Restaurants

You can request hard-to-find specialties like tacos árabes at this east Phoenix taquería.

This month we asked some of our favorite writers to share tales of some of their favorite — and least-favorite — food workplace memories. You’re welcome.

Last week, social media erupted with complaints that the recently opened Handlebar, a restaurant housed in a Valentine diner in Mesa’s master-planned Eastmark community, was a wholesale rip-off of downtown Phoenix mainstay Welcome Diner.

Tune in to see if Pork on a Fork BBQ can out-smoke host Shannon Ambrosio in an all-Phoenix episode.

Another bakery? Rejoice!

Robrt Pela rants about the old Bashas’ on 7th Avenue, Heidi Abrahamson raves.

The Old Town Scottsdale spot brings down-under cuisine to the Valley.

These food trucks are on a need-to-know basis. As in, you need to know about them.

Elly’s Brunch and Cafe, Uptown Plaza, Lou Manalti’s Pizzeria, Phoenix, brunch, breakfast, lunch

Eric Walters, the podcaster behind “Tap That AZ” really loves to drink. And talk about it.

A few words that stood out out in last month’s county health inspections: “slime,” “cockroaches,” “pants,” and “deteriorating”

Although it’s impossible to capture everything that’s uniquely great about Phoenix food and drink on a list of this size, here are 50 dishes, drinks and experiences that we think everyone should try at least once.

After work on weekend nights, I’d join the waitstaff at afterhours discos. I’d sneak into the men’s room and change out of my three-piece suit and into a pair of Jordache jeans and ankle boots with Cuban heels—this was the late 1970s; if you couldn’t do the Hustle while wearing a shirt made of spun petroleum, you were a loser.

From a spot with cuisine from Belize to a new, kitschy diner in Mesa—the newest restaurants opened in Metro Phoenix in April offer a pretty wide variety.

There isn’t much to this spot, just a counter, a menu, and the mural of a punk chicken spray painting a fence. Chick-In is so new that there is no website, no Facebook page, and no presence on Google Maps.

I was horrified. She didn’t pay, even though she would have received an employee discount. Could I do that?

Since I had grown up a straight-edged kid with a rustic palate, I had little idea what I was serving.

I put on my best corduroy skirt, my Famolare shoes and went down to interview. I was afraid that my lack of restaurant experience would hinder my chances, but I shouldn’t have worried. I was 15, I had just gotten my braces off, and I was a size two. I was qualified.

Have you tried this pizza yet?

When your fake boyfriend shows up at your real workplace.

Nothing is perfect, but these French fries come pretty close.