By Sarah Fenske and Amy Silverman The phone rang a little while ago, and it was a friend in the Amsterdam area. “So it’s over,” he said. And we said, “What!?” Here in the Frank Lloyd Wright Ballroom in the Arizona Biltmore, McCain is doing just fine. Big & Rich…
McCormick & Schmick’s chipotle-potato taquitos: Cheap and addictive. By Jay Bennett At first glance, the two parts of the headline on this blog post may appear to contradict each other. What, you may be asking, does eating on the cheap have to do with a chain of upscale seafood restaurants…
By Jay Bennett If you’ve never been to the Ranch Market at the Chinese Cultural Center, you have to check it out for a colorful experience. And if you’re looking for Chinese cuisine that goes above and beyond the run-of-the-mill stuff served at seemingly most Chinese restaurants, you have to…
By Jay Bennett Times are tough, indeed, but I was surprised to find a really good and relatively inexpensive Thai spot in Tempe to be dead on a recent Saturday night. What gives? Has it gotten to the point where folks can’t drop $10 for an entree anymore? Here’s hoping…
By Jay Bennett I usually don’t have much reason to enter Old Town Scottsdale — it oftens seems kind of a like a foreign land to me — but perhaps I have a reason now since checking out a fun little place called Terrace Café, which sits on the corner…
By Jay Bennett
“As I walk through / This wicked world / Searching for light in the darkness of insanity.”
Knowing I’d soon hear those lyrics being sung by Nick Lowe buoyed me Tuesday night as I sat watching a 90-minute performance staged by two politicians who dodged questions, offered empty promises, took cheap shots and, in the case of Arizona’s dubiously favorite son, espoused “record over rhetoric.”
By Jay Bennett The Two Hippies empire has expanded to include a fun taco and burrito stand on East Camelback Road. Said hippies (who also own Two Hippies Magic Mushroom Burger on Indian School Road) took over the shuttered boutique Gold Lion, on the corner of Camelback and Fifth Street,…
By Jay Bennett I can never eat a “regular” pancake again after trying a few bites of the sweet potato pancakes at Lil’ Mama’s Soul Cafe, a little storefront eatery on Seventh Avenue halfway between Indian School and Camelback roads. The missus and I ducked into this unassuming little strip-mall…
By Jay Bennett Outside of scarfing down Jack in the Box or raiding the dollar menu at McDonald’s, it just doesn’t get any cheaper than this: For $10.38, the missus and I scored at Da Vang. That’s right. For $10.38, we enjoyed two entrees and an appetizer at this Vietnamese…
By Jay Bennett Last week, I wrote in this space about the budget-tastic happy hour at Fenix Eatery & Bar, an otherwise pricey bistro in the Arcadia neighborhood. After that posting, a reader named Joel steered me toward another pricey joint that just happens to have a happy hour for…
By Jay Bennett Seems most of the time, when a restaurant touts its happy hour, it boasts nothing more than $2 domestic bottles and some free chips and salsa. Whee. So when you discover a true happy hour bonanza, you want to rejoice because you feel you’ve found a salve…
By Jay Bennett There’s no shortage of cooler, hipper, trendier, more unique breakfast joints in the Valley, but there may be no better morning spot around than the unassuming, totally uncool — and proud of it — Ranch House Grille, on East Thomas Road near 56th Street. It’s been only…
Drinking. Drugging. Thugging. Odes to these will be legion when Bay Area underground rapper Andre Nickatina brings his subtly named Coke White Tour to Marquee Theatre. As he has throughout his nearly 20-year recording career — as well as on his new CD, A Tale of Two Andres — Nickatina…
By Jay Bennett Hummus, kebabs, falafel — just say the word and I’m there. So when a Budget Beat reader named Natalie said the word, I was more than willing to oblige. She suggested I hit up one of her favorite Middle Eastern spots, Ararat. So the missus and I…
Most folks stop caring (or should stop caring) about their birthday by, oh, about the time they hit 25 years old. We s’pose there’s nothing wrong with raising a glass to a milestone age like, say, 30 or 50 or 75, but 57? What else would you expect from a…
By Jay Bennett The Budget Beat household loves a good hamburger (or hamburg, as they annoyingly call them in West Michigan, where I spent my teen years during a long-lost time known as the 1980s), so when a faithful reader suggests we check out a particular burger joint, we’re there…
You took Mom and Dad to South Pacific. You took your niece and nephew to Kung Fu Panda. And, now, you’ve had it up to here with Family-Friendly Entertainment. You want raw, you want raunch, you want adult. A burgeoning gang of actors who dabble in that tricky (but transcendent,…
By Jay Bennett I’d been curious about trying Eliana’s Authentic Salvadoran Cuisine ever the since the first time I drove by the place on 24th Street just north of McDowell. I love Mexican food and assumed that the food of El Salvador would be just as good. Of course, El…
By Jay Bennett Since being turned on to Paisley Violin by a co-worker a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been raving about the place to just about anybody who will listen. I know I’m a latecomer to its greatness, but better late than never, right? Situated in an old, standalone…
By Jay Bennet It’s amazing how many Thai restaurants exist in the Valley. I’ve been to several but have touched only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and I’m pleased to report that none of them flat-out sucks (well, there is a certain Thai place on Camelback that provided such…
By Jay Bennett You don’t have to twist my arm to get me to dine on the cuisine of the Middle East. It’s, perhaps, my favorite ethnic food — and has been ever since I was a little kid eating dinner at the house of my Uncle Walid, a Syrian…
By Jay Bennett On Saturday mornings, I like to head downtown to what is casually referred to as the farmers market, at Second and McKinley streets. It’s really called the Downtown Phoenix Public Market, a more suitable name than “farmers market” because, in my opinion, it’s way short on farmers…
