Farmboy Market Meats Sandwiches

At Farmboy in Chandler, owners Oren and Diana Molovinsky take the notion of locally sourced food to admirable extremes. They get fruit, eggs, and other produce from their own 3.5-acre farm, which Diana maintains. They offer local bounty from other farms and artisans, like tiny plums and a bulbous half-rainbow of heirloom tomatoes, on a farmstand-style table within the sandwich shop. They bake bread using a blend of local flours designed for them by Don Guerra, Jedi baker of Barrio Bread in Tucson. And the meat they smoke for sandwiches like the pulled pork or the Southwestern cheese steak? Well, unlike just about every other beefy, barbecue-hearted eatery in town, the cows are older (5 to 7 years of age, meaning more flavor) and from our state (provided by Arizona Grass Raised Beef Co.). Farmboy offers a robust breakfast, replete with fried eggs and burnt ends, with breakfast burritos on thick-and-chewy flour tortillas from La Sonorense Tortilla Factory. Sandwiches form the core of what’s for lunch. Almost all of them incorporate meat, some more traditionally (French dip, chicken salad). Most have creative flourishes and fall in line with the local, Arizona-driven spirit (wood-grilled beef tenderloin, chopped beef with spicy mayo, pepper jack smoked rib-eye “Verde Valley”cheese steak). The Molovinksys have bet the house on local food systems. The payoff is that Chandler has one of the Valley’s most intriguing breakfast-and-lunch options.