How a Phoenix chef builds one of the Valley’s most exciting dishes

Sometimes chefs grind and iterate on a dish until it’s just right. But there are moments when everything clicks. 

As Pretty Penny chef Steven “Chops” Smith pondered how to update the restaurant’s crudo for the warmer months, his mind wandered to the pineapple fermenting in the kitchen — a project he’d started to use up some excess fruit.

“We love fermenting here, especially if we have any odds or ends that can’t go anywhere,” he says, standing at a stainless table inside the Roosevelt Row restaurant’s kitchen. 

Then the idea came: marrying the flavors of an al pastor taco with light, bright raw fish.

Hamachi crudo has become a staple on restaurant menus. It’s fresh, flashy and the blank canvas of the fish invites endless iterations. 

During a visit to Pretty Penny earlier this year, the colorful, abstract crudo elicited audible “oohs” when it arrived at the table. Each bite had punchy, nuanced flavors to match. 

When we first visited Pretty Penny in 2024 at its original home across Roosevelt Street, the thoughtfully made octopus tostada made us swoon. Plenty of diners flock to the restaurant for its promise of at-cost caviar. Now, vibrant hamachi takes Pretty Penny’s seafood options to new heights.

We joined Smith in Pretty Penny’s kitchen to find out how the dish comes together. 

A fresh, fun crudo that’s different every time

Growing up in the mountain west, Smith was mostly familiar with the kind of Mexican food that came from a fast-food drive-thru. When he moved to Arizona and started to experience mole, salsas and other sauces that form the backbone of Mexican cuisine, “it just blew my mind with all these flavors and all the combinations you can get,” he says.

Pretty Penny’s al pastor-inspired crudo plate starts with a blue corn panna cotta made from tortillas steeped in cream and milk and set in a rimmed ceramic plate. The swirls of panna cotta are dammed by a vibrant yellow aguachile featuring passion fruit and fermented pineapple.

The chef then slices thin pink-hued pieces of the fish. Those get a sprinkle of Maldon salt, then a slick of a ruddy red al pastor-style marinade that features arbol, ancho and guajillo chiles, citrus, clove, allspice, brown sugar and Coca-Cola.

Once on the plate, each slice of fish gets a squeeze of aji amarillo crema and is dressed in more taco-inspired finery: thinly sliced serranos, pickled pineapple and red onion join verdant green bubbles of cilantro foam. The crudo comes with a bubbly chicarrón that’s not made from pork. Smith starts with tortillas that he steeps in water and salt. He adds tapioca to that tortilla broth, which he then dehydrates and fries. The result is crisp and light as air.

“You get these textures that are just like a chicarrón. It’s fun,” Smith says. “I wasn’t just going to throw tortilla chips on it.”

Though there are some plates that the chef always wants to look uniform, for each hamachi crudo, “I let the plate be the plate,” Smith says. 

Even though the components that go onto each order are the same, they each look a little different, and have different pockets of intermingling flavors because of that free form.

“That way your palate’s not getting dulled,” Smith says. 

During our visit, some mouthfuls carried the tropical tartness of pineapple and passion fruit. Others sang with the warm spice of al pastor or the creamy richness of aji aioli and panna cotta. It’s also possible to scoop a little bit of everything into one perfect bite on a chicarrón. 

The flavor may not remind you exactly of your neighborhood taqueria, but we’ll bet you won’t think about al pastor or crudo quite the same after trying this dish. Caviar may be king at luxe restaurants, but this hamachi makes the case for thinking outside of the tin before you place your order.

Pretty Penny

509 E. Roosevelt St.