I think I know why American cuisine is often so boring. We’ve never been overthrown by a hostile nation. With such a homogenous pool of settlers, Americans have never been forced to incorporate exotic cultures into their cooking. And so, our national heritage has been allowed to wallow in the…
The restaurant business is full of headaches for owners. For Robert McGrath, the daily aches and pains were indicators of something much more serious. McGrath, chef-owner of Scottsdale’s Roaring Fork, has recently returned to work after battling viral encephalitis, a serious infection that causes acute inflammation of the brain. It’s…
If you had to pick the professional ice cream taster out of the lunch crowd at Claim Jumper in Tempe, there’s a good chance that John Harrison is the one you’d pick. He strides into the prodigious-portion eatery wearing half the colors you’ll see under the glass at an ice…
You don’t have to be Jerry Seinfeld to be afraid of chefs who don’t wash their hands. Bad personal hygiene is dangerous — and all too prevalent in our restaurants. And that’s one way you get food poisoning.I was recently dining at the bar of one of my favorite Mexican…
Our waiter at Seasons is wondering with us where the crowds are. It’s 8 o’clock on a Friday night, and the spacious dining room is speckled with perhaps two dozen guests. It’s like this all the time lately, he laments, and no one can figure out why. It’s a stumper…
It’s been another wonderful meal at a local restaurant, and we’re lounging over coffee, basking in the glow of full stomachs and relaxed thoughts. The setting is classy, the service has been superb — all in all, an evening worthy of the $50-plus it’s going to cost us.Our server approaches,…
Bar dining isn’t anything new. Since the dawn of professional sports and big-screen TVs, patrons have been swarming bars, seeking a tall cold one. They’re content to cheer a game through with the likes of straight-from-the-freezer-bag bites like cheese sticks, potato skins, deep-fried zucchini and mushrooms, or chicken wings. Hungrier…
Sure, the recipes inside are solidly good, even inspired. But the name, The Wicca Cookbook, is enough to choke on.Forget about “eye of newt” and “toil and trouble”: If it’s a Shakespearean cliché, a book reviewer has beat you to it. Of course, some didn’t make it past the cover…
More than half of the time I sit down to lunch, probably, it’s with someone who would consider himself or herself a film lover. I’m a film lover myself. But when you sit down to lunch with Ron Walker, you’re sitting down with a film lover of a different league…
God help the owners of Waldo’s Barbecue. The shop, with locations in Scottsdale and Mesa, has a slogan that parodies P.E.T.A. — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Waldo’s take on the acronym? People who Enjoy Tasting Animals.Waldo’s is a sure-fire target for a recent P.E.T.A. campaign directed at…
What do the well-heeled and hungry want? Great food? To dine at Different Pointe of View, arguably the Valley’s most expensive restaurant, you’d never know it. This place, long on status but short on substance, continues to pack in diners willing to pay exorbitant prices for too-often mediocre food and…
The National Restaurant Association show invaded Chicago May 19-22, bringing more than 2,000 companies displaying often-dubious innovations designed to streamline restaurant operations. A few things the culinary world doesn’t need:• “Salmon pipes” are logs of precooked, processed and pressed fish bits to be served in hot dog buns at discriminating…
Jill Cohn isn’t what I expected, on the basis of several years of listening to her music on CD. Demonstrating the same sort of naiveté that leads housewives to believe that the guy on their soap opera really is a cad, or Charlton Heston to believe that Ice-T really kills…
It’s the end of an era, with the closing of the historic John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranch. It’s a new dawn for Valley hospitality, with the unveiling of the Zen-inspired resort and spa taking Gardiner’s place — Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain. The resort won’t open until October, but its flagship restaurant…
It’s late May, and there are 52 home games remaining in the Arizona Diamondbacks season at Bank One Ballpark. That’s a lot of baseball. That’s also potentially a lot of hours spent driving in circles and a lot of money wasted for sports fans unfamiliar with the best way to…
It’s so nice to have a slave — um, a server — to cater to our whims as we watch the Philadelphia Phillies kick the Diamondbacks’ butts on a Friday night. In-seat food and beverage service is just one of the amenities of scoring a Clubhouse ticket, the $70-per-seat grouping…
It takes about an hour to braid most horses, including their tails, Angelica Romero tells me. And that’s if a SWAT team doesn’t barge in looking for escaped convicts, which has happened to her. “Two years in a row at Tucson, early in my career, there was me and maybe…
Michael & Christi’s Heavenly Soul Food Soul food is so simple, it’s easy to overlook as a cuisine in its own right. Yet embracing good old gritty calories, heavy batters, fatty meats, thick gravies and sugars like molasses — what’s not to celebrate? It’s high time that diners salute this…
Journalists sometimes forget how important their readers are. Yet their missives often arrive in our mailboxes packed with helpful comments, and the constructive criticism that offers us the opportunity to better our craft as communicators.Consider this compelling note from a curious gentleman wanting to chat about my recent, unfavorable review…
I’m toying with the idea of planting corn in my backyard, then infecting it with the fungus Ustilago maydis. If all goes well, the kernels will be coated with a greenish-white covering, then turn silver-gray before rupturing to reveal huitlacoche, a black corn fungus that is a delicacy in Mexican…
Crisdee’s Chef Razz Kamnitzer grumbles that chain restaurants use glittery marketing instead of good food to lure customers in the door. What bothers him the most is not that he doesn’t have an advertising budget equal to that of the Olive Garden, but that the public believes the packaged puffery…
This town isn’t big enough for two Arcadias.Arcadia Farms Cafe has filed a civil lawsuit against Restaurant Arcadia, claiming trademark infringement and requesting that the restaurant change its name. Arcadia Farms is an award-winning eatery at First Avenue and Goldwater in Scottsdale. It’s been a Valley favorite for its creative…
