Tina Tamrat Hildebrand laughs and smiles shyly when I play reporter rather than gentleman, and ask her age. This fetching little Ethiopian lady could pass for someone in her mid-to-late 20s, but curiosity has yet to kill the culinary critic, which is why I pose the question. “You know, in…

The ker-plunk and whoosh is most pronounced right around the intersection of Tempe’s Fifth Street and Mill Avenue, or, as I like to call it, the corner of Hooters and Gordon Biersch. No doubt you’ve heard it before: the sound of your soul being flushed into the rancid sewer of…

I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy of dunces out there, hell-bent on making the dining experience as consistently staid and by-the-numbers as an effin’ copy of Reader’s Digest. Scribblers of that pinkie-in-the-air genre known as “food writing” — the unfortunate tribe in which I’m lumped — are by far the worst…

Sitting in the dark-orange, Dr. No-like bar at Scottsdale’s Stingray Sushi, drinking a tall glass of Kirin draft and watching the promising Phoenix Suns get spanked by San Antonio recently, it occurred to me that I probably feel the same way toward Stingray Sushi as I do toward our basketball…

On the whole, 2004 has been a good year for this portly penman, as enjoyable dining experiences have easily outweighed poor ones. Indeed, what stays with me, in the form of fat cells as well as recollections, are the great meals I’ve had on my various eating expeditions throughout the…

What a colossal difference a second visit to a restaurant can make. See, my modus operandi as a critic is generally as follows: I pick a place I want to review, then I dine there at least twice, usually with guests, so I can nibble off their plates unsuspected by…

Everyone knows about Pavlov’s dogs: those canines that helped Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov demonstrate that the natural flow of saliva in Sparky’s mouth could be induced by external stimuli, like a bell ringing. Pavlov referred to this as a “conditioned reflex,” and his findings netted him a Nobel prize way…

Hey, I may come off in print as a bloated narcissist, but I do get my comeuppance often enough. Take, for example, a question I had for a colleague after visiting the six-month-old Coyoacán steak house on South Central Avenue. The restaurant sits nearly at the foot of South Mountain,…

It’s a fine Tuesday morning, and I’m seated at a table in Matt’s Big Breakfast, the new diner that opened a month ago on First Street and McKinley, next to the Coronado Hotel, in the same spot where the eatery Chez Bubba used to do business. The sun is shining,…

I’ve always loathed Thanksgiving, so don’t expect some column from me telling you how to cook a turkey with a beer can stuck up its butt, or where to snarf the best stuffing in the Valley. Everything about the holiday nauseates me: the enforced familial bonding; the orgy of unoriginal…

Folks call and write me with some amazing requests. Usually, I do my best to reply in a timely manner, but occasionally, the inquiries veer into the asinine zone, in which case, I may never respond. For example, if you’re a PR flack who wonders why I never called back…