Professional chefs are born different from the rest of us. While the home chef may cook to relax, the professional cooks out of a compulsion to create. We may rummage through our shelves as we go, making do with what’s available, yet the professional won’t start until he has every…
Over the past month, a number of the Valley’s better-known restaurants have failed health inspections, with dismal scores ranging from 60 to 70. While it’s no surprise to find unsanitary conditions at a no-name dive, it’s unsettling when these fancy or corporate-controlled restaurants slip up so stupendously.Peter’s European Cafe is…
It doesn’t take much to get me to Tucson. Tell me there’s an opera or a play down there, or even a good used book store, and I’m heading south down Interstate 10, past the Casa Grande outlet stores and the roadkilled coyotes and the ostrich ranch. Certainly the chance…
Alligators don’t make good pets. Amazing, I know, but true. As a child growing up in Tokyo, I happened upon a pet store that was selling, along with fuzzy kittens and velvet-furred puppies, baby alligators. In a truly weak moment, my mother bought me one, packaged in a little plastic…
The dust jackets of Diana Gabaldon’s novels inform us that she “holds a master’s degree in Marine Biology and a Ph.D. in ecology, none of which has anything whatever to do with her books.” True enough. Virile Scotsmen romancing spirited heroines, exhaustive historical detail and time-travel fantasy — that’s the…
Pity the poor Chilihead. As if Chili’s employees didn’t already have enough grief in their working conditions (they’re barraged with that creepy “baby back ribs” TV jingle), they’ve got to suffer through what’s surely one of the most pea-brained training manuals in restaurantdom.It seems Chili’s corporate management knows no bounds…
We’re picking things out of our tom yum soup at Jax Thai Bar, a Tempe restaurant that’s the newest addition to Mill Avenue’s increasingly cosmopolitan culinary scene. Barklike nubs of galangal, a southeast Asian vegetable that’s a member of the ginger family. Whole kaffir lime leaves, dark green and similar…
In what has to be one of the most fiercely guarded transactions of the year in Valley restaurant circles, Convivo has been sold to former Different Pointe of View chef Jeffrey Beeson.The sale is noteworthy on its own — former owners Mark and Pat Bloom made the tiny, New American-themed…
“The problem in Phoenix, the way I see it, anyway, is that there is a real separation of the Latinos and the Anglos.” Mad Coyote Joe isn’t talking about bilingual education versus English immersion, or South Phoenix versus North Phoenix. He’s talking about restaurant culture. “You go to Albuquerque, New…
The phone is ringing again, rattling in its perch on the reservations podium next to the bar at Acqua e Sale. We’ve been listening to it all through dinner, not because it’s an irritation to our meal, but because we’ve been eavesdropping on the host. He’s telling yet another caller…
Another dot-com company has gone bust, hitting several local freelance restaurant writers where it really hurts — in the pocketbook. Instead of collecting overdue paychecks, contributors to Foodline.com are being offered used furniture and computer hardware salvaged from Foodline’s corporate offices in New York. How an Arizona resident is supposed…
It’s the day after Election Day, and I’m having lunch in the heart of Mesa with a Communist elected official. If that’s not surreal enough, neither of us yet knows for sure who the next president of the United States will be. Nor does CNN.Fabricio Rodriguez, student body vice president…
If you order your wine by the glass when you go out for dinner, you may be getting gouged.Some high-end restaurateurs are increasing their already inflated profits on booze by hiding small servings behind those elegant, single-serving carafes and humongous glasses. You’ve seen them popping up at places like Tarbell’s,…
There’s a new book out called Zeguts. It should not be confused with the international restaurant guide of the similar name, Zagat. Because while both track dining establishments and rate them on similar terms of concept, food quality and ambiance, Zeguts is strictly a parody of made-up establishments.At least I…
Brian Curtice breaks a tortilla chip into three pieces and lays them out on his napkin to represent three dinosaur bones. He’s explaining to me how he turned three dinosaurs into one, and pissed off the paleontological community to boot.”At the time, there were supposed to be three supergiants from…
To hear many native New Yorkers talk about it, you’d think they invented neighborhood-style Italian food. From antipasto to baked pasta, lasagna to ravioli and, of course, pizza, nobody does it better than the folks in the Big Apple. What gives? It’s not as if the requirements for back-East-style Italian…
Pack 40 of the nation’s top chefs into extremely close quarters, arm them with sharp knives, and what happens? Despite a rocky start in its disorganized planning stages, Saturday night’s Pleasures of the Palettes at the Phoenician turned out to be a success for its 800 or so very well-fed…
“Double-belled euphoniums and big bassoons . . .”It’s a lyric from “76 Trombones” in The Music Man, and if you’ve heard of Leslie Van Zee’s favorite musical instrument, there’s a good chance that’s where you’ve heard of it. Van Zee uses only a single bell, not a double, but she…
The dining scene for much of Sun City, Del Webb’s masterplanned commune for silver-haired citizens, is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Looking for exciting, cutting-edge cuisine? You won’t find it here. Area retirees tend to be armed with aging taste buds and delicate constitutions — they’re not looking for high-speed chases of…
Great chefs are not bred to be caged in corporate kitchens. There’s no keeping these talented souls confined with menus supervised by restaurant executives in business suits — their spirits yearn to run free. What else than a reckless urge for independence and self-expression would motivate a chef to leave…
We’ve never seen anything like it — a strange hybrid of animal and vegetable. Beneath a shiny crimson crown are segmented layers of pinkish crustacean abdomen, and below that, a bright red base like a big single foot, oozing out semiliquid. We stare at the unnatural thing between us, so…
The Valley’s own James Boyce was celebrated Saturday night at the James Beard House in Manhattan. Boyce, chef de cuisine at the Phoenician’s Mobil Five Star Mary Elaine’s, was invited to create a spectacular tribute to the late, legendary chef Auguste Escoffier, renowned as the innovator of modern French cuisine.I’d…
