Readers' Choice 2001 | Shops: Fine Foods, Spirits & Specialties | Phoenix
Navigation
Support Us
Search
  • Best Of
  • Shops: Fine Foods, Spirits & Specialties

Readers' Choice

Best Bakery
Paradise Bakery
several Valley locations

Best Place To Fulfill Your Apple-a-day Quota

Candy's Apples

Whoever coined the phrase "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" never considered the sinful creations that Candy's turns out. Candy's starts with immense, hand-selected Granny Smith apples of unparalleled crunch and flavor. Then it mounds this gift of nature with various combinations of ingredients, ranging from traditional caramel to peanut butter, macadamia nuts and Heath Bar pieces, completely obliterating any nutritional value that might have originally existed. It's a challenge to figure out how best to eat one of these delectable monsters (we used a knife and fork), but it's a challenge well worth meeting.

Best Middle Eastern Grocery

Yusef's Middle Eastern Restaurant, Grocery and Deli

If Yusef's doesn't have it, you don't need it. That's our thought, anyway, after browsing through hundreds of Middle Eastern and North African items stocked on the shelves of this delightful shop.

All the basics are covered: powdered sumac, Turkish coffee, teas, zaatar (thyme and sesame seeds to be blended with olive oil and dipped with pita), and kadaifi (phyllo dough). The store's got the fancy stuff, too, like Israeli olives, Lebanese green beans, Bulgarian eggplant dip and a tasty variety of feta cheeses. And Yusef's has got novelties, like a must-have tobacco water pipe called a hubba-bubba.

Yusef's? You said it.

Best Soft Drink Selection

Pop the Soda Shop

Pop rocks!

And nowhere in town will you find a wider selection of the bottled bubbly (non-alcoholic variety) than at this fizz fanatic's paradise, a soda supermarket that stocks hundreds of hard-to-find carbonated potables.

Specializing in regional and imported sweetened swills you either haven't tasted in years or never knew existed, the inventory (some 300 brands) includes such arcane quaffs as Mexican Coca-Cola (despite Coke's official company line, it's far zingier than its domestic cousin), Dr Pepper from a maverick Texas bottler that still uses pure cane sugar, and Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, which tastes a lot better than it sounds. In short, enough effervescent nectars to finance your dentist's Malibu beach house.

Burp!

Best Cookies

Fat Cat Cookies

Maybe your house was filled with the smell of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies every week when you were a kid. Or maybe your mom's idea of making cookies was opening a package of Chips Ahoy!. Whether you're reliving your childhood or compensating for it, you'll want to drop in on Fat Cat Cookies. Every morning finds owner Linda Schneider up to her elbows in delicious cookie dough. She and hubby Kem make 18 varieties, from basic chocolate chip, peanut butter and sugar cookies to whisker-lickin'-good specialties such as "cat's meow" (white chocolate and macadamia nut), "purr-fect pineapple" (crushed, unsweetened pineapple in a soft, cakelike cookie), "cat's whiskers" (white chocolate chips, pecans and a touch of rum flavoring) and the "original fat cat" (chocolate, walnuts and peanut butter chips). If you're lucky, you might even get to meet Boston, the "boss cat" of the operation.

Best Lemonade

Jamba Juice

How can something so simple go so wrong so often? Phoenix is a veritable citrus mecca, yet drinks bearing no trace of lemon get passed off as lemonade here every day. And don't get us started on how people have served us Crystal Light with a straight face, as if we wouldn't know the difference. Lemonade is simple; there's no need for creativity, tricks or gimmicks. Or artificial sweeteners. If you like your lemonade tart and straightforward, Jamba Juice does it just right. Buried amidst a lengthy menu of smoothie combinations, it's easy to overlook the almost quaint listing of lemonade. But it's there -- so satisfyingly sour, with just a little sweetness, and chilled with plenty of slushy ice. Pucker up.

Best Italian Grocery

Guido's Chicago Meat and Deli

It's not often that we break into tears at the sight of food. But as soon as we walk into Guido's, our hearts swell, and our eyes well up at what must be the closest thing to heaven on Earth for real (or wanna-be) Italians.

How could we not grow misty over San Marzano tomatoes? Overwhelmed by olive oil, bread and imported pasta? Smitten with sauces, marinated olives, cookies, pastries and even imported antacids? And that's just the stuff on the shelves. Mascarpone cheese, handmade mozzarella, carved capocollo, hard salami and more than a dozen from-scratch salads fill the cooler cases (the tomato and garlic salad is outstanding). If we don't feel like cooking our own, Guido's caters with its take-home lasagna, cheese tortellini, potato dumplings and ravioli. Whatever you do, take time to smell the sausage. It, too, is made by hand, gloriously juicy and bursting with fennel.

Best Produce

Guadalupe Farmer's Market

The name is deceptive: This is a shop with regular hours, not a weekend event. For cooks who despair of finding exotica like in-season cherries for less than $7 a pound, or for those who have heard tell of mythical eggplants that come in colors other than purple but have never actually witnessed such sights, the Guadalupe market is a mecca. It's not a tiresome gourmet shop with the precious-gem prices we've come to expect for things that should be everyday items, like ripe tomatoes or local grapefruit. This is a straightforward produce market, run by people who understand that they're selling vegetables, for goodness sake, not Russian caviar. Guadalupe Farmer's Market's plentiful produce is fairly priced, always fresh, and local whenever possible. Better yet, its fruits and vegetables taste like foodstuffs you've only heard about from elderly relatives who swear no one sells produce like they did "way back when." Guadalupe does.

Best Organic Produce

Boxed Greens

Short of manning your own farm, you won't find a better, more reliable way to get organics than with the home delivery service of Boxed Greens. This company cuts out the middleman, so the just-picked treasures come right to our door, guaranteed by 7 a.m.

This certified organic produce is grown mostly right here in Arizona, without pesticides. It's all the best the season has to offer, with pick-of-the-week freshness and boutique varieties that can't be found anywhere else. Working exclusively with small farms (500 acres or less), Boxed Greens snags such delectables as heirloom tomatoes, unusual herbs or fruits, all picked to order. Sure, these precious pleasures cost more -- purple beans for $7.95 a pound, plus $9.95 for delivery -- but aren't your taste buds worth it? We know ours are.

Best Gourmet Market

Trader Joe's

Gourmet grub doesn't have to be expensive. This we learned at Trader Joe's, an amazing emporium of more than 800 upscale items for remarkably palatable prices. We love the freshness, and the variety of product, too. TJ's shelves -- and now ours, too -- are stocked with delicious things like sweet garlic sauce, artichoke lemon pesto, Satsuma mandarin oranges in syrup, Super Colossal Sevillano olives, Manchego cheese and Bluefort Aged Sheep's Milk Blue Cheese. TJ's has wines from around the world, organic cereals, mozzarella and tomato salad, poultry sausages, low-fat curried turkey burgers, ready-to-eat meats, Spaten Beers from Germany, Fiji Water, designer jerky, and even gourmet goodies for our pets.

We wouldn't trade Joe's for anything.

Best Of Phoenix®

Best Of

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our terms of use, our cookies policy, and our privacy policy The Phoenix New Times may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 Phoenix New Times, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do Not Sell or Share My Information
Powered By Foundation