Mobil three-star-rated chef Michael DeMaria has taken over food management for Rawhide, including the Golden Belle Steakhouse and Saloon, catering and cookouts. But don’t look for anything radical from the owner of north Scottsdale’s upscale Michael’s at The Citadel, at least not yet.”Rawhide is what it is,” says DeMaria. “The…
Even though it’s a weekday, Phoenix Art Museum is packed. I’m there with an artist, and an internationally acclaimed artist at that, but the crowds aren’t there to see his work. They’ve turned out in the thousands to see the works of Norman Rockwell. Sculptor Larry McLaughlin and I haven’t…
Miracle Mile Deli When Jack Grodzinsky died in September 1998 at the age of 78, more than 650 people attended his funeral. It was a touching tribute to a respected businessman, an active participant in many Valley charities and a cornerstone of Phoenix’s Jewish community. While the sentiment was sincere,…
Norman Fierros is in trouble. Again. The bad boy chef’s eatery — Norman’s Arizona — was seized last week by the Arizona Department of Revenue for non-payment of taxes. Its windows are shrouded with white paper, and a message on the answering service apologizes for the inconvenience, promising to reopen…
Does it sometimes seem that, no matter the restaurant, you always get poor service? Even when diners nearby are getting the royal treatment? It could be true. You may not be aware of it, but you could be sending signals to your server that you won’t be tipping well when…
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this: Cheating is good for us. When it comes to primal urges, human beings aren’t designed to be monogamous. Even Charles Darwin, after discovering female barnacles that kept a tiny male partner in each of two little pockets inside their…
Your family’s favorite restaurant serves Blue Bunny ice cream, a fact the owners proudly promote on their menu, and on clever tabletop tents. It gives you warm fuzzies to think that the proprietor is so concerned with delivering quality that he’s offering you the name brand.Perhaps he is, but as…
He doesn’t seem like a guy who’d use the I Ching to make life decisions.Then again, if you saw Phil Strassberg on the street, you might not immediately recognize him as a guy who’s seen Babe Ruth play baseball, had his ear bent by Walter Winchell, managed Little Anthony and…
SYSCO Food Services of Arizona’s annual food service exhibition came off without a hitch the other week — great for SYSCO and its vendors, but a bit disappointing for the industry folks hoping to stock their pantries for free as they’ve done in years past. Instead of being allowed to…
To watch Frankie Manning at work is to learn humility anew. I’m leaning against the doors at one of the big rooms at Mesa Centennial Hall, waiting for Manning to finish one of the morning classes he’s teaching at a weekendlong workshop presented by the Arizona Lindy Hop Society. There…
Ethel McGill, who makes wonderful food, is not afraid to say so. In general, she tells it like it is.”This here is Texas sheet cake,” she might say, and you should believe it, although she will later explain that “it’s what you folks call a brownie.” When you have tried…
Local businessman Danny Hendon found his success in soapsuds, as owner of the 13 Danny’s Family Carousel Carwashes across the Valley. Now, the entrepreneur has trained his sights on a spiffy new upscale supper club in the East Valley. If it sounds like an odd pairing, it is. The resulting…
The Valley is home to a wide range of exotic cuisines, with everything from Ethiopian to Afghan and Pakistani restaurants at the ready to feed wanna-be global gourmets. For a city our size, though, we’ve traditionally been pretty short on French food. We can recite the big players without breaking…
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a restaurant customer comes up with a new complaint that’s beyond bizarre. Apparently, some folks think Origami’s, a pleasant little Asian fast-food place at Scottsdale and Shea, serves too much food, and they’re not going to take it anymore.Really. Stopping in for…
Lunch with a Bosnian, if you don’t know any Bosnians, isn’t the easiest thing to arrange. I wanted someone to guide me through the cuisine at Bosnian Cafe Sarajevo, just east of 35th Avenue on the south side of Northern, and also to tell me what life is like here…
It is the ultimate cold-weather comfort food, a baked turnover filled with meat, onions and potatoes. The humble Cornish pasty (pronounced “pass-tee”) was brought to Arizona and the rest of the New World by immigrant miners from Cornwall, that Celtic land of tin mines and fishing villages in Britain’s extreme…
Lady Luck has opened a kitchen just east of Scottsdale. The new Casino Arizona on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is home to Cholla, an upscale restaurant, and Salt River Cafe, a casual eatery. While there’s no guarantee of a payoff with the casino’s slots, cards, off-track betting, keno…
It’s what we all look for when choosing a pizza parlor: whether the chef holds a Guinness World Record. The folks at the New Wise Guys in Scottsdale must think so, given the way they emblazon the honor bestowed on chef Robert Tripi in their ads and on the back…
If it’s true that some guys have it and some guys don’t, then these guys unquestionably have it. Ladies are all around them in the lobby of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, gazing at them as if they were the Rolling Stones. Indeed, some of these very women –…
Lewis Bottomly is not given to exaggeration.”I’ve met some very good chefs,” he says, and indeed he has: among them, Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. But when Bottomly goes on to describe himself as “not so much a chef as a technician,” his talent for understatement takes him too far…
What would a casino experience be without that must-have, the all-you-can-eat buffet? This isn’t typical food in trough, however — Casino Arizona caters to higher tastes with Eagle’s Nest. Put this place on your list of where to eat well, eat a lot, and eat cheap. There’s no mistaking we’re…
Who goes to an airport to eat unless they have to? Apparently, more people than we realize. There’s a national trend brewing of airports supplementing hot dogs with stuff we actually want, including a new Wolfgang Puck eatery at Chicago’s O’Hare, Sylvia’s Soul Food of Harlem at JFK International Airport,…
