Forget your strategy of waiting till the last minute to pick up your fresh turkey from the grocery store, because Butterball, the top producer of Thanksgiving turkeys in the country, has announced a nationwide shortage of its large, fresh birds this year. According to New England grocery chain Big Y,…
What? Not done with your holiday shopping? Yeah, neither are we. But we’ve been making lists — and checking them twice — and we’ve got some suggestions for the nice people on your list. Today, Chow Bella’s Gift Guide for the Craft Beer Lover. So that special someone in your…
Brining. “It gets confused a lot with marinating,” Blue Hound Kitchen & Cocktails’ executive chef Stephen Jones says. “It’s a totally different beast.” Brine is a salt solution in which proteins or vegetables are submerged to give them flavor. Marinating uses an acid or oil base that desaturates. Brining saturates…
Note: This post has been edited from its original version. In addition to The Simple Farm, Arizona’s Fiore di Capra Inc. has also been nominated for a Good Food Award. We regret the mistake. If you didn’t already have a good enough reason to visit The Simple Farm, the farm…
Already, you say? The answer is yes, it’s already time to start planning for one of the highlights of the culinary year, the Devoured Food and Wine Classic. Mark your calendar for December 1, when tickets go on sale to the general public and then mark it again for March…
Just months after celebrating its five-year anniversary in June, Sweet Republic, Scottsdale’s top-notch artisan ice cream shop from Jan Wichayanuparp and Helen Yung, is giving its fans another reason to celebrate: a second location in Phoenix…
Fourteen celebrity chefs, countless community bakers, 700 attendees, hundreds of pies — and we won’t even try to count the calories. Come back to the blog later today for a slideshow, and later this week, we’ll have a behind-the-scenes account of the competition, complete with a rundown of all the…
Don’t want to cook this year? Whether you want traditional holiday foods or dishes infused with local flavor, an affordable meal, or an all-out Thanksgiving feast, we’ve got you covered. Traditional Turkey & Fixin’s Tanzy With both white and dark meat turkey, Tanzy’s prix-fixe menu covers all the traditional foods:…
Paul McCabe Executive Chef T. Cook’s at the Royal Palms www.tcooksdining.com This week, we’re talking with new T. Cook’s executive chef Paul McCabe, who comes to the Valley after a decade in Southern California kitchens, most recently at La Jolla’s La Valencia Hotel. It’s been about a month since the…
Coffee and craft beer fans looking for a new hangout in Old Town Scottsdale will get their wish next month. Located at 3617 North Goldwater Road, in the new Creative Center of Scottsdale (on the west side of Scottsdale Road just north of Osborn Road), Sip Coffee & Beer House,…
Posh Today Tonight, chef Josh Hebert of Posh Improvisational Cuisine is hosting a wine dinner to benefit The Joy Bus, a nonprofit organization that provides fresh and healthy meals to cancer patients and their families. The six-course dinner will include an amuse bouche of popcorn soup, followed by dishes such…
Since we’re already seeing Christmas lights and peppermint-flavored everything, it may already be too late to save anyone from the pumpkin flavored-deluge. But just in case you’re still sucking down those PSLs (that’s Pumpkin Spice Latte, for the non-Starbucks fans out there) and snacking on pumpkin-flavored almonds (which are a…
I just looked at the calendar and realized that the time for wintry merrymaking is coming closer. While I’m staunchly against Christmas creeping forward every year (seriously, retailers, can we at least wait until after Halloween before putting up Christmas decorations?), there’s one piece of Yuletide cheer that is best…
This month, Oregano’s Pizza Bistro is turning 20, and it is giving away one very sweet guilty pleasure to celebrate the occasion. All 12 locations will be giving away pizza cookies with every single lunch or dinner cookie on the big day. Mark your calendars for Monday, November 18, and…
Happy root vegetable season, everyone! That’s right, the root veggies are back at local farmers markets in a big way, just in time for you to begin experimenting with different recipes for your Thanksgiving dinner. Although parsley root doesn’t typically get the spotlight in the root veggie world, the white…
We spent the past year putting together a list of the best breakfast spots in the Valley for the 2013 Best of Phoenix® edition. Print this off, bookmark it, pocket it, or make your own list for the next time you feel like rolling out of bed and having someone…
It’s a new day for Quiessence. After being closed for five months, on Tuesday, the charming spot at the Farm at South Mountain reopened under new management, a new chef, and a brand new menu — one that still focuses on farm-to-table food, but in a more approachable way as…
Whatever happened to potluck Thanksgivings? Or the days when you could whip up a few classic family recipes supplemented by store-bought pie and canned cranberries? The answer is, those days are long gone and now hostesses are expected to turn out a beautifully brined turkey (because deep-frying is so last…
Wine geeks, cork dorks, oenophiles, and winos: Welcome to our little corner of Chow Bella. It’s here that you’ll find weekly dispatches from the wine universe or at least the very small part of that universe that I humbly inhabit. It was over a decade ago that I came to…
Another television crew is coming to Phoenix and surprisingly, they’re not headed for Amy’s Baking Company this time. The Cooking Channel show Eat St., “a lip-smacking celebration of North America’s tastiest, messiest, and most irresistible street food,” has a few Valley food trucks on their radar for the show’s fifth…
Lasagna is the ultimate Italian comfort food — a delicious multi-layered dish baked with cheese, pasta, tomato sauce, meat, and spices. We ventured into two local restaurants, Giuseppe’s on 28th and DeFalco’s Italian Deli and Grocery (coincidentally, both have been featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives) to see…
We recently took a weekend jaunt to Flagstaff, where the residents there have every right to shiver, wrap up in their colorful handmade scarves, and utter “brrrrrr” as they tool about the chilly, pine-laden landscape. For more than three decades now, Macy’s European Coffeehouse and Bakery has been keeping Flagstaff…
