Over and Haute: A few weeks ago, the New Yorker ran an intriguing piece on the declining significance of French cuisine, “Is There a Crisis in French Cooking?” Author Adam Gopnik discovered, to his horror, that the French are no longer on the cutting edge of gastronomy. Instead, they seem…
Eat the High Country: The Valley isn’t the only area of Arizona exploding with restaurants. The Sedona/Flagstaff region (see this week’s Cafe column) is also booming. One reader has alerted me to a couple of offbeat restaurants that local weekend travelers may want to try. The first, in Flagstaff, is…
Dahl & Di Luca, 2321 West Highway 89A, Sedona, 1-520-282-5219. Hours: Dinner, 5 p.m. to close, seven nights a week. This is not a pleasant time of year to live in the Valley of the Perpetual Sun, unless you’re a lizard or a water-park operator. For the next several months,…
Deja Revu: It’s rerun time on television, so I thought this might be a good time to do some restaurant-food reruns, too. I returned to several places I’d enjoyed in the past to see if they still lived up to my plaudits. These three do: Centro Cafe & Bakery, 15820…
Sir Charles Bar-B-Q Pit, 1231 East Northern, Phoenix, 997-6663. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Civilization has done a good job suppressing most of our basic, primitive urges. We modern men and women don’t satisfy our…
Bistro Panino, 4139 West Bell, Phoenix, 978-8500. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 4:30 to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Not too many years ago, there were only two plausible explanations for venturing west of Central Avenue in…
Word Is Out: Some restaurant critics, I suppose, know everything. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I have a shelf full of reference works to help me overcome my ignorance. The latest aid: Webster’s New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts, compiled by Steven Labensky, Gaye Ingram and Sarah Labensky (Prentice…
Inn Crowd: It’s not easy to put your finger on just what it is that boosts a very good restaurant into the ranks of the very best. But whatever it is, it appears to be happening at Lon’s. The exceptional meal I had here left me transfixed with admiration for…
Welcome to the New Times Cafe swimsuit issue. Unfortunately, the editors have nixed my suggestion to run a photo spread of me and several models lolling on a breezy, sun-dappled tropical-island paradise, cavorting in designer bathing suits. How could they be so shortsighted? Right about now, most of us start…
Bravo Bistro, 4327 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, 481-7614. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Dinner, Sunday through Wednesday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to midnight. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what…
Caribbean Cruise: You don’t often see the words “Scottsdale” and “bargain dining” in the same sentence. But to my happy surprise, I ran across an offbeat new place that not only dishes out wonderful food, but also gives you plenty of change back from a tenspot. It’s Caribbean Grill, a…
C-Fu Gourmet, 2051 West Warner, Chandler, 899-3888. Hours: Dim sum, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., seven days a week. “M” is for the million neuroses she gave me. “O” means that her act is getting old. “T” is for time I spend in therapy. “H” is for her heart not…
Brunch Cost Ratio: Everyone knows there isn’t always a correlation between price and value. Is a Lexus three times better than a Camry? Maybe, but only if you’re trying to impress an adolescent valet parker. Is a first-class ticket worth five times the cost of a discounted coach fare on…
Coup Des Tartes, 4626 North 16th Street, Phoenix, 212-1082. Hours: Lunch, Thursday through Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Thursday through Tuesday, 5:30 to 10 p.m. During its 1995 session, having solved all of Arizona’s educational, tax, crime, transportation, air pollution, health-care and welfare problems, the state Legislature turned…
Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport: Not too many years ago, Valley wine merchants used a simple system to display their inventory: On one set of shelves sat the wines with corks; on another sat the wines with screw caps. Well, the town’s become a lot more sophisticated, but apparently I…
Harris’, 3101 East Camelback, Phoenix, 508-8888. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, 5:30 to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Is Phoenix ready for more prime time? The operators of two new steak houses, featuring pricey, top-of-the-line, prime-graded beef, certainly think so. They’ve recently set…
Hard Times: Sometimes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Take the term “al dente.” Originally applied to pasta, it meant not overcooking the noodles–so they weren’t soft and squishy. Properly prepared pasta has a bit of spring, a bit of firmness when you bite into it. And the public…
Pig Feats: If you’re into eating high on the hog, check out The Pork Shop, one of the more remarkable retail outlets I’ve encountered on this job. The shop has been around since the late 1970s. Quite simply, it sells the best pork I’ve ever tasted. What’s the secret? Freshness…
Likle Montego Jamaican Cafe, 5004 South Price, Tempe, 413-0267. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Tuesday and Wednesday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 4 to 9:30 p.m. You don’t need to wait for the 2000 census figures…
Arnie’s Deli, 5114 North Seventh Street, Phoenix, 264-1975. Hours: Breakfast and Lunch, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., seven days a week. Call me the Deli Lama. For seven lean years now, I’ve been wandering in the desert, a deli-starved exile, far from the native dishes of my youth. Where are…
Goodbye, Deli: This week’s search for locally genuine deli fare (see page 79) came up more or less empty. In the past, though, I’ve been able to console myself after other futile missions. That’s because I always believed that, at least back in New York, the deli culture I grew…
Take Another Pizza My Heart: From the moment it opened in late 1994, tiny Pizzeria Bianco zoomed right to the top of the Valley’s pizza league. Actually, as Valley connoisseurs know, when it comes to pizza, Pizzeria Bianco is more or less in a league of its own. But proprietor…
