The Guilty Pleasure: Breakfast nachos Where to Get It: Daily Dose Price: $10.50 What it Really Costs: The disturbing realization that you have just consumed a full day’s worth of calories before 10 a.m. You know nachos. It’s the snack you impulsively consume at baseball games, bowling alleys, after-work happy hours, fast-food…
The nondescript neighborhood strip mall, like suburban sprawl and desert sunshine, is an inescapable fact of life in metro Phoenix. Mundane by design, you don’t normally associate Valley strip malls with places like Merci French Café & Patisserie in Scottsdale, a stylish restaurant and bakery that evokes Paris café culture…
The Guilty Pleasure: The Turtle “And The Hare” Showboat Sundae Where To Get It: Mary Coyle Ol’ Fashion Ice Cream Price: $7.95-$8.95 What It Really Costs: The possibility of a well-earned toothache, thanks to the lavish amounts of caramel and melted hot fudge on this baby. If you grew up in central Phoenix, Mary Coyle…
The Guilty Pleasure: Poutine Where to Get It: Short Leash Hot Dogs Price: $10 What it Really Costs: The usual pants-tightening effect that occurs after you eat something so delicious. Poutine, the famous Québécois dish that resembles something like a French fry gravy sundae, is so popular in its native land that Canadian locations of…
The Coronado neighborhood in midtown Phoenix is perhaps best known for its collection of well-preserved historic properties — a patchwork of cozy desert bungalows, red-brick English Tudors and Spanish Colonials, many lovingly restored and outfitted with artful yard installations and urban gardens. And while the greater Coronado neighborhood may be a…
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…
The United Lunchadores Street Gourmet food truck (formerly known as the Luncha Libre food truck) has become well known for its menu of inventive quesadillas, street tacos, and aguas frescas served in mason jars. The concept proved so popular, owners Tim and Kim Cobb opened a brick and mortar extension of…
In the years before the Metro Light Rail became a fixture in downtown Phoenix, before Cityscape and other high-rise projects began to reshape the city skyline, charting the downtown food scene was not exactly a formidable task. In those days, the roster of downtown dining options amounted to not much…
The Guilty Pleasure: Hangover Fries Where to Get It: RnR Restaurant & Bar Price: $9.00 What it Really Costs: The unavoidable feeling of self-loathing that comes after you have turned your stomach into a temporary human grease trap. Old-school drinking lore suggests that, after a night of too many beers and cocktails, the…
Is there any dish more indulgent and seductively rich than a well-made Indian curry, lavished with enough ghee and spice that a bowl of lentils or cauliflower or spinach mysteriously turns into a full-blown gustatory revelation? The traditional cuisine of north India, where layer upon layer of butter and fresh…
The Guilty Pleasure: Booze Burger Where to Get It: Paradise Valley Burger Company Price: $9 What it Really Costs: A food hangover, whose symptoms may include bloating, lethargy, and a compulsive need to count the hours until your next “cheat” day. If you ask food aficionados in North Phoenix where to find a solid…
In terms of popularity, the quintessential neighborhood French bistro, a refined but generally unpretentious place with white tablecloths and honest food and wine, has been in steady decline for years. In its place have come gastropubs, ramen bars, and any number of places serving tapas-style small plates paired with local…
It’s no secret that Phoenix is thick with Sonoran-style Mexican restaurants, bastions of machaca dinners, deep-fried chimichangas, and thin, pillowy flour tortillas often melded together with bright orange cheese. The cheese crisp, served on a round aluminum platter like a pizza, is the hallmark of old school Arizona-Sonora Mexican food,…
If you grew up dining around Central Phoenix in the 1970s or 1980s, there’s a good chance you have memories of eating at La Piñata, the Sonoran-style Mexican restaurant famous for its steady output of cheese crisps and its iconic vintage neon sign, featuring a zippy yellow arrow pointing to the building. “Steady” is…
P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, the perennially popular Scottsdale-based chain known for its menu of modern Asian fusion fare, is the kind of place you inevitably come across in the wilds of upscale suburbia. The restaurant, which is nearly always situated in close proximity to a shopping mall, is essentially a theme restaurant at…
In a city where you can count the number of Ethiopian restaurants on one hand, finding a good place to gather around a platter of injera bread dappled with heaps of fiery wot is no small feat. Since the 1990s, Café Lalibela in Tempe has been the Valley mainstay for…
The Guilty Pleasure: The Cookie Cup Where to Get It: Fatty Daddy’s Price: $6.25 What it Really Costs: A spike in your blood glucose levels, followed by a period of post-ice cream ennui. Desserts, like hairstyles and fashion, are often subject to brief but intense periods of mass popularity. There was…
Chon Thai Food has been open for only about four months, but already the East Valley restaurant seems to be a neighborhood draw. At the height of a recent Saturday dinner service, a huddle of restless customers crowded around the host stand near the restaurant’s entrance, while a skeleton crew…
The Guilty Pleasure: BBQ brisket “loaded” baked potato Where to Get It: The Loaded Potato Price: $11.50 (jumbo size) What it Really Costs: Only a few hundred Weight Watchers points, give or take. The Loaded Potato, which has been open for about a year now in south Phoenix, may be the…
There are three topics best avoided around the American dinner table if your wish is to eat in peace: politics, religion, and barbecue. Barbecue, among a certain set of avowed meat-eaters, has been known to set off meandering debates on the infinite number of ways to smoke and grill animal…
The Guilty Pleasure: Adult milkshake Where to Get It: Relish Burger Bistro at The Phoenician Price: $14 What it Really Costs: A certain loss of innocence because you will never again be able to look at a carton of vanilla ice cream without being tempted to reach for the vodka. …
Sophomore efforts are a tricky business, especially if you’re trying to make lightning strike twice. So when word got out early last year that the team behind Arcadia’s beloved Crudo was launching a second restaurant in Phoenix, the mounting anticipation — and high expectations — were palpable. Okra Cookhouse &…
