The grazer’s edge: China Doll’s dim sum adds up to total My less-adventurous friends have always suspected that “dim sum” is Chinese for “duck feet in a steamed bun.” Steamed buns are indeed a staple on the dim sum menu. And an occasional dish does contain a suspiciously webbed piece…
“Give me the luxuries,” said Oscar Wilde, “and I will dispense with the necessities.” We recently put Wilde’s theory to the test at two of the Valley’s poshest eateries. Each features an entrepreneurial young chef with a national reputation. And both will inflict a king-size beating on your wallet. At…
What do you call a neighborhood Italian joint featuring friendly service, good value and solid, occasionally outstanding food? These days I’d call it a miracle. The old-fashioned family Italian restaurant seems to be going the way of the family farm. Now, recipes get their first tests in the accounting department,…
Sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Fifty weeks a year I suppress all the instincts that Freud warned us about. Instead, I sublimate them through dutiful rounds of household activities: shopping for groceries, cleaning the pool and chauffeuring the kids. But every six months…
I wish I were born on the bayou. Not that I can’t do without a few of the area’s less-savory features: man-eating alligators, sticky heat and David Duke. But Cajun food just might be this country’s best regional cuisine. Four hundred years ago, the Cajuns’ ancestors left France and moved…
My visiting mother-in-law gave out a low moan. My next foray, I had just told her, would not take us to posh resorts, cozy bistros or funky ethnic joints. Instead, I was going to eat my way through the food court at Arizona Center, from A to . I welcomed…
I feel like the baseball scout who spotted Willie Mays playing sandlot ball. Or the producer who caught Meryl Streep acting in a college drama. While I haven’t been looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song says, I certainly haven’t been looking in the right places…
The main dish has always been my least favorite part of a restaurant meal. Give me some warm bread right out of the oven, and a zesty salad with lots of greens, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and a zippy homemade dressing. Let me nibble on hot wings, pan-fried dumplings, crispy pakora,…
Absorbing with gentle Buddhist harmony the fragrances of India and the flavors of China, Thai cuisine no longer seems as foreign as a snowplow to most Valley residents. Over the past 15 years, it has given Chinese food a stiff run for the Asian-restaurant dollar. How have exotic ingredients like…
Call me the deli lama. My temple is the New York deli. I’ve downed enough matzo balls, stuffed cabbage and corned beef that I could be hung above the deli counter, next to the Hebrew National salami. Pictures of me as a teenager confirm it: I looked like a knish…
Spending a week’s worth of grocery money on one meal is a great way to fuel what economists call “negative revenue enhancement.” But sometimes I yearn for water glasses filled with Evian, napkins refolded if I step away from the table and used cutlery whisked away by waiters who are…
If you’re Jewish and from New York, you know three things. Guilt. Suffering. Chinese food. My earliest memories go back to Sunday evenings, when my family, abandoning with pagan intensity all the strict dietary provisions of keeping kosher, always went out for Chinese food. On one memorable occasion, guilt, suffering…
The singles-bar scene isn’t exactly my home turf. The last time I made a serious foray was before Danny Partridge started dating. But I’d heard the scene at a couple of Valley after-work mating grounds could jump-start anyone’s battery. So on a recent Friday night, I dragged along my friend…
I don’t go to Middle Eastern restaurants for the same reason I don’t look up old flames. There’s no way the present can compete with my memories of the past. Recalling years of living and eating in the Middle East-the scented rice, the fragrant lamb, the perfumed spices-stirs feelings in…
Robert Browning said it long ago, but the words describe my mood. And so I head out for a much-desired Italian-food fix. The question is, what kind of cucina d’Italia shall it be? From the sun-and-tomato-drenched south to the subtly continental north, Italy boasts unmatched variety in its cuisine. Translated…
Wise visitors to Sedona know about La Mediterranee. Located on the second floor of a Route 179 motel, this funky coffee-shop-cum-ski-chalet turns out Middle Eastern cuisine that pleases New Agers, vegetarians and carnivores alike. After all, what better activity after a vortex visit than a dip into some soothing hummus?…
South American cuisine” has a way of sounding exotic. More exotic than it really is. After all, we North Americans use many of the same ingredients in our own cooking. So how different can it be? They eat corn, potatoes, beef and chiles. We eat corn, potatoes, beef and chiles…
If I said ‘Tis the season,” I bet I’d raise an eyebrow or two. The holidays are over, babe,” some of you would say. Long gone. Dead as that bottle of champagne we killed on New Year’s Eve. History.” Well, readjust your thinking caps. I’m not talking about the holiday…
Today is Christmas. I’m no Scrooge. Instead of putting some poor restaurant through the ringer today, I thought I’d share with you some of the “gifts” I’ve received–in the form of new restaurants–in 1991. Here, then, in no particular order, are my 12 days of Christmas, my memorable finds of…
When you contemplate eating at a French restaurant, do you fret about what to wear? Do you fear some snooty waiter will allow you to unintentionally order brains for dinner? Do you suffer from “which fork” anxiety? If stress seems a natural prelude to ordering a portion of pate, I…
For someone who doesn’t live in Scottsdale, I spend a lot of time eating there. This is not due to some covert community preference on my part. It is simply because new restaurants of note continue to pop up in that affluent area of the Valley. Some, including the two…
The sawdust has been swept from the floor, the menu refined, the necktie scissors stored away. Just as country music reinvented itself with a new breed of younger, hipper artist–Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam, k.d. lang, et al.–the cowboy steak house has also been revamped and updated. The new look is…
