Restaurant Update: New Valley restaurants are opening so fast I can hardly keep up. Here are some of the more interesting places I’m looking forward to visiting: * Harris’: That well-known San Francisco steak house is opening a branch near 32nd Street and Camelback. The stretch on Camelback between 22nd…
Farmhouse, 11421 South Gilbert Road, Gilbert, 926-0676. Hours: Breakfast and Lunch, Monday through Saturday, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. I’m not much of a morning person. My blood doesn’t usually start stirring until the crack of noon. How do I deal with the rising sun? Throw the covers over my…
Project Slim: Every job comes with some risk. The danger in restaurant reviewing: unwanted pounds. Despite careful eating on nonreview days and a very close relationship with an exercise bicycle, I found myself carting around a few more pounds than I did five years ago, when I started this line…
Zinfandel, 6522 North 16th Street, Phoenix, 277-7887. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday, 5 to 11 p.m. The poets and sages have always been willing to testify to the charms of wine. “In wine there is truth,” asserted Pliny the Elder. “From wine…
Copycats: A few months ago, I spoke with Robert Stempkowski, manager of Richardson’s, a longtime Valley New Mexican restaurant favorite at 1582 East Bethany Home. He was upset that some of Richardson’s signature dishes were showing up on the menus of several new restaurants in town, allegedly brought over by…
Let’s Give Them Something to Pork About: Although the northeast Valley may be somewhat barbecue-challenged (see this week’s Cafe review), that doesn’t mean barbecue lovers are stranded in the desert. Here are four places that smoke up some mean bones: * Buck-A-Rue Bar-B-Que, 15840 North Cave Creek Road, Phoenix, 971-6107…
Tickle My Ribs, 13610 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, 869-7427. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Life in an affluent section of town has its appealing certainties. Residents can generally expect the parks to be well-tended; the school district to be adequately funded; the trash…
Don & Charlie’s, 7501 East Camelback, Scottsdale, 990-0900. Hours: Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, 4:30 to 9 p.m. I strongly suspect that we live in a world teetering on the edge of breakdown. Every day, it seems, I run…
Neighborhood Update: Restaurant trends may come and go, but there’ll always be room for two kinds of places: a reliable neighborhood Chinese restaurant that dishes out all the old favorites, and a dependable, budget-friendly neighborhood joint that dishes out good food and 100 cents of value for your dollar. I’ve…
San Diego Bay Restaurant, 9201 South Avenida del Yaqui, Guadalupe, 839-2991. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. We Americans can do a lot of things better than foreigners can. We have the world’s most sophisticated science…
Done to a Turn: You’ve read through the menu and decided on your entree–maybe a steak, prime rib or lamb chops. The server asks how you’d like your meat cooked. Medium-rare, you answer, since that’s the way you’ve always ordered it. But when you cut into your animal protein, there’s…
Ve Haf Vays of Making You Eat: The staff at a casual eating spot in the tony Borgata could probably benefit from a couple of extra minutes of training, if you can believe one patron’s story. At lunch recently, she asked the young server what the soup of the day…
Che Bella Tuscan Grill & Bakery, Biltmore Fashion Park, 24th Street and Camelback, Phoenix, 956-5705. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight. What comes to mind when you think about improving the Valley’s quality of life? Reliable mass…
Striving for perfection isn’t supposed to be a restaurant customer’s job. The typical American diner is like royalty, to be treated with the respect due any divine creature. This is a service-oriented society, by God, and that means if the wait time is unreasonable, if the order isn’t just right,…
Spring Restaurant, 5850 North 43rd Avenue, Glendale, 937-2195. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Like the Loch Ness monster and Sasquatch, the cheap-ethnic-restaurant gem is a we’re always on the lookout for. You know the mythical…
Skewered Beef: If CNN ever wants to do a Crossfire episode about restaurants instead of politics, RoxSand Scocos and Paul Fleming would make a feisty pair of combatants. Back in June, RoxSand wrote a guest column. In it, she excoriated meat eaters in general and Morton’s steak house in particular…
Charlie’s Grill, Sheraton Crescent Hotel, 2620 West Dunlap, Phoenix, 371-2747. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, 5 to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Once upon a time, the only people who ate in hotel dining rooms were weary travelers and on-the-road businesspeople. They weren’t…
Trendspotting: Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer (although, unfortunately, not the end of the heat). As natives start emerging from their homes and snowbirds and tourists begin filling up the Valley, restaurants are busy getting ready for the season. Here are some trends to keep your eye on:…
Return of the Native: About a year ago I wrote a less-than-glowing review of Tarbell’s Restaurant, a glitzy, trendy, pricey bistro that boastfully styled itself a “great American restaurant” the moment it opened. I saw potential, but, at the time, Tarbell’s didn’t belong in the same league with competitors like…
Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant, 8946 North 19th Avenue, Phoenix, 870-4555. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. How can you tell if a city is booming? If you’re a developer, you count the…
Guest Columnist Last time Howard Seftel and his tortured taste buds took off, guest columnist/chef RoxSand Scocos wrote about eating less meat. Now Seftel’s done it again. What’s an editor to do? We invited Paul M. Fleming to continue the dialogue. Owner of Fleming Restaurants, he operates six establishments in…
Altos, 5029 North 44th Street, Phoenix, 808-0890. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 5:30 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. According to experts, the four most stressful experiences people can go through are a death in the family,…
