italian island of Sicily, but they didn’t meet until they wound up at the same college in New York City. Halfway around the world decades later, now they work together at Gasper’s Casual Italian Dining/Pizzeria.
Gasper Manno is an Italian born and raised and New York pizzeria trained pizza man. Manno has lived and breathed pizza since his childhood in Sicily when his mom topped leftover bread dough with tomato, parmasen and anchioves to his days tossing pies for the very particular New York crowd. Now, he puts on a pizza-making show at the pizza bar in his very own place: Gasper’s Casual Italian Dining/Pizzeria.
The Farm Kitchen serves up lunch in a gorgeous picnic setting, complete with wicker baskets and red-checkered table clothes at the Farm at South Mountain. For around $10, you can grab a seat in the great outdoors, with plenty of ambient noise, umbrellas to shield you from the sun and some feathered friends who are surprisingly timid, given the abundance of food.
Wine drinkers rejoice! Arizona celebrates its inaugural Arizona Wine Week Oct. 30 to Nov. 6. Gov. Jan Brewer, who’s been known to enjoy a glass or four of wine herself, will formally proclaim the week-long celebration Nov. 1 at Phoenix Public Market.
There’s nothing like sushi and deep-fried pastry puffs to ease those after-work drinks through your system more responsibly, not to mention prevent a brain freeze if those happy hour drinks happen to be frozen… Has your ice-cream headache subsided long enough to figure it out?
Where Am I Eating?
Alessi – the innovator behind the iconic Kettle with a perched bird and the Alessandro Mendini lines of corkscrew people – is now open for business in Biltmore Fashion Park following a move from CityNorth last March. The store smartly postponed its grand opening celebration until the temps returned to the double digits and kicked off the shopping season last night.
Drinking and charging leads to one thing: Buyer’s remorse. But there’s nothing wrong with grabbing a drink after a long day of scouring the racks responsibly, especially when you’re cooling your heels in the laid-back elegance of Fred’s at Barneys New York.
Luis Millan says his next move is to start roasting whole pigs on a spit at Canteen Modern Tequila Bar, but for now, he’ll settle for slow-braising pork shanks Pibil-stye for his Pork Shank Tacos with Mango Salsa.
Chef Luis Millan of Canteen Modern Tequila Bar fuses together his Mexican heritage, French cooking techniques, Spanish food adoration and Arizona kitchen experience to create really interesting dishes with international flair.
Vincent’s Market Bistro is quintessentially French with its open air patio shaded by sprawling bougainvillea vines, soft classical music, an array of wooden tables with yellow-and-blue table cloths in varying patterns, a no cell-phone-while-dining policy and fresh, buttery croissants by the plateful with every order.
Luis Millan, the chef at the new Canteen Modern Tequila Bar, moved to Tuscon from Cananea Sonora, the small Mexican copper-mining town he called home, at age 18 for college. When he started working at a restaurant on the side, he found a different calling.
Slade Grove is the kind of man you want in charge of your chocolate: He professes his love for his new enrobing machine and says he has packed on nearly 20 pounds perfecting all his holiday treats at Wicked Kitchen Gourmet and Cookies from Home.
Some days you just want a big bowl of pasta. And then you want to justify ingesting all the carbs, so you pick dish packed full of veggies: Leeks, cauliflower, and corn – oh wait, corn’s another starch isn’t it. Dang it! Count that as a double drats, because at this point we’ve probably said (and eaten) too much. So what do you think? Where Am I Eating?
Merc Bar is hidden away in the plaza across the street from Biltmore Fashion Park without so much as a sign to alert you you’re in the right place. The martini on the doormat, however, should be a pretty decent giveaway and a hint of what’s to come once you make it down the low-lit hallway and swagger up to the swanky bar to order your very own Espresso Martini.
What’s better than chocolate? Three kinds of chocolate, of course. Chef Christopher Gross of Christopher’s Restaurant and Crush Lounge created the often-imitated Parnassienne au Chocolate Chocolate Tower: Nearly half a foot of a dark chocolate lattice over a white chocolate tube that envelops a chocolate mousse center.
Chef Christopher Gross may be a picky eater, but there’s one thing he’s famous for that a lot of people won’t even touch: Foie gras. His favorite ingredient earned him and Christopher’s Restaurant and Crush Lounge a lot of flak and a handful of protests from animal rights activists and our vote for Best Foie Gras in the Valley.
Chef Christopher Gross of Christopher’s Restaurant and Crush Lounge understandably asks journalist to call him Chef Christopher rather than Chef Gross: “I guess it’s not the best last name for a chef,” he says. Today he tells us about how he dodged the bullet of school lunch, the ensuing panic after Food & Wine magazine dined in his restaurant under his radar, and the perks and busts about having his own restaurant.
Can vegans even eat chocolate? You bet. And if Rikki Cupcake has anything to say about it, your everyday chocolate fix will come in the form of a dense, fudgy (vegan) brownie that just begs for a tall, cold glass of (almond) milk. Today, Rikki shares her recipe for Fudgy Agave Brownies.
