Chef Mahmmud Jaafari has got a gem on his hands with Green Leaf Cafe, a casual little shop on 19th Avenue and Campbell in Phoenix. The place has been around for more than a decade, serving an ambitious menu of Persian cuisine accented by Mediterranean, Italian, American, Mexican, Cajun, vegetarian…
The kitchen is having some difficulty securing one of its specialties this week. My guess is that the chapulines are particularly feisty in cooler weather, making them harder to catch. Chapuline means grasshopper, and on some days the critters are available at Restaurant Oaxaca in north central Phoenix.It takes a…
It’s musical chairs of a most interesting kind between two restaurants with completely different concepts. Hapa Sushi Lounge’s star chef, Nobu Fukuda, is departing his award-winning adjunct of Restaurant Hapa to open an addition to Cowboy Ciao.This means that Restaurant Hapa, lavishly celebrated by local and national media for its…
The day was eerie. A slow drizzle of rain fell to earth like tears of those from above. The sky was a gray that made everything else look like a black-and-white photograph. Night was falling. I was anxious and leery about where I was heading.I could feel my heart racing…
Manhattan has Drew Nieporent and the Myriad Group, an enterprise that began in 1985 with a single restaurant, Montrachet. Today, Nieporent operates a virtual empire of some of New York’s best-loved eateries: Tribeca Grill, Rubicon, Nobu, Layla, TriBakery, HeartBeat, Icon and Pulse.The Valley has Tom and Chrysa Kaufman. While operating…
For the first time in 25 years, the Arizona Department of Health Services has updated its requirements for food safety in restaurants. While it took the agency three years to develop the new rules, the need for a few of the changes seems pretty obvious.At least one person on a…
Say your mother made casseroles. In particular, she made one with a funny name — “Mom’s Mish-Mash,” you called it — with condensed cream of mushroom soup. She was famous for it; she took it to church potlucks, she took it to PTA dinners, and all of the other mothers…
Done right, beef bourguignon should be a classic dish that cravings are made of, with economical beef chuck made glamorous from a roll in flour, a lusty browning in oil, and a deep pond of Burgundy, the wine deglazed and scraped up with good beef bits from the pan. Cooking…
In Sunny’s world, his favorite customers wait for their barbecued ribs, beef and chicken the longest. Tonight, it’s his sister Clara’s birthday and she’s been patient for over an hour.”I’m a lonely rascal,” explains Walter “Sunny” Gaines. This is hard to believe. As proprietor of Sunny’s Sunshine Bar-B-Que each Friday…
Here’s a recipe for weirdness: Put about 100 food writers from across the country in a convention center at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Load them up with jellybeans, Q-Tips soaked in tannic acid, bottles of chopped crayons and coffee, plus a healthy dose of androsterone (the chemical found in…
Fresh fish cut daily, reads the menu at The Cracked Crab. Note the word choice: cut, not caught, daily, although our gracious server assures us that the bounty of lobster, shrimp, salmon, scallops, mussels and more arrives bright and shiny every morning.Putting too fine a point on semantics? Hardly. When…
When the James Beard Foundation hosts an event, it’s upper crust all the way. Gourmets treat the dinners very seriously, displaying etiquette that would please Miss Manners, and the talk is deep, thoughtful stuff. Sure.Last week’s Friends of James Beard event at the Royal Palms showcased the skills of several…
Back Porch Cafe President Bush is encouraging Americans to band together and support our country, and we’re doing it. In this time of flags rippling from the rooftops and fluttering behind vehicles on the road, we’re celebrating everything patriotic and proud. So it makes sense that something suddenly appeals so…
There are two reasons to frequent Chez Bubba’s, the wonderful Caribbean and Creole restaurant on First Street downtown. One of them is Bubba. Myron “Bubba” Stephenson is such a remarkable personality that his presence alone could carry the restaurant, quite independently of the food — which, of course, is the…
Talk is swirling that the massive Mondo’s restaurant may be closing, barely a year after opening at The Promenade on Scottsdale Road south of Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard. While restaurant staffers say it’s “just a dirty rumor,” court documents suggest otherwise.A lawsuit filed September 5 shows that Mondo’s of Scottsdale…
Like the art style for which it’s named, Mosaic restaurant is a complicated creation, composed of many tiny details to form an elaborate whole. The result is a visual dazzler, from the restaurant’s sleek interior design to its menu reading like a voyage around the world. Yet just like a…
Picture this: a honeymooning couple on a tour of Egypt. They are the youngest ones in the tour group by at least 20 years. But that’s not what’s bothering them on this trip of a lifetime, which has taken them to Cairo’s famed Egyptian Museum, King Tut’s tomb and the…
Within the space of a few seconds on September 11, the world changed. For one restaurant and its hundreds of staffers, the world came to a horrific end. Windows on the World, the internationally renowned restaurant capping the World Trade Center, was reduced from its perch 107 stories over the…
My Florist Cafe Man does not live by bread alone. He also needs some sugar. At least that seems to be the thinking behind the folks at My Florist Cafe, the new adjunct to downtown Phoenix’s wildly popular Willo Bread store. Yet we’re not talking dessert here: This new restaurant…
The Valley’s restaurants felt ripples from the aftermath of last week’s terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. During the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many restaurants closed, either for dinner or completely. Out of respect for the victims or because…
Blinded by the sweat pouring into my eyes, I caught myself wondering if it was really worth it.I struggled to keep a firm grip on the splintered handle of an archaic pick as I thought of the gorgeous turquoise beach just a few feet away. With hands blistered and slicked…
Gecko Grill doesn’t simply do good old-fashioned Mexican food. Oh no. The restaurant offers a full American barbecue menu, too, serving baby back ribs alongside its burritos. If this seems like an ambitious pairing, it is. Real barbecue lovers won’t stand for so-so smoked meats and sauces, and with quality…
