I have been to the mountaintop, and, yes, I’ve eaten it, because that’s just the kind of guy I am. The edible pinnacle of which I speak is as formidable as Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano, and while devouring it, I felt like the food-critic equivalent of some intrepid mountaineer determined to…
It’s sometime between 11 and midnight, and I’m seated at the bar of the “air patio” at e4 (www.e4-az.com), Scottsdale’s new epicenter of wickedness, a Vegas-style nightclub with four theme rooms based on the elements: fire, water, air and earth. Next to me is the devil in the flesh herself,…
Unless you have a tongue made of cast iron and a mouth lined with ceramic tiles, the clear noodle salad at Sala Thai Restaurant on 32nd Street, a quarter-mile north of Shea Boulevard, should set your gob ablaze like Los Angeles during the riots, and that’s at the “medium” level…
Are all restaurant chains doomed to suck eggs like Old Yeller? Not necessarily. It’s hard to find fault with a Chambord margarita from Z’Tejas, for instance. And I do occasionally get a craving for an In-N-Out burger or a roast beef sammy from Arby’s. Don’t even get me started on…
FRI 9/16The Prince of Motherfucking Darkness: That’s the literary epithet that author John Gilmore has earned after a lifetime spent excavating the noirish underbelly of human existence. From his grim account of Charles Schmid, the homicidal “Pied Piper of Tucson,” in Cold-Blooded, to his mortician-like dissection of Charles Manson’s psyche…
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!” I cry as I ease our whip a block south of the downtown Phoenix arts venue .anti_space at 815 West Madison Street. “It looks like a freakin’ Rob Zombie flick down here.” “Oh, Kreme, they’re just crackheads,” sputters the J-unit, pooh-poohing my dismay at…
Maybe it was watching Tommy Lee get tutored by that hot blonde in Tommy Lee Goes to College that inspired us. Or maybe it was just cruising through Tempe the other day and noticing that all the fly Arizona State University chicks are back for fall. Or perhaps we were…
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: That’s what — poof — appears in my cranium like a two-bit magician behind a puff of smoke as I walk back to my car from Vu, chef William Bradley’s chichi, yearling eatery over at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale at Gainey Ranch. There’s one…
My nostrils are so filled with the stink of keister-kissing by the other restaurant critics in this city that I long for nothing more than the hide of an overrated grub purveyor. Throughout greater Phoenix, there are plenty of culinary dinosaurs, as well as new bistros, in need of a…
“There’s more white cloth in here than a Klan meetin’ in Georgia!” I spit as we cross the threshold of Old Town Scottsdale’s Dos Gringos for the club’s toga party last Thursday. “So, uh, how do I look?” “Like someone tried to tie a tablecloth around a hippo,” cracks my…
The most superlative pizza I’ve ever scarfed was from storefront pizzerias in Manhattan and Brooklyn, usually after stumbling out of some tavern. But even when I was sober as the dreaded parson, pizza was the grub that kept me going in Gotham. And nothing that I’ve tasted outside the Five…
“First off, no pullin’ out your ‘man,'” Mr. Luscious informs his fellow male strippers, minutes before they take to the Celebrity Theatre’s stage as the erotic revue known as The Main Event, Part 2. “You can act like you’re about to pull it out, but you better not.” “In case…
The only deity I’ve ever had a personal affinity for is that corpulent, jolly “buddha” with a small “b” known as Jin Foo, Bu Dai, or Hotei, depending on whom you ask. Personally, Gautama Buddha, he of the Bodhi tree fame, always struck me as a bit too severe, like…
The quarter-mile drag-racing track at Speedworld Raceway Park is sticky from burnt tires, and exhaust fills our lungs like we’ve been puffin’ Pall Malls all day. Cars and motorcycles are lined up in pairs from the beginning of the two-lane blacktop, way back past the chain-link entrance, just like that…
Flan is one of those desserts people pooh-pooh, as if its production seems too simple, or its presence in a Southwestern town like ours too prevalent. But take it from a flan-obsessed gourmand like myself: Good flan ain’t easy to find. Like tiramisu in Italian eateries, flan is often written…
I’m at a sushi bar the other day, waiting for the chef to finish up some toro nigiri for me, when I decide to pay the raw-fish maestro a compliment. I praise the swank new restaurant he works in, and comment that the sushi has improved since it first opened…
I’m in the back of Louis XIV’s tour bus as the San Diego group’s front man Jason Hill is knocking out a new composition on acoustic guitar on the couch next to me, something with the refrain, “I don’t want to be a fool no more.” I wait politely for…
No slight intended to that toddlin’ town of Mesa, but few are the delectations that would motivate me to drive down to that burg in 110-degree-plus heat, with the monsoon on my tail. Exceptional barbecue is one, and exceptional barbecue Mesa now has with the opening of a Big City…
“Hey, where’s the buffet?!” cries the Mandy Moore of P-town, otherwise known as Her Regal Jettiness, as we saunter into the Scottsdale sports bar known as Buster McNutty’s. “You’re tellin’ me this is a big girls’ night and there’s no buffet?” I answer her query by stepping on her big…
So I roll up on the Jettster’s crib to pick her up for another night of pimpin’ in tha PHX, and I find her parked on the couch in her raggedy jammies, eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and watching The Real World: Austin. “Hey, Kreme,” she mutters, scratching her…
If I were not duty-bound to visit a restaurant more than once before reviewing it, I never would have returned to Scottsdale’s Tapas after my initial, disastrous visit. There were even a couple of points during the evening when my companion and I seriously discussed walking out. Mostly, this occurred…
Does anyone else cringe when they hear of Mayor Phil Gordon’s front porch benches and how they’re now greeting visitors at Sky Harbor Airport? The mayor’s Mayberry aesthetic may have a noble intent; it’s supposed to bring us all together, and in doing so, help fight crime. But can’t we…
