Food & Drink

This past weekend was the 81st annual National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant & Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago, the largest industry gathering of the year. More than 2,000 exhibitors pitched their products in almost 900 restaurant-related categories, and I think I saw every single display. But truth be told, rather than showcasing…

Most of the people who showed up at a recent sake tasting hosted by the Japan America Society of Phoenix knew what many Americans apparently don’t: Good sake should never be served hot.”The only place in the world you’ll get hot sake is here in the U.S.,” American sake maker…

Dating is an evil practice. It forces people who barely know each other to spend awkward hours suffering through dinner and a movie, a night at the theater, or a weekend trying to find their way home from a foreign country that doesn’t even have the courtesy to use English…

Basketball isn’t really my game. To the extent that I’m a sports fan at all, I like football and baseball. I’m really a movie buff. The signature snack of my pastime isn’t peanuts or Cracker Jacks, but popcorn. As appalling as ticket and concession prices have gotten at the movies,…

Move over, Awesome Blossom. There’s a new vegetable on the marketing block that’s threatening to steal diehard fans of French-fried onion and potato snacks.For the past 21 years, Phoenix-based Seaphire International, a spin-off of Planetary Design Corporation, has been researching and developing sea asparagus, as this exceptionally salty cultivar is…

To draw on a line from Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being mean.Life as a critic — be it theater, art, music, architecture or food — is a balancing act. Critics strive to be fair while both entertaining and informing their readers. A positive report is easy; everybody’s happy…

Menu writing is an art. Savvy restaurateurs go to great lengths to make their dishes sound appealing, waxing poetic about the virtues of even the commonest hamburger, meat loaf or macaroni and cheese. The more adjectives, usually, the more expensive the meal. I’m waiting for the day when it’s also…

I’m still at a loss as to why Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo is such a big deal in the U.S. when it’s not a big deal in Mexico. Most people I’ve polled labor under the illusion that the fifth of May is Mexican Independence Day. If you think that, you…

It’s a wonder we don’t hear more news of restaurant staffers going completely postal. They’ve got the motives — long hours spent on their feet, often with demanding customers, and with little control over (but ultimate blame for) the kitchen, low pay and, too frequently, lousy tips. They’ve got the…

“We want to be the Harry and David of certified organic produce. That’s our aspiration,” says Gina Verdugo, co-owner with Dan Wygocki of Boxed Greens Inc. Verdugo is referring to the much-copied originator of the now legendary Fruit-of-the-Month Club, a multimillion-dollar mail-order company founded in Medford, Oregon, during the Great…

So many events, so little time, my party companion laments, digging through the stacks of announcements crowding my desk. It’s April again, and it seems that everywhere we turn, there’s another tempting fund raiser, festival or feast demanding our attention. The Valley’s reservations-required dining season is drawing to a close,…

The Mad Hatter must have organized the menu and set the table for the First International Edible Book High Tea. The “tea” — and I use the term quite loosely — was held during one of Tempe’s patience-trying street fairs on Changing Hands Bookstore’s back patio during intermittent rain showers…

Sometimes it is so simple to bash chain restaurants, and admittedly, it can be fun. They’re behemoths with mass-feeding troughs. They’re invisible, out-of-state corporations more concerned with the bottom line than with creative cuisine. They bombard us with maddening commercials about “baby back, baby back, baby back ribs.” But it’s…

Back in 1958, when most high school guys were dreaming about cruising Camelback in a cool, two-tone Chevy, Gary Schiller was probably thinking about sausages. That’s because at age 13, he began working after school as a Boy Friday at Schreiner’s Fine Sausages, a Phoenix landmark on Seventh Street. Established…