If you haven’t been to Virtú Honest Craft in Scottsdale yet, you might want to make reservations soon. The tiny, wonderful cafe from chef-owner Gio Osso has been tapped by Esquire magazine’s restaurant features writer John Mariani as one of this year’s Best New Restaurants…
Autumn isn’t official until the first leaf falls from the shit-show tree, which means the now-infamous Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale is back in the news. Following up on the best/worst episode ever of Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares, in which Gordon Ramsay walks out on high-strung owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo,…
On Saturday, September 28, Carefree Station, the nine-year-old Southwestern restaurant located in Carefree’s Spanish Village, closed for the weekend citing “unforeseen circumstances beyond our control” via their Facebook page. By last Wednesday, Carefree Station still had not opened its doors. A representative for the restaurant, owned by Robert and Linda…
What’s happening at Noca these days? The better question may be what isn’t. Eliot Wexler, owner of the venerated restaurant in the Biltmore area, tells me that, in March, executive chef Claudio Urciuoli went to San Francisco to further his baking skills at the San Francisco Baking Institute. That decision,…
Wok Box, the quick-service Asian eatery that invites its customers to “Take a walk down the delicious side of Asia!” (spoiler alert: not a real geographical location) opened its first Arizona store in Scottsdale in January of this year. But the eight-year-old Canadian-founded company with 70 franchises worldwide is hungry…
When a new spot opens in town, we can’t wait to check it out — and let you know our initial impressions, share a few photos, and dish about some menu items. First Taste, as the name implies, is not a full-blown review, but instead a peek inside restaurants that…
You can hardly help joining the hustle and bustle at downtown’s Phoenix Public Market Cafe, and that’s kind of the point. You may move from the outdoor herb garden at the restaurant’s entrance to shelves of for-sale local products until arriving at a pastry case of homemade baked goods (think…
If the farmers market at downtown’s Phoenix Public Market is one of the Valley’s most notable spots for finding fresh locally grown and locally produced food, then the adjacent Phoenix Public Market Café may be the hippest place to partake of its bounty. The restaurant certainly is vintage-chic enough in…
Since the August departure of Jeremy Pacheco (who moved to Las Vegas to become the executive chef of Society Cafe at the Wynn), Lon’s at the Hermosa, the luxury boutique resort in Paradise Valley, has been on the hunt for a new culinary leader. And given its track record of…
Welcome to Chow Bella’s Bites & Dishes, where Valley chefs and restaurateurs respond to a question New Times food critic Laura Hahnefeld has on her mind. Have a question you’d like to ask? E-mail laura.hahnefeld@newtimes.com. For many years, meat’s been the star attraction of the American plate. But with the…
In what can now be pretty much be deemed “2013: The Year of the Landlord,” another Valley restaurant has been shuttered by a building owner — this time, it seems, much to the surprise of the staff. On Saturday, September 28, Carefree Station, the nine-year-old Southwestern restaurant located in Carefree’s…
Last June, Nick Watts’ mobile kitchen of grilled cheese sandwiches, called Chedda Truck, made its debut to a huge (and unexpected) crowd at Artistic Tattoo in Central Phoenix. Watts sold nearly 175 sandwiches in three hours, but customers were angry at the wait time (over an hour) and many left…
The Valley has plenty of joints offering familiar brunch dishes like pancakes and omelets. But the newest spot for one of our most favorite weekend indulgences has neither — nor would you expect it to. Crudo, chef Cullen Campbell’s home of modern Italian food in Phoenix, has announced it will…
Another month, another look back at the best things I ate during September. From dishes like my new favorite carne asada taco to magnificent Mediterranean eats to a killer lasagna my dining companion likened to the work of the devil, here are 10 of the best things I ate this…
There are only two kinds of meat at Backyard Taco in Mesa — carne asada and pollo — and they’re both pretty amazing. Tender and cooked to perfection over mesquite charcoal with just the right amount of seasoning (so that you still taste the grill), they’re served with cabbage, onions,…
Don those aprons, home cooks. MasterChef, Fox’s competitive cooking reality show judged by celebu-chef Gordon Ramsay, restaurateur and wine maker Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliot, the Michelin-starred chef from Chicago, is looking for contestants for its fifth season — and it’s headed our way…
What’s the best way for a husband-and-wife team to cook the food they love together every day? If you’re Brooke Francis and Nathan Carel, you start a food truck. Called The Roasted Shallot, Francis and Carel’s food truck will hit the Valley’s mobile kitchen scene in mid-October (if not sooner)…
In June, when we last left Karl and Christine Boerner, the Swiss-trained father-daughter pastry chef team behind Karl’s Quality Bakery and the next-door Baker’s Daughter, they were making Kronuts (their version of the Cronut) and suing their landlord. The first effort worked out well; the second, not so much. The…
Renegade by MOD is the daring new restaurant from chef Michael O’Dowd, whose decade at Kai earned the restaurant AAA five-diamond and Forbes Travel Guide five-star acclaim. Breaking free of his corporate chains last fall, O’Dowd is now a first-time restaurateur as well as a celebrated chef. And at his…
What does the Valley’s biggest risk-taker of a restaurant look like at the moment? Its cuisine takes a familiar dish and plugs it into a culinary electric socket, invigorating it with inspirations from countries like Japan, Italy, and China, and presenting it in ways that make necks crane at nearby…
When a new spot opens in town, we can’t wait to check it out — and let you know our initial impressions, share a few photos, and dish about some menu items. First Taste, as the name implies, is not a full-blown review, but instead a peek inside restaurants that…
Welcome to Chow Bella’s Bites & Dishes, where Valley chefs and restaurateurs respond to a question New Times food critic Laura Hahnefeld has on her mind. Have a question you’d like to ask? E-mail laura.hahnefeld@newtimes.com. Requests from diners are nothing new. Perhaps they have to do with omitting a certain…
