Best Reason to Go Out for Dinner on Sunday 2013 | Sunday Simple Supper at Noca | Food & Drink | Phoenix
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Best Reason to Go Out for Dinner on Sunday

Sunday Simple Supper at Noca

Evie Carpenter

The sad fact that more Valley restaurants close on Sunday than shut down during the summer is enough to make us want to harumpf into our sofas with Saturday night's leftovers. But thanks to Noca's Sunday Simple Supper, waking up to a Monday just got a whole lot happier. With a focus on comfort and a rotating menu each week, each $35 three-course meal includes dishes like luscious clam chowder, pork osso bucco, and cherry blueberry cobbler. For an extra-special day of rest, you'll want the fried chicken supper. Served up on the last Sunday of every month, it stars Noca's famously fantastic fried chicken made with a recipe Noca owner Eliot Wexler took a year to perfect.

Best Late-Night Nosh

Pig & Pickle

Jackie Mercandetti
Comfort food meets chef finesse meets affordable prices: Pig & Pickle is a kind of culinary power to the people.

Gourmet comfort food dishes like heady wood-oven-roasted bone marrow, ham-tastic croque madame, and pork shoulder tostadas heaped with kimchi that can be had until 1 a.m. — and all for under a 10 bucks — are more than just late-night eats: They're a kind of culinary power to the people. Blame Keenan Bosworth and Joshua Riesner, the former chef duo at Atlas Bistro, for keeping you up past your bedtime. Here, at their easygoing Scottsdale restaurant, night owls can pair boozy old-school cocktails with meat-centric eats and rub shoulders with industry folk who've decided to do the same.

Best Place to Sober Up

Philadelphia Sandwich Company

Wanna kill the buzz after a long night of overindulgence in Scottsdale? Forget about sucking down black coffee or any other hokum remedy. What your body needs to help detoxify itself from the staggering amount of Jäger bombs, AMFs, and other firewater that you've been inhaling is cysteine, and plenty of it. Stat. The amino acid, which aids the liver in nullifying alcohol-related intoxicants, is founded in abundance in chicken, steak, red peppers, and certain cheeses, and thus, the various hoagies and cheesesteaks being served around the clock at the Philadelphia Sandwich Company. Though it's not a complete curative, sucking down one of the 24-hour eatery's chicken- or beef-laden sammies loaded with extra Cheez Whiz and peppers is sure to get you back on the mend. Plus, it's open all night and there's a billiards table, electronic dartboards, and other games available for play while you wait for the taxi to show up or your head to clear, whichever comes first.

Best Hangover Breakfast

Yucca Tap Room

Jennifer Goldberg

For years, this Tempe landmark has offered Valley music fans a place to stay up way too late, drink way too much PBR, and listen to music that's way too loud. Thankfully, on weekends, it's also a spot to crawl from the wreckage, slither into a booth, and order up good bad-for-you food of the waffle sort — like a cheese-stuffed poblano pepper served between two bacon waffles, waffles topped with S'mores fixin's, and even a waffle patty melt covered in caramelized onions and gooey American cheese. We're gripping our stiff Bloody Marys as tight as we can.

Best Soul Food Restaurant

Mrs. White's Golden Rule Café

Jacob Tyler Dunn

In 1964, Mrs. Elizabeth White turned her name, her down-home soul food, and her observance of the golden rule into not only one of Arizona's longest operating African American-owned businesses, but a legendary Valley restaurant as well. Fifty years later, the modest little building on Jefferson Street is still the best place in town for heaping platefuls of smothered pork chops, pond-raised catfish, and Mrs. White's one-of-a-kind Southern fried chicken. And for dessert? Peach cobbler (of course), which Mrs. White still prepares regularly — along with her pies — at her soul food restaurant so many have called home for nearly half a century.

Best Vegan Restaurant

Bragg's Factory Diner

Heather Hoch

Diner-style vegan and vegetarian eats may be just about the best idea since the Vitamix — and at this cheery spot in the retail space of Bragg's Pie Factory, the former pie factory turned art gallery in Central Phoenix, you can get them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — and pie. You could start and stop at the golden and fragrant coconut curry waffles, but then there's beet burgers topped with a zesty corn relish; an "E.L.T." made with eggplant "bacon"; vegan pie in flavors like rosemary apple, banana cream, and chai-spiced pear; and, sometimes, even vegan doughnuts.

Best Vegetarian Restaurant

Pomegranate Cafe

This cheery, mother-daughter eatery in Ahwatukee serves up big, bursting-with-color dishes of fresh vegetables and grains, fruit-packed smoothies and veggie juices, and an ever-changing array of homemade sweet treats. There are very good lunch and dinner items here — like bulky "Rainbow" wraps, a lively, Southwestern-inspired blue corn taco salad, and a nutty and spicy stir-fry called the Dragon. Brunch, featuring dishes like a light but hearty Lumberjack sandwich and egg or tofu scrambles with veggies, is worth noting as well. And (bonus) in addition to the all-vegetarian — and very often vegan — menu, there are gluten-free and raw options as well.

Best Gluten-Free Restaurant

True Food Kitchen

We must begin with a caveat: True Food Kitchen's menu is not 100 percent gluten-free.

And that's just fine with us, because this way we might actually be able to convince a friend or two to dine with us. Gluten-free living can get awfully lonely, but not at TFK — where Dr. Andrew Weil is (virtually) right by our side, instilling his anti-inflammatory diet into a Fox Restaurant Concept menu. The setting is lovely and kale never sounded so good. What more could you ask for?

Best Authentic Arizona Restaurant

The Stockyards

Jacob Tyler Dunn

Most folks in these parts know the name Tovrea because of the castle or the murder (or both) but did you know about the Tovrea Stockyards? Operated in the shadow of the hill that holds the castle, Edward Tovrea's feedlot was once the largest in the country. Not far away, the family later opened a restaurant, named, naturally the Stockyards. Despite decorating upgrades over the years, The Stockyards still has an authentic Arizona feel, from the black and white photos to the leather booths to the menu, Today the steaks may not be quite as fresh — they have to go farther for the meat, of course — but you can still get a damn good piece of beef here.

Best English Pub

Rose & Crown

Aching for some Wee Britain in old Phoenix town? Rose & Crown is the pub to satiate all of your Anglo-Saxon cravings. Located in a renovated historic home right across from Pizzeria Bianco in Heritage Square, the bar specializes in craft beer, billiards and grease-a-licious eats. It's best to stop in Mondays for half-priced pub burgers, but the English bar also specializes in one of our favorite Canadian food forms every day — poutines [sic]. The thick, crisp English-style chips are perfectly seasoned and then smothered with cheddar cheese, brown gravy, and scallions. Though it isn't a classic take on poutine, it's definitely delicious enough to hold us over until our next stop over the northern border. Beyond all of that, Rose & Crown has a great porch and patio for soaking in the downtown scenery with some superb people-watching.

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