BEST UPSCALE STEAK HOUSE 2005 | Donovan's Steak & Chop House | Food & Drink | Phoenix
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BEST UPSCALE STEAK HOUSE

Donovan's Steak & Chop House

Donovan's dark, mahogany-lined, Remington-appointed interior, its free valet, its flawless three-person service, and its high-end chops are not there for the hoi polloi to appreciate. Better be a high roller or a retiree with stock dividends up the wazoo if you want to enjoy a pocketbook-painless evening at this steak house. Still, if you've got it, there are worse ways to blow it. When it comes to the steak alone, it's worth the price tag, though don't look for any fancy prep, because here it's about the meat, son. Prime rib is topnotch, as is every other cut you can imagine. Stellar appetizers include bacon-wrapped scallops, Maryland crab cake, and lamb chops. Desserts? Can't go wrong with standards such as the triple-chocolate brownie, crème brûlée, and strawberry-topped cheesecake. Make sure there's room in your belly before you go, because there won't be any when you leave.

BEST DINER

Fast Eddie's Diner

Someone cue Meat Loaf wailing, "Whatever happened to Saturday night? When you dressed up sharp and you felt all right?" That's what we hear, along with the rumble of Meat Loaf's motorcycle from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, whenever we stop by Fast Eddie's Diner for a Cosmic Burger with crinkly fries and a cherry phosphate. The booths are gold-flecked, and there's a long, checkerboard counter where you can sit on one of the oversize red stools and watch them make your strawberry malt.

All the place needs are some chicks in poodle skirts snapping their gum to complete the picture. Even the kids' menu chimes in with The Cunningham (pancakes), the Ralph Malph (French toast), and the Pinky Tuscadero (eggs, hash browns and bacon), although the Happy Days references are likely lost on today's adolescents.

But for the rest of us, when we pull into Fast Eddie's parking lot, we'll join in with Meat Loaf, and cry with all the nostalgia we can muster, "Hot patootie, bless my soul, I really love that rock 'n' roll!"

BEST DELI

Katz Delicatessen & Restaurant

They say you can tell a good Chinese restaurant by how many Chinese people are dining there, and we feel the same way about a good deli, if you know what we mean, which is why we were so happy to see a nice Jewish guy like David Leibowitz on a recent trip to Katz Deli. Leibowitz works up the street at KTAR radio, and assured us he's a regular. So are we, after tasting the chopped liver, which, to us, is the most important item on the menu at any deli.

We dragged a friend from New York along on our deli mission. At first, she suggested we simply recommend that anyone looking for good deli food in Phoenix have it FedExed in from Carnegie Deli in Manhattan. Very funny, we said. She changed her mind after lunch at Katz Deli, where she pronounced the whitefish as good as the chopped liver (although she found it odd that the whitefish salad was orange) and gave the corned beef the New Yorker's seal of approval.

She also nodded her approval at the decor, which could have been plucked out of any one of a number of boroughs (think wood paneling and cartoons from the 1970s, along with faux-leather booths dating back at least that far). The friendly help? Now that wasn't so New York. But that was just fine with everyone.

BEST BARBECUE RESTAURANT

Big City BBQ

With "cattle" being one of the Zona's four C's, along with copper, cotton and citrus, and considering the fact that the PHX once was home to one of the largest feedlots in the nation, you'd think that there'd be killer barbecue on every corner of this burg. But for whatever reason, great barbecue is harder to find than a fur-wearin' Phoenician in August. That's why we're friggin' thankful someone bent our ear about Big City BBQ, which has slammin' barbecue, whether you're talking about pulled pork or chicken, beef brisket or pork spareribs. The sauce is thick and tongue-tingling, but the meat itself is soft and juicy, so that superior sauce isn't hiding second-rate meat. Sides are off the hook as well: candied yams, savory mixed greens, peppery black-eyed peas, brown sugar baked beans, and so on.

For dessert, there are sugar biscuits and peach cobbler, but the barbecue is the real reason to pay a visit. Believe us, you won't be mad at us for recommending Big City to you.

BEST SOUL FOOD RESTAURANT

Stacy's

We don't know what we'd do without Stacy Phipps, proprietor of Stacy's, Phoenix's finest soul food restaurant. Phipps consistently prepares the best fish, fried chicken, greens, rice with gravy, and black-eyed peas that we've had outside of Dixie. Moreover, he includes items on his menu sure to warm the heart of any erstwhile son of the South, like fried chicken livers and chicken gizzards, that mass of muscle in the fowl meant to grind up any stones the unlucky clucker has swallowed. Fortunate indeed was the little girl or boy down South who got to eat the gizzard or the liver when their mama cooked a whole chicken for dinner, and we feel just as fortunate when we down a whole hopper of gizzards and/or livers at Stacy's. But that's not all. There's barbecue, sweet tea, corn bread, peach cobbler, and so on. Why, with Stacy's nearby, we never have to go home for all that good eatin', which is exactly the way we want it.

BEST OLD-SCHOOL CHINESE RESTAURANT

Autumn Court Chinese Restaurant

Jackie Mercandetti
From Central Avenue, Autumn Court looks like some funky gingerbread house, but stepping inside is like walking into the fog-draped Chinatown of San Francisco in the 1940s. The main dining area is designed like a faux autumn arbor, with a tree's amber-tinged limbs overhead and a waterfall that gurgles over fake masonry. Dining areas are walled in by dark, wooden paneling and glassed-in shelves with all manner of wax and plastic fruits, veggies and dry goods. Paper lanterns hang overhead, and the tables are set with kitschy ceramic glasses filled with chopsticks.

And the food? A grab-bag of reliable, old-school faves, like pot stickers, crispy aromatic duck, sizzling rice soup for two, moo shu pork, moo goo gai pan, spicy Szechwan chicken, and many others. Not as exotic as some other places in the Valley, but 100 times better than what you'll get at the mundane, prefab chain joints.

BEST DIM SUM

Golden Buddha at the Chinese Cultural Center

Why is the Buddha's belly so fat and his smile so wide? Too many Twinkies and six-packs of Old Milwaukee? Wrong again, pork bun breath! Actually, the "golden Buddha" statue in the lobby of the Chinese Cultural Center's Golden Buddha restaurant is Bu-Dai (Hotei in Japanese), the corpulent, smiling mendicant revered for his good humor and generosity. Chances are the Phoenix version has been packing on the pounds by eating dim sum to his heart's delight at his namesake, the new eatery at CCC, which serves dim sum daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. See, dim sum actually means "heart's delight" in Cantonese, so that's a little pun on our part. But we don't kid when it comes to Golden Buddha's dim sum, an endless parade of small plates that include sweet shrimp-stuffed noodles, shark-fin dumplings, barbecued jellyfish, custard-filled pastries, coconut cake, and red-bean-stuffed sesame balls, to name a few. In fact, a few too many trips to Golden Buddha, and you may resemble, well, a golden Bu-Dai. But hey, at least you'll be smilin'.

BEST SUSHI

Stingray Sushi

The first time we visited Stingray Sushi, not long after it opened, we were more impressed by the eatery's decor than its maki or nigiri. Brought to us by the same team that gave us the hip Scottsdale tiki bar known as Drift, Stingray was an instant hit with the Gen Y party set, with its orange walls, zebrawood tables, and general James Bond-ishness. It's taken a little time for Stingray to prove itself as more than just a pretty face, but our last few outings of bellying up to its sushi bar have shown us that it is. Sure, the crowds are still attractive, and the interior is still fit for a Bond nemesis, but now the sushi is produced as professionally as you'll find anywhere else in our oceanless metropolis. And in many cases, it rises to the level of greatness, as it does with the lollipop -- tuna, salmon, whitefish and crabmeat wrapped in cucumber, then sliced and skewered. Or the pink blossom, with unagi, tamago, shrimp and avocado in a roll bound by pink rice paper. Standards like tuna, yellowtail, and toro (fatty tuna) nigiri and maki are just as fresh and delicious. And that's why, over time, Stingray has become the first place we think of when we want to get our sake and sushi fix. Good work, gents.

BEST JAPANESE FUSION

Sea Saw

Sea Saw is the province of Chef Nobuo Fukuda, renowned for his "tapanese" cuisine, a marriage of the Spanish concept of little noshes called tapas with high-end Japanese eats. It's all about the rare combinations of delicate flavors Fukuda brings to the table: kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) purée topped with a bit of curry and a little pile of caviar; chilled, pan-seared duck breast in a soy-zinfandel reduction; white fish "carpaccio" with thinly sliced ginger in a bath of yuzu juice with sesame seeds. It ain't cheap. The portions are nouvelle-size at best (read: small, people). Everything is prepared slowly in front of you by Fukuda and his staff, and by the time your bank account is depleted, you may have to use your remaining five bucks to buy a couple of hamburgers to fill the gaping hole in your tummy. Somehow, it's all worth it, because Sea Saw's taste sensations are so varied, refined and creative that you'll willingly max out your credit card for them. Come to think of it, identity theft would come in handy here. Why, with some rich dood's Amex in your pocket, you could load up at Sea Saw until you're actually stuffed! Anyone out there got a copy of Jerry Colangelo's Gold Card?

BEST SEAFOOD

Eddie V's Edgewater Grille

There's something about living in the desert that makes you crave seafood as if you were a pregnant walrus. And if we were a hungry, knocked-up walrus in the desert, we'd want a condo nearby Eddie V's Edgewater Grille. It's way up in Scottsdale's DC Ranch, but it's worth the drive, because Eddie V's leaves the competition in the proverbial dust by doing two things: preparing incredibly fresh fish, and doing more than just grilling it and plopping it on a plate, like they do at some other fish eateries in town. If you order oysters, you can bet those suckers are straight from the sea, and the lump crab would snip you with its claws if it still had 'em. But Eddie V's excels when it comes to such piscatorial pleasures as Pacific escolar, Chilean sea bass, or lemon sole -- all served in gorgeous, upscale surroundings. Don't forget to check out the long, swanky lounge bar -- and good luck getting a seat there on a Friday night, especially if you're a pregnant walrus.

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