The Guilty Pleasure: Tosti Elotes Where to Get It: La Carreta de Lily Price: $7.58 (large) What it Really Costs: A slight dip in your self-esteem because eating salty, gloppy food out of plastic bag is pretty much the opposite of sexy. Tosti Elotes probably won’t be the most elegant…

Just beyond the gray brick student housing mega-complexes on Apache Boulevard in Tempe, past the late-night pizzerias and burrito drive-thrus, the college haunts give way to a handful of restaurants advertising flame-grilled kebabs, spitfire shawarma, and other staples of Middle Eastern cooking. Apache has been quietly cultivating something of a…

The Guilty Pleasure: The South by Southwest Where to Get It: Welcome Chicken + Donuts Price: $5.50 What it Really Costs: The dawning realization that the other breakfast sandwiches in your life are sad and dull. How do you get South Phoenix to become a hipster-approved breakfast and lunch destination?…

On a recent Saturday afternoon in Old Town Scottsdale, the galleries and bistros on Main Street were mostly empty and somber-looking in the gray December weather. But Craft 64, the pizza and craft beer joint that opened in March near the Hotel Valley Ho, was flush with music, chatter, and…

The Guilty Pleasure: The Sinaloa Dog Where to Get It: La Pasadita Hot Dogs Price: $3.29 What it Really Costs: The cost of a three-day juice cleanse, to flush the remnants of nacho cheese out of your system.  Bacon-wrapped hot dogs have been a street food staple in Hermosillo, Sonora…

The Guilty Pleasure: The Kraken Where to Get It: DCM Bar at DeSoto Central Market Price: $18 What it Really Costs: Any sense of perspective about Blood Marys. Henceforth, you will be disappointed when there’s not a burger or a whoopie pie (or both at once) attached to your brunch drink. …

Milk Bar might be the most unusual restaurant to open in downtown Phoenix this year. The stylish restaurant and bar, which had its soft opening in February, is a modern update on the iconic bar mleczny (Polish for “milk bar”), the traditional worker canteen that reached the height of its…

The Guilty Pleasure: La Frijolera Where to Get It: Pizza Patrón  Price: $9.99 What it Really Costs: The dry cleaning costs of removing pizza grease stains from your shirt.  For a humble value pizza chain, Pizza Patrón sure has generated a lot of controversy over the years. The Latino-themed pizzeria, which is based in…

There has never been a better time to be a seafood lover in Phoenix than the present. From East Coast-style fish houses to fancy oyster bars, a new wave of fish-obsessed Valley restaurants is helping make top-quality seafood as easy to find in Phoenix as your neighborhood Starbucks. Well, almost…

The Guilty Pleasure: “Dragon” Dumpling Burger Where to Get It: Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour Price: $12.50 What it Really Costs: Some unavoidable arterial blockage. But if you’re going to block an artery, this is the way to do it.  Since opening its doors last year, Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour has become the…

It’s tempting to bemoan the lack of diversity in the Valley restaurant scene; ours is still a culinary landscape overpopulated with meat-and-potato chain restaurants and 24-hour burrito joints. But every now and then, a new spot turns up brimming with far-flung flavors, and the Valley becomes a more interesting place…

The Guilty Pleasure: Wapanada Where to Get It: Greater Than Coffee Price: $6.50 What it Really Costs: Your daily recommended allowance of carbs. But it’s worth it.  New York gave the world the Cronut™. Los Angeles fired back with the brookie (brownie + cookie). But downtown Phoenix, dare we say, is the birthplace of…

Malaysian cooking, as opposed to other Southeast Asian cuisines, doesn’t get much play on the American restaurant scene. This is confounding when you consider that the Malaysian kitchen offers one of the most accessible and multicultural cuisines in the world. On any given plate, you’re likely to encounter Chinese cooking…

The Guilty Pleasure: Tryptophan, a.k.a turkey-flavored ice cream Where to Get It: Scooptacular Price: $1.50 (kid’s size) What it Really Costs: The last ounce of your waning willpower, which will effectively go into winter hibernation, starting this week. Every year around this time, Scooptacular treats — is treat the right word? – ice cream lovers…

The Larder + The Delta, the Southern-inflected food counter inside downtown Phoenix’s historic DeSoto Central Market, is the kind of highly touted new restaurant that makes you wonder whether it will measure up to the hype. People gush about the cauliflower, of all things, designed to evoke the flavor and…

The Farm at South Mountain is a rare kind of Phoenix destination. For years, the historic 10-acre farm and garden, which is tucked away on a quiet stretch of 32nd Street in South Phoenix, has offered a small taste of rural tranquility in a city spilling over with strip malls…

If you happen to go to 43rd Express (also known as Pho 43 Express) for lunch, the first thing you’ll notice is how difficult it is to get a table. The dining room at this West Phoenix mom-and-pop Vietnamese eatery, sparsely decorated with run-of-the-mill landscape art and a few overgrown…

Tapas, the small, mostly savory dishes traditionally consumed in bars across Spain in the pre-dinner hours, made a big splash on the American food scene in the early 1990s. Chef José Andrés is largely credited with introducing Americans to the pleasures of classic tapas like tortilla española and jamón ibérico…

During lunchtime recently at Taqueria El Chino near downtown Phoenix, a small group of office workers sporting lanyard badges from the nearby Capitol Mall clustered around the restaurant’s small takeout counter, where burritos, tortas, and tacos emerged from the open kitchen with almost conveyor belt-like efficiency. As the lunch hour…