Skillet Doux

The Quarterly Report - Q2 2010

Chinese Pancakes @ Super L Ranch Market	Dominic Armato

One thing is, sitting around a hospital room means you have a lot of time on your hands. So while there's no Bravo and Top Chef is out, heck, as long as there's time to kill and I've got myself an internet connection, why not do the quarterly report? For those who missed it first time around, these are the last three months' worth of little snippets and impressions that never seemed significant enough to work into full posts. Which means they're even less comprehensive than usual. Consider them a quarter's worth of little snapshots, in no particular order.

	The Fallen Angel	Dominic Armato

La Grande Orange Pizzeria
4410 N. 40th Street, Phoenix AZ 85018
La Grande Orange seems to be a rather popular spot. And having only stopped into the grocery until recently, I wasn't quite sure why. There was some good stuff to be found, but it struck me as a gourmet grocery that was more style than substance. Good for picking up some treats, but not really a market in any serious sense. I warmed to the place quite a bit, however, after sitting outside with a pizza and salad from the accompanying pizzeria one evening. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to pizza styles. They all have their charms. So while hardcore traditionalists of many stripes might be offended by the sourdough crust, I have to back it up. This is a tasty pizza with great texture, alternately charred, crisp and unusually chewy. The Fallen Angel, with Schreiner's Italian sausage, roasted peppers and shaved fennel, has a healthy level of spice with a balancing natural sweetness. And it reminds me that I really need to check out Schreiner's sometime soon.

Italian Sub	Dominic Armato

My Daddy's Bakery
11677 West Bell Road, Surprise, AZ 85374
Surprise doesn't get a whole lot of attention within food nerd circles, and driving through it's not hard to see why. But I still subscribe to the theory that there are little hidden gems everywhere you go. And while I don't know that I'm willing to call My Daddy's Bakery a gem based on the one sandwich and couple of sweets I tried, it's more interesting than most everything else I've driven by down Bell Road. Cute little place that's mostly Italian pastries, cook at home pizzas and a few frozen pastas. A basic sub of the throw-it-all-on-there Italian-American variety did the job, hitting the spot in a no-frills fashion. Sfogliatelle could've been lighter but were enjoyable, and cannoli were similarly workmanlike, even if the use of green candy sprinkles rather than pistachios was a little annoying. But they were mini cannoli, so perhaps it was to avoid the use of nuts for grandkids' sake. Still seemed kind of sacrilegious.

	Ricotta Ravioli	Dominic Armato

Pasta and Sugo
2916 N. 40th Street, Phoenix AZ 85018
I think the deathwatch was on for Pasta and Sugo the day they opened. Odd location, crude signage, and a bit of an identity crisis. Perhaps they know what they are, but I'm not getting it. They produce pasta and sugo (natch), nothing else, and not very much of it. A few shapes of fresh dried pasta, a few varieties of frozen ravioli, two or three sauces -- that's about it. And this could be great if the product's great. The bagged pasta was worthwhile, nice bite with a bit of whole wheat for a slightly rustic flavor. But it was priced like an ultrapremium import and just didn't seem worth it. Eating in is a disaster. Arriving in a plastic takeout container, the pasta was waterlogged and the sauce was flat and crying out for salt (mediocre tomatoes, I think). Though the method of service gave a clue as to why. Only a handful of tiny tables in the place, and our group of five was served slowly over the course of twenty minutes. I think they only have one microwave, and I don't mean that as a joke. Which is especially frustrating because when all you're serving is three kinds of ravioli and a couple of sauce options, would it be so hard to keep some boiling water going and two pots of sauce simmering? It just seems unnecessary. And the stripped-down trappings wouldn't bother me one bit if the pasta were good, but it just isn't. Not after being prepared that way, anyway. I'd love to support a place like this, but I just can't.

Steak House BLT Burger	Dominic Armato

The Grind
3961 East Camelback Road, Phoenix AZ 85018
The Grind has been pretty well covered by others, and I don't know that I have that much to add, but I'll note it here for posterity's sake. The big question for me, as much as I hate to do the old head-to-head thing, is how their burgers stack up against Delux. So do I prefer The Grind? Yes and no. And that's the problem. When the burger's on, and it's cooked to the right temperature, and the bacon is crisp and it's nicely sauced, there's absolutely no contest. It's a great burger with a real meaty, beefy patty with substance, in contrast to the glorified meatloaf over at Delux (I have teeth, guys, and I'm willing to use them). But The Grind has been wildly inconsistent, and sometimes that burger just doesn't come together. Also doesn't help that the late-night menu has been stripped down and only features one burger. When it's on, I love your Steak House BLT burger, guys. Sure wish I could try the others.

	Salade Frisée aux Oeufs et Lardons	Dominic Armato

Petite Maison
7216 East Shoeman Lane, Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Staff meal at Petite Maison is rather eclectic, but the regular menu is pretty much straight-up bistro. With a twist, I suppose you could say. Lots of them. Little ones, though, as if they wanted to put a signature spin on each classic. Problem is I'm not sure they're improvements. I haven't spent a ton of time in France, but does anybody there put a croque monsieur on a croissant? Even if somebody does, I think it's a mistake. I don't care if it looks good on the menu, it doesn't do justice to either the croissant or the croque monsieur. And the frisée salad with poached egg and bacon has a beautiful poached egg, but rather than nice chunky, fatty lardons you get a pile of bacon that's been sliced and chopped and cooked dry. Again, not an improvement (and it's overdressed, to boot). This is perhaps overly harsh. We had a perfectly nice lunch, and everything is crisply and professionally executed. But it's frustrating when a kitchen that seems to be in control stumbles through questionable attempts to distinguish itself. There's nothing wrong with distinguishing yourself by simply being extremely good, and that skill is clearly there.

Chinese Pancakes	Dominic Armato

Super L Ranch Market
668 North 44th Street, Phoenix AZ 85008
A fun little diversion if you're hitting one of the restaurants down by the Chinese Cultural center on the weekend is a small cart that the Super L Ranch Market puts out front. I'm not familiar with this particular brand of sweet treat, but I like it. Similar to takoyaki, these pancakes are produced on a hot griddle with indentations into which is first poured a batter, then a filling, then more batter before they're flipped to cook on the other side, resulting in a thick pancakey dessert puck with your choice of sweet filling. Red bean and coconut were two of the options on the day I walked by, as well as one other choice that I've since forgotten. But they're tasty, a little crisp on the exterior, sweet and volcanic in the middle, and the long line of folks waiting for their turn makes for a nice little taste of street food culture in a town that doesn't seem to have very much of it, Nogales Hot Dogs notwithstanding.

The Girl and The Goat

Awwwwwww	Dominic Armato

Let me make something absolutely clear, lest you think I'm plumbing new depths of Top Chef obsession. I did NOT travel to Chicago for the opening of The Girl and The Goat. But when the enormously (over)hyped opening of a Top Chef winner's restaurant happens to occur the very week we have a night on the town -- a week when I was taking a Power Rankings pass, no less -- checking it out kind of seems like a moral obligation. I don't mean to give the wrong impression. I was actually quite curious to see how Stephanie Izard's place would turn out. I'd eaten at her previous restaurant before she was a reality television star. But to check out how fame and fortune may or may not have changed her meant making peace with the fact that I'd be letting the blog be even further dominated by Top Chef this month. With a little trepidation, I suppose I can deal with that.

	Fat Bread with Liver Butter	Dominic Armato

In her pre-reality televison days, Stephanie (being on a reality TV show puts you on a first name basis with the public, you see) was the chef at a joint in Wicker Park named Scylla. I had a couple of meals at Scylla not long before they closed, and while I can't recall the details (this is precisely why I started a journal/blog, by the way), I recall a bit of an uneven experience that nonetheless included some rather exciting peaks. I remember thinking at the time that if you picked the winners, you'd walk out having had a great meal. I didn't get much of a chance to suss out those winners, however, as Scylla closed up shop shortly before Stephanie went on Top Chef. Which precipitated which is anybody's guess. Shortly thereafter, she became a national culinary icon, having snatched victory from popularly favored (though no less popular) Richard Blais, and after a brief respite, what followed was a slow crescendo of rumor, then buzz, then announcements, then delays, then name changes, then a marketing blitz, and finally... just this week... an opening. Yes, Chicago, henceforth when you read daily updates about The Girl and The Goat, they will most likely involve discussion of actual food.

Cave Brothers Mozzarella	Dominic Armato

So my ladylove and I went to go check it out this past Wednesday. I concede up front that it's completely unfair to write about a place like this just a scant few days after opening. Early writeups are always unfair, but when the hype has reached such a fevered pitch, it's especially unfair. The Girl and The Goat can't possibly live up to expectations, and not letting them at least get their feet wet seems cruel, somehow. But such is the reality of the Yelp era, I get one shot at the place this year, and it happened to be this week. I figure I'd better take it. So the usual "just opened" caveats apply. Even under the best of circumstances, I like to think of these posts as data points rather than "reviews," and that goes triply here. It's only fair.

	Chilled Sweet Onion Soup	Dominic Armato

The Girl and The Goat is big! Much bigger than I expected somehow, a lofty space on Randolph in the West Loop filled with unfinished wood, black and dark green accents and the pleasant, if pungent, scent of wood smoke from the open oven in back. There's a rather sizeable bar, a small lounge with low couches where many appeared to be eating a full dinner, a long kitchen along the back and plenty of tables to cover what I expected would be a crush of opening week reservations, until I checked Open Table on Monday morning and discovered that other than a gap from 6:30 to 7:45, Wednesday night was wide open. Had so many decided to keep their distance that the crowds they had sought to avoid were rendered illusory? The room sure seemed pretty busy. Perhaps the throngs got wise to the Open Table backdoor later in the day. It's a small plates menu (surprise!), divided into vegetables, seafood and meats, with a small addendum featuring oysters and breads.

Crispy Pig Face with Chimichurri	Dominic Armato

Yes, breads. While trying to keep an open mind, I'm unsure of how I feel about bread service being monetized. It feels a little like we've simply found a way to charge for something most places give away for free. But like most other things, items given gratis are worked into the prices anyway, so I suppose this way the cost is limited to those who choose to partake. Nonetheless, it's a little jarring to pay $5 for a small loaf of fresh bread with liver butter and diced plums, even if the description thereof is all you need to hear to know why we did it. It was delicious, hot and soft bread spread with creamy butter that had a little offal funk, and bright, sweet tart plums for contrast. It was perhaps the second-most decadent bread service I've encountered, safely behind the creamy crock of lardo at Carnevino, which was free. But then, dining at The Girl and The Goat doesn't require taking out a second mortgage for a steak that may be older than the house you're mortgaging (and yet I'd do it again... and again... and again... but I digress).

	Skirt Steak a la Plancha	Dominic Armato

Dishes, by design, arrived in no particular order, though I don't know if this is a conscious choice or some opening week jitters. My first taste was a small one, a sample of my ladylove's salad, listed on the menu as Cave Brothers Mozzarella with sungold tomatoes, yellow plums, watercress and purple beans. It was as described, a fine specimen of a salad, especially when it came to the crisp, slivered beans, that satisfied without thriling. You can make friends with salad, but it has to be one helluva salad. This was not. But I enjoyed the taste I had. My first, however, rather endeared me to the chef. It was a chilled sweet onion soup, with beautiful, explosive flavor and a wonderful creamy texture despite what I suspect was a total absence of dairy. Highlighted with a small dollop of mildly spicy poblano-sorrel oil, it was a beautifully refreshing dish for a hot evening that still had some depth and body. Perhaps my favorite of the evening.

Crisp Skate with Calamari and Garbanzos	Dominic Armato

Nipping at its heels was my next dish, the "crispy pig face" with chimichurri, daikon and baby arugula. Stephanie, like many chefs these days, displayed an unhealthy (yet oh so wonderful) obsession with pork products during her stint on Top Chef, and little bits of pig are to be found all over the menu. It's the star, however, of this dish, which plays kind of like an unusually succulent schnitzel, breaded and crisply fried with fresh greens and a chimichurri that had some kick. My first taste left me a little flat, but it quickly became apparent that this was because I'd first hit upon a lean corner of the cut. Once I found the fat -- which was practically everywhere else -- the plate melded together into a meaty and herbacious blend of flavors with a wonderful crunchy texture.

	Soft Shell Crab with Sweet Corn	Dominic Armato

Sadly, texture was something of an issue for the next two dishes, and our dinner went south for a bit. Though my ladylove seemed quite tickled by it, I was underwhelmed by the skirt steak a la plancha. Done with slivered beets, wilted romaine lettuce, assorted pickled vegetables and what was described as a salted goat milk caramel, it seems like it should have had a lot more depth than it did. It actually came across similar to an Asian-style sweet and sour beef salad that you might have at a Thai or Vietnamese place. But without something like the punch of chiles or the salty pungency of fish sauce, it felt flat. That the skirt steak didn't seem to retain any of the seared flavor you'd expect it to pick up from the plancha didn't help, either. Combine that with intentionally wilted greens, and it felt like a weak, overly sweet Americanized Thai beef salad that had been sitting in the container a little too long. Overly harsh, perhaps, especially considering the kitchen's young age. It wasn't bad, really. But that's what immediately sprung to mind.

Rabbit Rillettes in Crisp Rice Crepe	Dominic Armato

The first of my two seafood dishes was similarly challenged, and I started to suspect that we might be seeing some opening week issues on display. The crisp skate was done with grilled calamari rings, sweet (pickled?) grape tomatoes, garbanzo beans that challenged the teeth (though not unpleasantly), grilled radicchio, capers and a tomato aioli. There were small issues, like the fact that I wouldn't have known the calamari were grilled if the menu didn't say so (not a hint of char or smoke). But most importantly, the panko-breaded crisp skate was anything but. It was soggy, limp and barely warm, and it resulted in a dish that completely lacked texture. There may very well have been a good dish in here, but it was very difficult to see past a sad piece of seafood. It remains to be seen whether the skate and the skirt steak bloom once the kitchen tightens up a little bit. I think it's a possibility, but they're definitely not there yet.

	Goat Cheese Bavarois	Dominic Armato

This would have been the end had we not opted to add a couple more dishes mid-meal. The plates are small enough that I'd say three will do most folks, going down to two or up to four if you typically find yourself on the extremes. My last dish was another crack at seafood, a fried soft shell crab that was, indeed, served crisp, atop a bed of sweet corn kernels and dressed with a chili aioli. The crab was seasoned, barely dusted and fried, letting it shine which was a great call. These little fellows are so delicate and so tasty that there's no sense burying them. The sweet corn was similarly minimal and delicious, but the whole dish was put off by one unfortunate error, which was an overabundance of lime juice that really took over the dish. Again, work out the kinks and this is a winner (though the crabs will most likely be gone by then).

Corn Nougat with Plum and Bacon	Dominic Armato

But despite some of the problem dishes, we ended on a high note, a creative little dish that still wasn't quite firing on all cylinders, yet managed to delight us nonetheless. Rabbit rillettes are rolled in rice crepes and fried crisp, then floated in a bowl of ginger "giardinare" and sweet garlic puree, and topped with thinly sliced carrots and a bit of spigarello (the green stuff). The flavors here were wonderful and well-balanced. The rabbit not only took to the broth beautifully, but its shredded texture lapped up the liquid once the crepes were cut apart. The garlic was present but not overpowering, and the vegetables atop were pure and delicious. The singular issue was, again, that the crisp crepes weren't very crisp. Only the tiniest bits on a couple of edges provided any clue that they were intended to be. And while I'm sure they were meant to be partly crisp, partly soft (a call I fully support), a little more texture would have made the dish. But this was a winner even as we received it.

Desserts were creative and enjoyable. A goat cheese bavarois with berries and crisp oats was clean and restrained in its subtle sweetness. The corn nougat -- corn ice cream, as far as I could tell -- was served with crumbled corn bread, corn kernels, diced plum and bits of crispy bacon, and the only problem was that the nougat arrived half-melted, in keeping with the evening's theme.

	Inspiration For The Name	Dominic Armato

That theme, of course, is that The Girl and The Goat just opened, and I have absolutely no business writing about it. Like the meals I remembered from Scylla, there were big hits and big misses. But this offering from Stephanie lent the impression that it might come together with a little more time. The beauty of restauranting in the internet era, however, is that unlike with a traditional newspaper review, there will be no shortage of others commenting in the coming weeks on whether or not the kitchen finds its footing. Less highly anticipated restaurants might not survive a lukewarm early reception, but unless the city of Chicago has completely succumbed to goat fatigue (I suppose a case could be made for the north side of the city... *sigh*), Stephanie will get the time she needs to whip the kitchen into shape. I hope she does, not because she's so damn likeable (though she is), but because there are some really compelling ideas here that I'd like to see hitting the table at full strength.

The Girl and The Goat
www.girlandthegoat.com
809 W. Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60607
312-492-6262
Mon - Fri	4:30 PM - 11:00 PM
Fri - Sat	4:30 PM - 12:00 AM

Crudo

Albacore with Apples, Truffle and Black Garlic	Dominic Armato

UPDATE : Crudo has closed

I have mused before, and I'll try not to make it a tired theme, about what strikes this particular newcomer as Phoenix's odd relationship with seafood. "It's tough to get fresh fish in the desert," I've heard, on more than one occasion. But surely, no sushi bar exists this side of the Pacific that obtains even half of its fish locally. Le Bernardin isn't exactly pulling its kanpachi, sea urchin, langoustine and hiramasa out of the Hudson. Heck, even when it comes to crab in Maryland, a state so devoted to the crustacean that the little blue buggers are on their driver's licenses, it's a challenge to find the locally fished variety. Most of Maryland's pride is shipped in from the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela or Southeast Asia these days (perhaps less so the Gulf now, but... ugh... best not to think about that). Of course, there's nothing like day boat seafood, but the point is that whether or not they should be (a question I'll leave for the more ecologically-minded), seafood restaurants are largely location irrelevant. And yet, it's almost as though there's a lack of seafood culture here. So as odd as I may find the complete absence of independent fishmongers, it's refreshing to know that there are places -- quirky, independent ones, even -- that are devoted to a variety of lovely, fresh fish. It is, after all, Crudo's namesake.

	Butterfish with Crispy Lardo	Dominic Armato

"Quirky" may be one of the most important thoughts to hold onto, here. Crudo is a truly odd little beast, serving breakfast in the morning and fairly straightforward panini and flatbreads in the afternoon, only to morph into a creative, Italian-inspired seafood restaurant by night. This daily transmogrification is a function, it would seem, of the restaurant's location in the front of a hair salon. This isn't quite as odd as it sounds, but it's pretty close. The Steven Paul Salon once housed a more conventional cafe before Crudo took it over, and the room isn't shared with styling chairs and hairdryers, but rather a small jewelry and clothing boutique. And though I'm firmly in the food before ambiance camp, the better place to park, I think, is out on the patio, which is where we found ourselves on an unseasonably cool June evening.

Tuna with Orange, Basil and Olives	Dominic Armato

Chefs Cullen Campbell and Brandon Crouser have tag-teamed a menu that's about fifteen items long, split right down the middle between hot and cold. But the more compelling option, for me at least, is the ability to do three, four or five courses -- your pick -- at $10 apiece, making it possible to bring a companion with whom you don't mind trading plates and sample two-thirds of the menu on one pass. The top half is mostly comprised of the namesake crudi, thinly-sliced raw fish doused in olive oil and seasonings that challenge tradition but are firmly rooted, for the most part, in Mediterranean flavors. Further encouraging sharing is the fact that the crudi plates are of a fair size. Splitting a dish will still yield you 4-5 slices of fish. Seafood options are mostly absent from the bottom, cooked half of the menu, but the meats and vegetables found there are similarly Italian-inspired, again with plenty of creative twists to keep things lively.

	Hiramasa with Espelette and Bottarga	Dominic Armato

The first dish to come our way was a firm and light butterfish, topped with crispy fried lardo and oven-dried tomatoes. Consisting of nothing but cured pork fat, the lardo first crunches and then melts into the fish when you take a bite, and the oven-dried tomatoes provide a cleaner, sweeter flavor than a typical sun-dried, which always seems to completely take over any dish it's added to. Good call there. Meanwhile, my ladylove started on tuna, awash in olive oil and topped generously with orange segments, diced olives and basil. The olives -- again, a very clean-tasting variety -- gave a little salty punch without giving too much, and while the dish could have benefitted from a better piece of fish, I don't mean to cast aspersions on the quality of crudo's seafood, which was generally quite good and no less than I'd expect without getting into, no doubt, pricier territory.

Madai with Meyer Lemon and Sea Beans	Dominic Armato

The second wave was even a little stronger, my dish being hiramasa, a type of amberjack, done with iitois (a local allium with which I'm not yet familiar, but it could have passed for a chive), a dash of spicy espelette and a hint of grated bottarga. It's about this time that I noticed each of these crudi was introducing an element that was a little rough around the edges -- fried pork fat, briny olive, fishy bottarga -- which I rather enjoyed as a departure from the clean/tart/sweet profiles that typify most creative Asian sashimi these days. After trading dishes, I had another that followed the same pattern: generous squares of albacore with crisp green apple matchsticks, black garlic and a touch of earthy truffle. Clean, sweet and tart balanced by earthy and pungent. Another refreshing taste with a little character.

	Anchovy with Roasted Baby Bells	Dominic Armato

Our final pass at the crudi contained what was, for me, the peak and valley of the top half of the menu. I started with the peak, the "Japanese auction" selection for the week, which was madai, a type of red snapper, dressed in a lightly sweet Meyer lemon oil, Meyer lemon rind and a scattering of sea beans, confusingly named as they aren't beans and don't grow in the sea, even if they rather taste like it. I found this to be the most delightful crudo of the evening, due in no small part to the fish which seemed a notch above the rest of the pack, even before I realized that was our "special." And though I enjoyed some more than others, the only crudo I'd be perfectly content to scratch off my list was the white anchovy with roasted bell peppers, housemade pickles and shiso. But that may be attributable to the fact that I find it hard to get excited about marinated white anchovies, which always strike me as way too heavy on the vinegar, and these were no exception.

Fegato Grasso with Polenta and Dates	Dominic Armato

Having shaded more heavily towards the crudi in our selections, we were forced to pass on some rather delightful-looking hot dishes, like a rolled veal breast, gnocchi with prosciutto broth and fingerling potatoes with more lardo. But I suppose you need something to go back for. I found the latter half of the menu a little more uneven, actually, including one dish that didn't quite sit well with me at all. The fegato grasso (exactly what you think it is) was served surrounded by a loose polenta and topped with honey and dates. The combination of honey and dates I found just a little too powerful for the fegato, which was lost unless I got a big chunk of it and a touch of the accompaniments, quickly leaving me with a big plate of polenta, dates and honey. But more importantly, something in the polenta clashed with the fegato... butter, I think? To my palate, they just fought each other. This dish didn't come together for me.

	Mushrooms Au Gratin	Dominic Armato

More successful was the menu's requisite umami bomb, which I'd chide as a culinary trend except for the fact that I kind of like it. "Au Gratin" is a terribly misleading way to label the mushrooms, which are, I believe, roasted with mozzarella, Grana Padano, fingerling potatoes, and a little truffle before being topped with a very loose egg. This one's not rocket science, and it may be a slave to fashion, but really, what's not to like? Slightly less trendy was a beet-stained risotto, and while "stained" might give the impression that this was a surface application, in reality it was a full-on BEET dish. A small tower of risotto was wrapped with grilled zucchini and capped with a thick slab of roasted beet and a lone basil leaf. The balsamic drizzled around struck me as unnecessary. It's easy sweetness and overused, particularly in a dish that featured enough natural sweetness to make it redundant. The risotto was done with bacon and Grana Padano, and the flavor was wonderful, even if the texture struck me as slightly off. The risotto had bite -- most important -- but it struck me as a little too loose. These are, however, minor complaints. This was a very nice dish.

Beet-Stained Risotto	Dominic Armato

The winner of the hot dishes for me was a brodetto alla Triestina, which bucked convention in a way that made me rather happy. Brodetto, in its origins, was a humble seafood stew, made with whatever was abundant, most often done with tomato and wine and tarted up with vinegar (I've always wanted to say that in a food context). This is usually a rustic dish, but here it's cleaned up for a night on the town. A very light interpretation, this brodetto comes across more like a pile of fish and vegetables sitting in a broth, which has its upsides and downsides. The downside is that the yellowtail, potatoes and oven-dried tomatoes, while bright, tender and delicious, somehow didn't feel fully infused with the broth's character. But then again, maybe that would have been too much. The broth carries a punch, sweet and tart and so powerful that it almost feels like an agrodolce, and yet is light and clean and doesn't leave you feeling sticky sweet. I'm a little torn. I'm not convinced the body of the "stew" couldn't be better married to the broth, but I dig that broth so much I'm pretty content with it the way it is.

	Yellowtail Brodetto	Dominic Armato

We weren't feeling dessert that evening, though the choices sounded mostly conventional. Of course, that can fool you sometimes (I love that no matter how many people rip it off and give it flashy names, Jean-Georges still refers to it simply as "warm chocolate cake"). But we left quite satisfied. Crudo is a charming, if unconventional, little place. In general, I think the crudi are stronger than the piatti, but it's mostly a very solid menu, and I wouldn't hesitate to return. Another thing I'm trying to adjust to here is the summer lull. It's one thing to hear about how restaurants get rather quiet this time of year, and it's another thing to go to a place the Saturday after a glowing writeup from the New Times, sit for three hours and only see two other tables. But looking around the neighborhood, the quiet certainly didn't seem limited to Crudo. Frustrating as that might be, I suppose it's better that it's the season rather than the digs. But if the summer kills off as many restaurants as I've heard, Crudo deserves to be on the list of places to help through the heat. And with cool, light, raw fish dishes as their specialty, doing so certainly won't be a chore.

Crudo
www.crudoaz.com
7045 East 3rd Avenue
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
480-603-1011
Tue	8:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Wed - Sat	8:00 AM - 10:00 PM

Tadich Grill

Tadich Grill	Dominic Armato

You're on your own in San Francisco.

It's been a long day, your stomach's gnawing, and anyplace honest with a counter is sounding like a good idea. A restaurant that's been around for over 150 years can't have survived that long by playing to culinary trends -- were there culinary trends in 1849? -- so you brush past the fellows having a smoke on the sidewalk out front, open the door and step out of the rain-drenched night and into the bustle within.

	The Long Counter	Dominic Armato

It isn't 1849, but it might as well be 1949. If you block out the less conservatively dressed patrons and the servers' terminals, you could pretend that Truman was still president, Don Newcombe was the NL rookie of the year and Tony Bennett was still Joe Bari. So you wait for a spell until a stool opens up at the satiny smooth wooden bar that starts at the front door and goes on forever, maybe all the way into the kitchen in back, maybe all the way into the bay. You take a sip of water and, under yellow light cast by ancient brass fixtures, start to look over a menu filled with the kind of simple seafood and steaks that meant the good life to your grandparents. Your waiter steps up, white jacket, black tie, slick hair, a face with experience, and though he works a busy counter he moves with economy and carries himself like a foreign dignitary. "Can I get you something to drink?", he says, sounding like he arrived here from Western Europe, but decades ago. You ask for a Diet Coke, to which he responds, "I said something to drink," with just enough of a wry tone and a twitch of the lip to keep it friendly. He glides off to retrieve your Coke. You're the boss, but it's his turf.

Seafood Cocktail	Dominic Armato

You start to regret the selection. Something with bourbon somehow seems more appropriate as you soak in the scene. Folks who got off late unwind with an old-school cocktail. The walls are lined with trench coats and the counter lined with briefcases. A septuagenarian with earlobes like dried apricots -- a regular -- sits down to your left, orders and eats a minute steak with potatoes, pays his tab and hobbles off before your seafood cocktail even hits the counter. The seafood cocktail decided to dress for the occasion, wearing a perfectly trimmed lettuce leaf, purely for show, that frames a chaotic mix of bay shrimp, prawns and crab claws, cool and tender, still smelling of the sea. It's touched with just the right amount of cocktail sauce, a house blend that eschews ketchupy sweetness in favor of texture and fire, the tomato pulp still detectable, the horseradish wafting up into your nose before the fork passes your lips. It's simple and perfect and you sigh when you reach the bottom all too quickly. Your waiter raises an eyebrow and cracks the faintest smile as he whisks away the empty vessel. He won't ask what you thought of it. He already knows.

	Cioppino	Dominic Armato

When he returns, he bears a wide, shallow bowl filled with a stew whose acquaintance you're anxious to make. The cioppino's a house special, and if you doubt the house's authority, the plate helpfully reminds you that the house was built, figuratively at least, in 1849. The seafood stew is bold and decidedly not of this era, made with heavily reduced tomatoes, dried herbs, what must have been every sea creature at the market and enough oil to carry their flavor. The first spoonful of wine-fortified soup hits your lips, and you're transfixed. It's deep and developed, almost bordering on dirty, with the essence -- no, the bold, unmitigated totality -- of the bounty of seafood that adorns the bowl. Clams, mussels, shrimp, crab, scallops, fish... they're all here, all with their own distinct flavors, all sweet and luscious and tender. You have bread to dunk. It isn't crusty, artisan bread, but rather thick slices of something light and moist, toasted to a faint crisp, basted with butter and garlic and absorbent like a sponge. You have to resist the urge to tear through the cioppino like a madman, but you manage to linger with it for a spell, making every spoonful count and using the bread to mop up afterwards. You couldn't have gotten anything more out of the bowl if you licked it. The dishwasher will pause for a moment, wondering how a clean bowl got mixed in with the dirty.

Bourbon Bread Pudding	Dominic Armato

You don't have room for dessert, but you're going to eat one anyway. Bourbon makes an appearance, allowing you to right an earlier wrong, steeped with caramel and basting a bread pudding that comes out of the kitchen without its cap. Your waiter walks it over to a free patch of countertop, reaches into a refrigerator below for a bottle of fresh whipped cream, lays a huge dollop on top of your dessert and, by accident, a small one on his fingertips. He glances over his shoulder, and in a flash, the misplaced cream disappears into his mouth before he turns and sets the dish before you. "Pudding" seems like even more of a misnomer than usual, with cubes of spongy bread and tender, cooked apple nearly unsullied by binder, held together, it would seem, by sheer force of will and the occasional raisin. It's sweet and delicious and you need coffee, so you order an espresso. But the machine behind the counter spits and belches and emits a few disconcerting noises, and after fiddling with it for a few minutes, your waiter declares it dead and sullenly informs you that drip coffee will have to do. "That's okay," you say, realizing that a plain old cup is more appropriate, and this was probably providence. An old mug is set before you, the coffee within is smooth, warm and easy to drink, and with three deep gulps, it's gone.

You pay the check, and as you struggle to stand, your waiter thanks you with a warm smile. He genuinely seems to mean it. Or he's a master at making you think so, which is really all the same to you. You work your way to the front of the narrow building, another lone body falling in to take your place. You step back into the cool night, stand in the neon light and take a deep breath. A cab pulls up and asks if you need a ride. And even though you get in, you think to yourself that he arrived too soon. You really would have liked a few more minutes.

Tadich Grill
www.tadichgrill.com
240 California Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
415-391-1849
Mon - Fri	11:00 AM - 9:30 PM
Sat	11:30 AM - 9:30 PM

FnB

Grilled Spicy Broccoli	Dominic Armato

And now, a couple of unqualified raves.

We've been in town for five months now, and though I never get around as much as I'd like -- not a tenth as much as I'd like -- I feel like I'm starting to get the lay of the land a little bit. And in those five months, I've been to three places that I can plainly state I adore without reservation. The first, I wrote about a few months ago. The second, I hope to write about later this week. And the third, even if I'm late to the party, should really come as no surprise.

	Fresh Mozzarella	Dominic Armato

The first time I stepped into FnB, I suffered a twinge of melancholy. Even with a successor on the horizon, I miss Sea Saw, and it's more than a little weird to see that sleek, modern space all cozied up. Though it sports a comforting menu with a strong farm-to-table aesthetic, FnB is no dive. Even if it's one of the anomalies that puts the cuisine before the scene, it's still situated in Old Town Scottsdale, which means the dim lighting, playful yet meticulous tile work and white tablecloths might be considered a concession to those who (to their discredit) might reflexively write off anything more rustic. I wouldn't have thought it possible to see a place like FnB described as "too casual," but since I have, to those who might have turned up their noses at such a place before the raves started rolling in -- and there are plenty of you out there -- stick around and you might learn something about restaurants with heart.

Fried Rock Shrimp	Dominic Armato

The thing is, though FnB's execution is, in every aspect, careful and meticulous, the place is all heart. It starts with Pavle Milic who, along with his wife Emily, runs the front of house and does so with the kind of energy and panache usually reserved for fictional characters. But this endlessly entertaining song and dance is coming from a fellow who's incredibly passionate about what he's doing, and genuinely wants to make people feel happy and at home. The restaurant's heart also radiates from its kitchen, still smack-dab in the middle of the room and surrounded by a counter on three sides. But this is no show kitchen. These ladies are working it, and watching them work it just adds another connection between diner and dish. And most importantly, chef Charleen Badman's menu is packed full of heart. Gastropub, farm-to-table, refined comfort food -- call it what you will, but it's food that's simultaneously approachable and deep, and whether you're inclined to favor or eschew the culinary zeitgeist (and whether or not you feel FnB captures the same) is and should be irrelevant. This is some hands-down great food, and that's all that matters.

	Smoked Trout Salad	Dominic Armato

As I walked into FnB for the first time, late one Friday night, Badman was hand-pulling the mozzarella that would, moments later, be set in front of me along with some bread. That pretty much set the tone right there. The menu starts off with a few noshes, like marinated olives and roasted nuts, and "a piece of cheese, a little fruit & grilled nut bread" which is exactly as it reads. One dish that almost seems out of place is one I had to try, if only for that reason. Crispy rock shrimp and jalapeno tartar are ubiquitous these days, but never this good. Perfectly tender, perfectly crisp, perfectly balanced sauce... it's a reminder that this was always a delicious dish, long before it was butchered by every other sports bar. And yet, it was the low-water mark of my trips to FnB, almost a little tease that said, "Yeah, we can do that. Now here's what else we can do."

Braised Leeks	Dominic Armato

The middle of the menu is absolutely dominated by vegetables, which outnumber the entrees two to one. I'd say this is simply playing to the kitchen's strengths, but that would imply the kitchen has weaknesses, which I have yet to discover. It also probably has much to do with the fact that FnB has a pretty strong commitment to sourcing as much local produce as possible. The smoked trout salad is more salad than trout, with fennel, arugula, orange, onion and ginger, and wouldn't be so notable if the vegetables weren't so pristine or the trout so fresh and delicate. Fried green tomatoes are killer, tart, hot and crispy and perfectly punctuated with a creamy, fresh green goddess dressing, crumbled feta and a bushel of greens. Again, it's all about ingredient selection and execution. There's no rocket science, here. Just killer produce perfectly prepared.

	Fried Green Tomatoes	Dominic Armato

Other vegetable dishes are a little more inventive. The local food nerds tweeted themselves blue, declared April 30th "Leekapalooza"... heck, did everything shy of staging a mock funeral procession down Scottsdale Road when the braised leeks were taken off the menu for the season. It wasn't entirely unwarranted. Succulent braised leeks are served up under cover of melted fresh mozzarella, smothered with a pile of coarse, crisp mustard-laced breadcrumbs and topped off with a fried egg. It's a running gag in kitchens nowadays that putting a fried egg on top of anything makes it a bestseller, but there are places where it's gratuitous and places where it isn't, and FnB's braised leeks are firmly in the latter camp. It's the kind of dish that builds reputations, all gooey and oozey with those toasted breadcrumbs to keep it from becoming umami soup.

Asparagus with Pureed Cauliflower	Dominic Armato

That said, the vegetable that haunts my dreams is actually the grilled spicy broccoli, served with Meyer lemon aioli and little bits of crispy onion. The char takes one of the most milquetoast of vegetables and makes it sing, with a little acid from the aioli, a little zip from the crushed red pepper and a little crunch from the onions, it comes at you from every direction and they all work. Since the vegetable portion of the menu is rounded out with swiss chard and spaghetti squash, the asparagus is practically hoity-toity in comparison, swimming in a cauliflower puree and topped with a handful of crisp and paper-thin fried beets. On first taste, I thought it needed some acid. But a couple more bites, and I realized that Badman was right -- it absolutely didn't. We're programmed to expect lemon or balsamic or a nice, tart Hollandaise. It's practically convention. But this is a less aggressive approach that brings something else out of the asparagus. Something good.

	Lamb Tenderloin with Snap Peas	Dominic Armato

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've only sampled a single entree at FnB. What can I say? I keep eating vegetables. But the one big dish I tried was a knockout. Grilled lamb tenderloin was billed alongside snap peas, potatoes, olives and mint. It's a very rustic plate, tender, intensely-flavored meat in a puddle of natural jus with a heavy dose of fresh mint and just a occasional stray bit of tart, salty olive for punch. My favorite touch, however, was that the snap peas were mixed with haricot verts. It seemed so odd not to simply choose one or the other, but damned if they didn't work together, one crisp and sweet, one tender and vegetal... ditching convention in a subtle way that yielded compelling results. And compelling the dish is, as pure and beautiful an expression of lamb as I've tasted in a long time.

Crème Brûlée	Dominic Armato

Desserts follow the same formula, simple on the surface, done just so. A dense chocolate cake with ice cream and rhubarb compote and a lemon cake with strawberries and fresh whipped cream were bordering on conventional, but excellent. It was a crème brûlée, however, that stole my heart. Chamomile, I think? Rich and custardy with a blast of fragrance, the crust was absolutely killer and decidedly old-school. A circular branding iron sits in the grill's coals, and you know exactly how many people are ordering the crème brûlée because the restaurant fills with the smell of burnt sugar every time it hits the ramekin. It's a perfect crust, crisp and caramelized with a certain smokiness that I've never had elsewhere. Who decided that a butane torch was progress? I say bring back the branding iron. It makes a killer brûlée. Should you forego dessert, you still get a little something sweet, in the form of light and crispy peanut brittle. I'm sure Pavle would be all too happy to honor a request for an extra piece, but frankly, I wish they'd just put a whole plate of it on the menu so I could get my fill without feeling like a noodge.

	Peanut Brittle	Dominic Armato

I really can't shower enough compliments on the place. The food is so unpretentious and approachable, but those who really know their food will appreciate just how carefully it's done, and how significant its subtle little twists are. I can't come up with any reason not to love FnB, but by god, some people are trying. I've heard it called "too casual." I've seen the presentation referred to as "sloppy." And I'm just flabbergasted by this. I mean, really, so f-ing what? Phoenix -- Scottsdale, particularly -- has a certain reputation as a place that values style over substance when it comes to restaurants, and comments like this betray the nugget of truth at the heart of every stereotype. Thankfully, this seems to be the minority opinion, and the restaurant's well-deserved success is very, very encouraging. FnB is bridging the gap, making soulful food in a stylish neighborhood, dressing up its homey tendencies just enough so as not to scare those with narrow expectations for what constitutes an acceptable restaurant atmosphere. Make the room a little more downscale and move it a mile or two west, and I'm betting the food doesn't get a fraction of the attention, even though it wouldn't deserve it one iota less. But if a slightly polished atmosphere and prime location is what it takes to make the point that great food need not be flashy, I'm okay with that. More of this, please.

FnB
www.fnbrestaurant.com
7133 E. Stetson Drive
Scottsdale, AZ 85252
480-425-9463
Tue - Thu	5:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Fri - Sat	5:00 PM - 12:00 AM
Sun	5:00 PM - 10:00 PM

Quiessence

Quiessence	Dominic Armato

Quiescence : The quality or state of being marked by tranquility at rest.

Essence : One that possesses or exhibits a quality in abundance as if in concentrated form

One would presume, of course, that the name is a play on words rather than a misspelling, but since that pretty much sums up the courtyard where we spent four hours, I'd say we have confirmation. Quiessence is an uncommonly charming restaurant. And given this blog's usual laser focus on the grub, I feel a little silly making such a big deal out of it, but when simply approaching the front door is as notable as it was here, I see little reason not to make kind of a big deal about it.

Charmingly Overgrown	Dominic Armato

Quiessence is one of three restaurants located at The Farm at South Mountain, which has somehow created a little self-contained alternate universe down there in South Phoenix. You're driving through a dusty residential neighborhood where the yards are all gated, you see the sign and hang a hard right, and suddenly you're surrounded by lush vegetation, meandering down a gravel road that's flanked by stately pecan trees. The walk from the parking lot to the restaurant takes you past fences, trellises and thickets clogged with fragrant flowers and vines, until you arrive at a tranquil little courtyard at the back of which is situated a low, unassuming building that houses Quiessence. Or, if you book a little bit in advance, you can instead spend your evening in the courtyard itself, under a green canopy lit with twinkle lights (as my ladylove affectionately refers to them), warmed by the flames of the outdoor wood burning oven that's used to bake the restaurant's breads. Named, appropriately, The Brick Oven Table, it carries with it a special menu and the presumption that you're happy to let the chefs send out whatever the heck they feel like preparing for you. That accurately captures our attitude towards most restaurants we visit, and so we decided that the brick oven table was the one for us.

	Chef Spread	Dominic Armato

Though I believe the "Chef Spread" is available to all of the restaurant's patrons, it's a fine way to welcome somebody to a special table, nonetheless. I'd heard good things about the charcuterie at Quiessence, and they certainly lay out an impressive spread. Downright succulent mortadella with an almost spongy texture, a very restrained and mild cacciatora, sweet felino and a luscious Mangalitsa coppa confirm that the Chef de Cuisine has been spending some time in Italy. But the spread isn't limited to salumi. A couple of the best bites included a complex and... um... heady head cheese, served atop a large cracker with thin slices of pickled onion, and smooth and salty pork rillettes on thick crostini with a lone celery leaf garnish. The meats match the mood, very mellow and delicately flavored. My initial response was to wish a couple of them were seasoned and/or cured a little more aggressively, but a couple more bites and I thought better of that, recognizing the skill involved and happy to enjoy the plate's character for what it was. Accompaniments were limited to some parmesan grissini and, far more notably, a small plate of fresh vegetable pickles. And when I say fresh, I mean fresh. Even if we hadn't been informed that they were prepared daily, I would have suspected as much. They were done with an incredibly light touch, coming across more like fresh, crisp vegetables that had been blanched and kissed with a touch of vinegar and pickling spices than what you'd typically think of as pickles. They really suited the plate well, and I thought they were particularly well-suited to the head cheese and rillettes. I could've eaten a plate of them as a standalone course and enjoyed them more than either of the salads we had later, and that isn't a shot at our salads.

Seafood Salad and Shellfish Soup	Dominic Armato

After a leisurely break between courses (what would quickly become a theme for the evening), we were treated to a duo of seafood appetizers, hot and cold. On the left, a cold seafood salad, with oyster, clam, tilefish, scallop and perhaps something else I'm forgetting, diced and seasoned and presented in an oyster shell. On the right, a demitasse cup filled with a cream of shellfish soup with a touch of fennel oil. The seafood salad was on the same page as the charcuterie, seasoned with a great deal of restraint, tasting mostly of the seafood itself, and quite refreshing. The cream of shellfish soup is to be commended for not being very creamy, another light treatment that nonetheless focused on capturing the briny, dusky elements of the shells as much as the sweetness of the meat therein. I might've preferred just a touch more intensity from a vessel so small, but this is the pickiest of preferences. It was a delicious soup.

	Citrus Salad	Dominic Armato

With the salad course, for which we each received a separate dish (eat half and switch!), I was still enjoying the food, but a disturbing trend that had reared its head with the presentation of the charcuterie launched into overdrive. Namely, the descriptions of our dishes were starting to get rather... unwieldy. To be clear, I appreciate that Quiessence is making every effort to source their ingredients as locally as possible, and there's a certain folksy charm inherent in such a practice that suits the restaurant's vibe. But really, I do not need to know which local farm supplied the carrots, in whose backyard the lettuce was grown, and which branch of the tree on the other end of the courtyard dropped the grapefruit (only the last is an exaggeration... barely). Especially when working without a menu, I like to be told what I'm eating. But it should not take longer to introduce the dish than it does to eat it.

Salad with Fresh Ricotta	Dominic Armato

In any case, our salads were perfectly enjoyable, as fresh and vibrant as their (lengthy) pedigree would suggest. The citrus salad was, I thought, the lesser of the two. Though lovingly crafted from a mix of citrus, fresh greens, onions, fennel and a creamy pecan dressing, it struck me as awfully wet, and not because it had been overdressed. The flavors were very nice, but the amount of moisture killed any crispness and had it approaching soggy. The other fared much better. Slivered radishes, carrots and fennel were tossed with greens and a lemon vinaigrette, and paired with salty grilled croutons and a healthy scoop of a delightfully fresh and creamy housemade ricotta. The only thing that can make a great ricotta better is a touch of salt, oil and acid, which is exactly what the croutons and lemon vinaigrette provided. That a humble garden plot in curly, shaved form shared the plate was merely a bonus.

Gnocchi with Fava Beans	Paccheri with Braised Beef	Dominic Armato

Pasta's always a tough sell for me. It really has to be sharp. And to their credit, I thought both of the offerings we received were really quite good. But despite respecting the care that went into them, I couldn't quite muster much in the way of enthusiasm. Slightly cheesy gnocchi had a great spongy texture, and the accompanying fava beans were as fresh and light and green as the rest of the menu would lead you to expect. A pair of paccheri -- stuffed with an abundance of shredded, braised beef, seated in a pool of tomato sauce and smothered with provolone cheese -- played more like unusually refined Italian-American than Italian-Italian, but were perfectly enjoyable as such. As much as I advocate simplicity when it comes to pasta, perhaps both dishes needed just a little something to put them over the top. While warm and satisfying, brightness was a little tough to come by. Still, two very solid pasta dishes.

	Smoked Marlin with Lettuce	Dominic Armato

An intermezzo of smoked marlin provided some subtle and unexpected pleasures. A thinly-sliced marlin wrapper and fresh lettuce filling made for a small cigar-shaped taste, topped with fennel and lemon zest and dressed with a touch of fennel oil. At first I wanted a little more smoke in the fish, until I realized that the fish's delicate nature had turned a leaf of lettuce, of all things, into a focal point of the dish. Tightly bound inside the wrap, the lettuce's leafy crispness took on a certain density, and given that it was no doubt lovingly raised by some salt of the earth local farmer, it had great flavor. Though the dish was officially about the marlin, which was very nice, its design had the effect of forcing me to really appreciate a great leaf of lettuce... and how often does that happen?

Seafood Plate	Dominic Armato

And then we went from seafood the small and subtle to seafood the big and brash. An enormous platter was set before us -- with no size reference, the photo belies its scale -- that contained an assortment of fresh seafood. On the outskirts, seared tilefish and grilled scallops were plated with fried basil and a Sicilian tomato sauce, meaning in this case that the addition of copious chiles and raisins made it both spicy and sweet, and the centerpiece was a battered and fried softshell crab atop a cauliflower puree. The fish and scallop were nicely cooked (the scallop a touch over for my tastes, but well within the realm of acceptability), and between its spicy-sweet nature, the tomato's intensity and thick slabs of garlic, I enjoyed the sauce's unashamed brashness. The softshell crab, however, left me completely unsatisfied.

	Grapefruit Sorbet	Dominic Armato

It was aggressively salted -- appropriate, thank you -- but its preparation just came off flat. The batter was unusual, not at all crisp but rather puffy and almost a little doughy, and the cauliflower puree was barely seasoned, so that the pair came off as completely one-note and desperately in need of some kind of acid or other bright element. I could absolutely get behind treating the crab minimally and letting it shine. Salt it and fry it and call it a day. But dispense with the batter then, which only got in the way. It was a hit and miss course, to be sure. Next, we were treated to the limited bounty of the courtyard, a spoonful of grapefruit sorbet with a sprig of mint to act as a palate cleanser. And then it was off to more meaty fare.

Milk-Braised Ham with Greens	Ribeye with Ramps and Mushrooms	Dominic Armato

The ham was the more interesting of the two, its aggressive, salty nature and oftentimes tough texture muted by a lengthy bath in warm milk. Crisp beans, a hearty sauce and some rather intense and delicious braised greens completed a very enjoyable and gut-warming main course. The other meaty offering was a little more conventional, slices of ribeye atop a bit of potato hash, served with grilled mushrooms and ramps and sauced with demi and what I believe was a ramp puree. It's impossible not to get excited about the beautifully crisp, almost chive-like nature of fresh ramps, and the dish was executed perfectly well, but I found myself wishing for just a little something to break it out of such a conventional mold.

Cheese Board	Dominic Armato

Is it my failing that I've become bored to tears by conventional cheese courses? Not that I intend to hold every restaurant to The French Laundry standard, but I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Thomas Keller, for having introduced me to the composed cheese course. Allow me to understand -- I can have a variety of cheeses and a variety of accompaniments that may or may not suit some of my cheeses, and I can sort of nibble and nosh on these various elements, or I can have a dish that selects a central cheese and designs a dish around it, seeking to carefully complement and enhance the cheese's unique and delectable attributes. Why would I choose the former, exactly? As it was, I didn't have a choice. We received a traditional cheese board, with a cow's milk reserve from Wisconsin, some manner of Camembert, a very pungent and spicy bleu and an angry little ripened goat from Cypress Grove. There were crostini, there were pine nuts and pecans, there were slices of apple and a fig and rosemary jam, andzzzzzzzzzzzzz... I'm sorry, it's not you, Quiessence, it's me. At the risk of incurring the wrath of dairy zealots, I've always had a hard time mustering great excitement over the traditional cheese course, and now I'm really just done with it. Most likely, this is MY problem, but it is what it is.

Dulce de Leche Bread Pudding	Goat Cheesecake	Dominic Armato

Generally speaking, my capacity is almost limitless, so I was surprised by just how stuffed I was at this point. Mercifully, though plentiful, the desserts were small. A cube of dulce de leche bread pudding with crème anglaise and fresh whipped cream was a very dense and cakey iteration, which might insult some but didn't bother me one whit. More to my taste was a goat cheese cheesecake... or goat cheesecake, I guess... tangy and dense, rolled in crushed pecans, sitting in a pool of caramel and topped with a bing cherry. I love using goat cheese in cheesecake and I've always wondered why I never saw it until I did it (though it was undoubtedly done thousands and thousands of times before it struck me as a good idea). It has the tanginess of cream cheese, but a richness and complexity that cream cheese lacks. Good stuff.

	Chocolate Mousse	Dominic Armato

Chocolate mousse was a childhood favorite, even if it's more recently fallen out of favor. But this version, a mix of white and dark, was made atypically compelling by a lot of small crunchies I couldn't identify, taking that uniform texture and giving it a little life. Vanilla panna cotta with fresh strawberries, the dessert that by all rights should have stolen the show for me, had the misfortune of following a crème brûlée I'd had at FnB the night before. Of course crème brûlée and panna cotta aren't synonymous, but they're similar enough that with every bite I couldn't help but think that it wasn't nearly as flavorful or enjoyable as that fabulous crème brûlée I just had last night. The strawberries, however, were exceptional specimens.

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Strawberries	Dominic Armato

One of the things we'll remember the most about our dinner at the Brick Oven Table at Quiessence is its length. Once we'd paid the check and staggered out of our seats, our meal had clocked in at over four hours. Thankfully, we had an absolutely wonderful time, mostly because it was, for us, a rare opportunity to really spend some time with each other, but also due in no small part to the exceptionally pleasant surroundings. Again, this is a blog that tries to keep the focus as much as possible on the food, but this is a situation where I really feel the need to point out that dining at Quiessence -- outdoors, at least -- is as much about what surrounds the table as what is placed upon it. Our dinner was very good, deftly executed but for a couple of lapses, very much ingredient-focused and quite enjoyable. That puts Quiessence in good company. But what sets it apart is, truly, the entire experience. I guess the best way I can put it is to say that our dinner was very good -- good enough that it didn't make us feel for a moment as though we were paying for the surroundings, even if we were a little surprised to discover that we wouldn't have completely minded doing so.

Quiessence
www.quiessencerestaurant.com
6106 S. 32nd Street
Phoenix, AZ 85042
480-275-8888
Tue - Sat	5:00 PM - Close

Trending Late

Kumamoto Oysters with Yuzu, Chili Gelée, Micro Shiso and Fresh Wasabi	Dominic Armato

Of all the food trends that have come and gone over the years, I have to admit that -- selfishly speaking -- this is one of my favorites.

It would seem that the "staff meal" -- when a restaurant that isn't typically a late-night institution has extended hours one or two days a week -- is rapidly gaining popularity here in Phoenix. They don't even remotely resemble any staff meals I've ever seen, and I'm mildly resenting the implication in some circles that this is increasing the availability of "good" food late at night (late-night diners aren't good?). But when you're somebody for whom the easiest time to sneak out for a bite is late at night, they could call it the Book Club or the Board Meeting and I'd still be happy to have another dining option.

So on a recent Thursday, I struck out with a couple of fellow food nerds with the intention of hitting the most recent addition to the late night scene. Posh is still a fairly young restaurant, and their hook is that they've taken the age-old practice of letting the chef cook whatever the heck he wants and turned it into standard operating procedure. Not so from 10:00 PM to midnight on Thursdays, however, when an actual menu with 4-6 small dishes and plenty of alcohol specials makes an appearance. For now, late nights at Posh are a three-week-old experiment, but based on my experience the first two weeks, here's hoping it remains a regular event.

	Boar Bacon with Fried Egg	Dominic Armato

Briny Kumamoto oysters received a treatment far more elaborate than their resultant flavor would suggest, and that's a good thing. When you see that they're dressed with yuzu, chili gelée, micro shiso and fresh wasabi, you wonder if there's going to be an oyster buried in there somewhere. But the additions complement both the oysters' flavor and their provenance, gentle Japanese touches accentuating rather than standing in the way of the salty little critters. Braised(?) boar bacon, accompanied by artichoke leaves and a lentil puree, was barely visible, peeking out from beneath a fried egg with a vibrant yellow and deliciously oozy egg yolk, but its shyness was a ruse. Big, porky flavor was its true character, the inherent saltiness of the bacon mitigated by that luscious egg yolk. A fusion of two food trends (bacon and fried eggs) that are getting a little ubiquitous? Ehhh, who cares. Great flavors, and the menu's better for it.

Pig Ear Ravioli with Morels	Dominic Armato

Late night at Posh wasn't exclusively comprised of hits. A play on stuffed shells with tomato sauce that substituted brandade for the ricotta was a lot nicer in theory than it was in practice. But even if the misses weren't relegated to the minority (they were), Posh could have earned my loyalty on the strength of two dishes alone, the first of which is the pig's ear ravioli. Conventional wisdom is that pig ears are all about texture, and doing something meaningful with them is a matter of harnessing that odd chewy/tough character and using it for good rather than evil. But Posh's owner/chef Joshua Hebert sidesteps the texture issue entirely, pulverizing the pig ears into a smooth and savory paste and using it to stuff some rather delicate ravioli with a not-so-delicate veal demi. The sauce is intense, just a tiny bit sweet, and further accented with sautéed morels. I really need to quit using the term umami bomb, but it applies in spades. The pasta is light and delicate, but the flavor is huge.

	Brûléed Foie Torchon with Spun Sugar	Dominic Armato

One of my new favorite dishes, however, is one that could just as easily lead off the dessert menu, despite its decidedly meaty nature. Foie gras takes sweet very well, but a lot of people overdo it. Hebert over-overdoes it and circles back around to awesome. A succulent little puck of foie is sugared and brûléed, paired with diced fruit, dressed with a very sweet orange sauce, and topped with a rather dramatic cloud of spun sugar. The foie's brûléed crust is wonderfully crisp, and the spun sugar is thicker than cotton candy and comes across as downright crystalline (probably because it is), making for a pair of delightful textural contrasts to the foie's natural squishiness. But even the foie itself has a lot going on in the texture department, having been assembled, it seems, from a rough and uneven dice that keeps it from being texturally uniform and makes it a real pleasure to eat. Most importantly, however, the foie somehow stands up, its rich flavor blasting right through all of that fructose and sucrose. I've had some pretty mean foie dishes over the years, but this one's going to stick in my head for a good long while, I think.

I should probably get around to eating a normal meal there at some point. And with a couple of big winners like those, the sensible thing would have been to go home happy. But why have one dinner when you can have two? When discussion turned to Petite Maison's role as local pioneer of the "staff meal" and it was pointed out that they were just down the street and still open, we decided that one late-night meal couldn't hope to contain us. That I'd kicked off the evening establishing myself as culinary enabler by handing the menu to my companions and saying, "The answer to all of your questions is yes," may have also played a significant role in this harebrained decision.

"BLT"	Dominic Armato

Thankfully, it paid off. Though Petite Maison's website features their staff meal quite prominently, in practice it was simply a matter of walking in, parking at the bar and asking what they had that night. On this particular night, it was but two dishes. A "BLT" and... chili cheese fries. At a French bistro? Huh. Ah, well. I lived two blocks from Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, California for five years. I'm no stranger to late-night grease bombs. Bring two of the former and one of the latter, we said, in perhaps not so eloquent a fashion. The "BLT" was a rather loose riff on convention, thin crispy bacon on a brioche bun with endive and sweet -- very sweet -- tomato confiture. My compatriots quickly identified the bacon as the work of The Meat Shop, and that fine product was well-accompanied. "BLT" might be stretching the limits of the term a little bit, but it was a tasty little sandwich.

	Chili Cheese Fries	Dominic Armato

While the BLT was a significant departure from the tried and true, the chili cheese fries were exactly the opposite. This wasn't an upscale reimagining of chili cheese fries. It was simply chili cheese fries, done very well. A huge pile of crisp, seasoned fries were buried under a mound of meaty, flavorful chili that was studded with chunks of a soft, tangy cheese that I couldn't identify (read: was too busy eating to bother trying). I don't want to oversell it. It's chili cheese fries. But it's made with an unusual amount of care. It was still a gutbuster, but rather than being a total grease bomb (not that there's anything wrong with that), it was actually a carefully executed dish with components that maintained their own character rather than devolving into a uniformly squishy mess.

I'm somebody who's only too happy to roll out the door at two in the morning, grab a newspaper, park at a linoleum countertop somewhere and tuck into a questionable tuna melt. But you know, it IS kind of nice that the amount of late-night fare that isn't of the greasy spoon or booze sponge variety appears to be on the rise. In chatting with Hebert, he mentioned -- and I'm paraphrasing -- that it'd be nice if a few more restaurants jumped in, everybody took a different night, and it became possible for folks to go out for more refined late night food on every night of the week. I say why stop there? I'd love to see everybody pick a night or two to offer extended hours. Not that there's anything wrong with that tuna melt, but it sure is nice to be able to sneak out at night for a little brûléed foie and an endive and tomato confiture BLT. As trends go, this is one I can get behind.

Posh www.poshscottsdale.com 7167 E. Rancho Vista Drive, Suite 111 Scottsdale, AZ 85251 480-663-7674 Tue - Thu 5:00 PM - 11:00 PM Fri - Sat 5:00 PM - 12:00 AM Thursday Late 10:00 PM - 12:00 AM

Petite Maison www.petitemaisonaz.com 7216 East Shoeman Lane Scottsdale, AZ 85251 480-991-6887 Mon - Fri 11:00 AM - 10:00 PM Sat - Sun 10:00 AM - 10:00 PM Thu - Sat Late 10:00 PM - 12:00 AM

The Quarterly Report - Q1 2010

Carne Asada Tacos @ Sonora Mesquite Grill	Dominic Armato

One of the things that always drives me nuts is the volume of places I never get around to posting about. Maybe I only tried one thing, maybe it wasn't particularly notable for good or bad reasons, maybe I wanted to go back before writing but never quite got around to it and probably never will, or maybe I just feel funny writing up a whole big thing about a place where I had a pretty decent lunch once. So less because I think this is all that useful and more because I'm obsessive about cataloguing this stuff, I figure I'll take inventory every few months of places that I don't think are going to find their way into a larger post at some point, and chunk them together into one frankenpost instead. So with that, in alphabetical order, the quarterly report for Q1 2010:

	BBQ Pork Soup	Dominic Armato

Best Hong Kong Dining
1116 South Dobson Road, Mesa AZ 85202
I was headed to Hodori for Korean, and kind of got sidetracked. For some reason BBQ pork soup just seemed suddenly compelling (why I went Chinese over Korean when craving soup, who knows), so I popped in here instead. It's a huge menu that's a mix of traditional and Americanized Cantonese, and may be worth a little exploration in the future. On this particular day, though, I just got a simple noodle soup with cabbage and sliced char siu. The soup and noodles weren't anything special, but they did kind of have that no frills hole-in-the-wall corner joint in Hong Kong vibe, and they hit the spot on an afternoon when I was really craving them. The char siu was really nice, though, which makes me wonder if anything else on the menu is worthwhile.

Italian Beef	Dominic Armato

Chicago Hamburger Co.
3749 East Indian School Road, Phoenix AZ 85018
Chicago-style hot dog stand within a mile of home? Day one stop. Though they serve all of the Chicago standards, the specialty of the house is the "Chicago Slider," which I mostly find puzzling. Do people associate sliders with Chicago? White Castle was founded in Wichita and has its corporate HQ in Ohio. Anyway, the sliders are, indeed, the best thing I've had there, a little larger than the WC and appropriately steamy. The Vienna Beef dogs (Vienna/Royko standard) are solid, if they don't quite have the steamy magic of the better places, and the fries are standard-issue frozen fare, if done as well as can be expected. Steer clear of the Italian Beef, though. It was really awful for a lot of reasons that aren't worth enumerating. Just don't bother.

	Tostada de Ceviche	Dominic Armato

Mariscos Acapulco
3226 East Thomas Road, Phoenix AZ 85018
I got here a few times, and actually rather enjoyed it. It's straight-up, no-frills Mexican mariscos and everything is solid, if unremarkable in its consistency. I had some pretty good crab enchiladas in potent tomatillo sauce, inexpensive whole fried fish in a tasty garlic sauce, clean and fresh ceviche tostadas, and a worthy version of one of my favorites. I have a weakness for a good coctel de camarones, and Acapulco's makes me happy, fresh shrimp, plenty of avocado and a very light sauce that would be problematic if the table weren't covered with all of the ketchup, hot sauces, saltines and limes you need to doctor it to your preference. As long as you aren't looking for anything too fancy, Acapulco should hit the spot.

Fish and Chips	Dominic Armato

Ricky's Big Philly
3538 East Indian School Road, Phoenix AZ 85018
Don't get too excited. They just closed down a couple of weeks ago after losing their lease. Which is too bad. Ricky's Big Philly was a burger and dog joint, and I don't want to oversell it, but what they did they did with an unusual amount of care. Good burgers, chicken sandwiches, and an especially good fish and chips special. Fresh cod, battered and fried to order with housemade slaw and good fries absolutely destroyed the better-known Pete's just a few blocks to the east. I'm not generally one for seasoned fries, but here they were lightly dusted with a house blend rather than being saturated with overspiced gunk. And their onion rings are absolutely killer, thick rings that are soaked overnight and freshly battered and fried. Ironically, the only thing that wasn't any good was the cheesesteak, dry and shredded into oblivion. But as long as you steer clear of the place's namesake, it's an unusually good burger joint. Hope they manage to reopen somewhere.

	Curry Chicken Salad Sandwich	Dominic Armato

Sacks Art of Sandwicherie
4730 East Indian School Road, Phoenix AZ 85018
Though I'm admittedly doing my best to set aside what may be the second-worst restaurant name I've ever seen (Winner: You-A-Carry-Out-A... no joke), Sacks is the kind of place I really want to like but just can't. A huge selection of creative sandwiches -- it's right up my alley. But everything I've had has ranged from okay to terrible. The curry chicken salad shown here is one of the better ones I tried, but it's muddy and poorly-balanced and plays more like a heavily curried chicken paste. I don't believe for a second that the "prime" beef sandwiches actually contain prime beef. It isn't a deli, so I blame myself for not liking the "Reuben," which had weak corned beef, cole slaw instead of sauerkraut and a sickly sweet Russian that tasted like it used Miracle Whip for a base. But the most telling item was a simple turkey sandwich, which featured typical cheap deli counter fused lunchmeat swimming in saline. When you're flogging your sandwich prowess, you really ought to be roasting your own turkey -- or at least sourcing something that doesn't look like whatever was on special at the Safeway next door. It's a $6 sandwich. Charge me two dollars more and make it good, please.

Matzo Ball Soup	Dominic Armato

Scott's Generations
5555 North 7th Street, Phoenix AZ 85014
A good Jewish deli is always on our short list of restaurants to locate when moving to a new town. Scott's Generations is scratching the itch for the moment, but the search goes on. Matzo ball soup was muddy and the matzo was leaden. Chilled beet borscht was passable, but the flavor was a little weak and in need of more sourness. Scott's will satisfy a Reuben craving, though. The corned beef is passable, and it's griddled up nice and crisp and plenty gooey on the inside. I've heard the pastrami is worthwhile, but I can't speak to for it personally. So, I guess the summation is that it's hit and miss so far and nothing's knocking me over. Anybody who's found a better deli, I'm all ears.

	Carne Asada Tacos	Dominic Armato

Sonora Mesquite Grill
4613 E Thomas Road, Phoenix AZ 85018
Tipped off by fellow foodnik Joel over at One For Dinner, I popped into Sonora Mesquite Grill for what he's billing as "the best carne asada tacos you've never heard of." And I have to say, they're very good for what they are. It's a tiny joint, they serve only carne asada, barbacoa and chicken, and everything is exceptionally fresh. Ordering a couple of carne asada tacos netted me the two beauties you see here, along with a selection of salsas. The meat's heavily marinated, with great flavor that includes the mesquite that it's picked up off the grill. Really, I think the only reason I'm not quite as enamored of the place as others is a matter of personal preference. Sonora Mesquite Grill's is very tender and moist, and I actually tend to dig slightly drier, more charred meat when I go looking for carne asada. But it's clear that a lot of care is going into the food, I suspect most will prefer this to what I typically seek, and the woman running the place is one of the sweetest you'll ever meet. They deserve to stick around and I hope they do.

Szechwan Palace

Water Boiled Fish Fillets	Dominic Armato

We've been moving around a lot lately (yes, this is an opening paragraph theme that needs to die), and I feel as though I'm starting to get into a new city routine. One of the first tasks is to try to locate decent spots for ethnic faves, and Chinese -- primarily Cantonese and Sichuan -- is always near the top of the list. So when you're making the short ten minute jaunt between home and the airport to drop off a visiting relative, and on the way you pass a massive Chinese-looking structure identified as COFCO, the Chinese Cultural Center, that houses a market and multiple restaurants representing various regions of China, you'd better believe that's looking like a good place to start.

	Flank, Tongue & Tripe	Dominic Armato

Cantonese is near and dear, given the amount of time I've spent in Hong Kong and Southern China, but the regional cuisine that really gets me excited these days is Sichuan. Erroneously known for simply being hot hot hot, it's a remarkably sophisticated cuisine. And though chiles are used in abundance, the idea that it's all spicy oil is a gross misperception based on lousy Sichuan food. One of the things about Sichuan that always amazes me is that when you're at a really good Sichuan restaurant, you could have five or six successive dishes where the sauce is essentially the same five or six ingredients with only very minor variations, and yet each one, through different preparations and careful balance, will have a completely unique character. The fancified homestyle of Da Ping Huo in Hong Kong is one example of this. Combined with the vibrant nature of the region's foods, this makes Sichuan especially craveable as ethnic cuisines go, and I need to have someplace I can get a fix. I had high hopes that Szechwan Palace would do the trick.

Dumplings in Spicy Oil	Dominic Armato

Szechwan Palace is pretty swanky as my regular Chinese stops go, which is to say that it isn't a hole in the wall, as most of my favorites seem to end up being when it comes to authentic Chinese. But authenticity isn't in question here... provided you either look the part or know how to ask, that is. Szechwan Palace, like many Chinese joints, is a two-menu establishment, but a nice bonus is that the Chinese menu is far more accessible here than in many places. If you're not Asian, you'll have to ask for the red leather-bound Chinese menu rather than the laminated menu featuring the Americanized fare. But even the Chinese menu features very good translations, so provided you know to ask for it, the full range of the kitchen's ability is at your disposal. Only the specials, written on a marker board at the entrance, will require some assistance if you don't read Chinese. But on the two occasions I visited, our server was more than happy to run down the day's offerings. So with a menu that appeared to be the real deal, how did the execution stack up? Well... depends on what you get, apparently.

	Crispy Shrimp	Dominic Armato

On my first visit, a couple readers and I (great to meet you, guys!) had a really nice meal. For cold starters, there are four or five different meats that are all tossed in the "Chef's Special Spicy Sauce." We opted for the combination of beef flank, tongue and tripe. This is always one of my favorite ways to start a Sichuan meal, chilled meat in an explosive oily ma la sauce, and Szechwan Palace's was a very nice version. I always love to see how this dish varies from chef to chef, subtle shifts in balance completely altering the character of the dish. Here it was especially heavy on the Sichuan pepper and, a little less common, very heavy on the salt, which I found that I liked quite a bit. The flavor popped, it was beautifully balanced, the meats were tender and flavorful... a great start.

Jalapeno Chicken	Dominic Armato

We followed that with one of the two dumplings offered on the menu. Sadly, I can't recall precisely what they were titled -- and the titles of the two were quite similar. The ubiquity of online menus has made me a little lazy when it comes to taking notes, but all Szechwan Palace shows online is a limited portion of the Americanized menu. So... you'll have to guess. The dumplings weren't remarkable, rather soft with a very simple pork filling, and the sauce was surprisingly mild... more of a light slick of fiery red oil atop a broth. Sichuan cuisine utilizes a number of different seasoned broths, and I'm not well-versed enough yet to be able to distinguish and identify them, but this one was very, very mellow, but nicely rounded -- a solid base, not an uninteresting one.

	Cumin Lamb	Dominic Armato

Crispy shrimp were solid, if unexceptional, and certainly not up to the level of the plate I recently had at Peach Farm (which I realize is completely not helpful for Phoenix folks). The flavor was very nice, with seasoning that went beyond simple salt and pepper, but with shrimp that were a little tough and shells that perhaps weren't fried as hot as they needed to be, they didn't quite nail that tender shrimp / crispy shell interplay that makes this dish great when it's on. Jalapeno chicken wasn't bad, but mostly a throwaway, chunks of thigh meat stir-fried in a mostly nondescript sauce that, to its credit, featured the jalapeno nicely, both in terms of heat and flavor. But I didn't find anything terribly compelling about it, plus with the substitution of breast meat for the thigh, it could've passed for an Americanized standard at any decent Americanized Chinese restaurant... not what I'm looking for, here.

Tendon in Chef's Spicy Sauce	Dominic Armato

Our first pass at Szechwan Palace was rounded up with two very nice dishes. The first was an old favorite that, much to my delight, they just happened to be serving that day. Cumin Beef is a menu standard, but when we inquired about the specials, we learned that they happened to be serving a cumin lamb that day, and it turned out to be a really lovely rendition thereof. I've had some versions of this dish that are positively abusive, where you can taste the cumin while the server is still 40 feet away. This one wasn't so potent, but it was very nicely balanced, the depth of the sauce providing a nice base for the still plenty strong cumin flavor. Most notably, the lamb was delicious, tender and moist and intensely flavored, not shying away from pure lamb flavor, but lacking the kind of unpleasant gaminess that can sometimes accompany lamb if it isn't handled well. A very nice dish.

	Garlic Pork Belly	Dominic Armato

The consensus winner, however, was the Water Boiled Fish Fillets. It's a very traditional Sichuan preparation, where meat or fish is dropped into a wok filled with a spicy, bubbling concoction, simmering in the broth for moments before being brought to the table scalding hot, both from a heat and spice perspective. Our first taste of this version was a bit of a letdown, but we became more and more enamored of the dish with subsequent helpings. For starters, I think we made the mistake of serving ourselves from the oily slick on the top, rather than dipping down for the complex and flavorful broth beneath. Lesson one, dig deep. Secondly, like many foods, I think scalding hot wasn't the ideal temperature. More of the flavors came out after it had cooled off quite a bit, so I think it was actually more tasty after sitting for 15-20 minutes than it was when it first hit the table. In any case, it was a great rendition, looking like it could take your eyebrows off but surprisingly restrained given its appearance. Like the dumplings, this was another broth-based sauce, but it was much deeper and richer and more complex -- I got chile oil and toasted chiles, I got citrusy Sichuan pepper, I got garlic, I got ginger, I got fermented beans, I got leeks -- there was a lot going on, and it was all wonderfully and subtly balanced. What's more, the texture of the fish fillets was wonderful, tender and silky but firm enough to have some body. The dish was just delightful, and it got a little better every time I went back for more.

Yu Xiang Chicken	Dominic Armato

It was a great visit. I've eaten some outstanding Sichuan, and this wasn't it, but it was real deal and most of it was very good. Close to home, authentic, very good... what's not to like? So I rallied the troops for a return visit, wanting to sample some more of the menu. And man, there's nothing more disappointing than when a place about which you've said good things falls on their face when you bring others back. For our second trip, I made the mistake of trying all new dishes. Usually, this is a good strategy. You've got a kitchen that's shown they can make some great food, let's see what else they can do. Sadly, on this occasion, the strategy largely backfired.

	Bacon and Leeks	Dominic Armato

We started with another of the cold appetizers in the chef's spicy sauce, this time opting for tendon rather than the mix of the previous trip. I love tendon, but this iteration wasn't doing it for me. It was very roughly sliced into thick, irregular discs, a great departure from the careful, thinly-sliced preparations I'm accustomed to. It didn't work as well for me, and the sauce didn't quite have the pop of our previous visit. Our other cold starter, the garlic pork belly, was one the lone highlight of my second trip. Another oily ma la preparation, this one was, as the name might suggest, especially heavy on the garlic. And the pork belly was delicious, tender and thinly sliced and perhaps not exactly cold -- more lukewarm -- but entirely delicious. I'd get this one again in a heartbeat, and not just because it's pork belly.

Fish Fillets in Vinegar Sauce	Dominic Armato

But from there, the meal was a string of disappointments, starting with the other dumpling (not pictured), which looked similar but was laced with vinegar this time around. The broth was a little underpowered, but the problem was really in the dumpling, which was gummy and falling apart, and possessed of a pork filling that was tough and largely tasteless. Yu Xiang Chicken, one of what seemed like a dozen Yu Xiang preparations on the menu, was a total throwaway. Bland, flavorless white meat in a nondescript brown, oily sauce with bamboo shoots and woodear mushrooms. Like every Americanized Chinese dish you've ever had. We ordered off the Chinese menus... had I made the mistake of not specifically requesting that everything be prepared Chinese-style the second time around? Were dishes being dumbed down for us?

	Water Boiled Beef	Dominic Armato

I underestimated the quality of the translation with our next dish. We figured a dish listed as "Bacon and Leeks" would be some sort of pork belly dish, perhaps braised, in a leek-based sauce. Not so. It was stir-fried bacon and leeks. As in, sliced, smoked bacon and sliced leeks. How was it? It was bacon and leeks. Can't really complain. But I also can't say I would have ordered it if I'd simply been wise enough to take them at their word. A near miss was the fish fillets in vinegar sauce, possessed of a lovely texture and a light sauce with a subtle vinegary tang. The problem was that it was too subtle. A little more volume on this one would've worked wonders. But it just came across as underpowered. A shame, really, because there was a good dish in there. The vinegar fish fillets paved the way for water boiled beef on the second trip. I figured we'd try another water boiled preparation, and avoid doubling up on fish fillets. It turned out to be a mistake. It was fine, but the beautiful depth and subtlety that was there on the previous trip was missing on this trip.

Ma Po Dofu	Dominic Armato

But the one that put me over the edge was the Ma Po Dofu. I love Ma Po Dofu, and at the risk of repeating myself, I feel like Ma Po Dofu is to a Sichuan chef as tomato sauce is to an Italian-American grandmother. Everybody's take is just a little different, and it's a homey, comforting dish that's a perfect window into the soul of the chef. Let's just say that this Ma Po Dofu did not speak well for the soul of whoever prepared it. It was really astonishingly bad. Almost insulting. It was the flattest, most flavorless Ma Po Dofu I've ever tasted anywhere, bar none. All of the pieces were there, as far as I could tell, but they'd somehow become a muddled, flavorless mess. Long after everybody else had abandoned the dish, I kept going back to try more. It was flat-out bad, but I wanted to know why. What made this dish so uniquely tasteless, and how did this come out of the same kitchen as some of the really nice dishes we'd had on the first trip? Another taste provided no further insight.

So I have no idea what to think. Over two visits, I've tasted dishes that ran the gamut from delightful to The Worst Of Its Kind I've Ever Tasted. Is it a matter of coming at the right time of day? Ordering the right dishes? Being sure to explicitly state that you want everything prepared Chinese-style, even when you're ordering off the Chinese menu? I don't know. And it's frustrating, because I can't completely write the place off. I've had enough delicious dishes there that I feel compelled to return, but I've had enough awful dishes there that I'm almost afraid to do so. Consistency -- both from dish to dish and visit to visit -- is one of the greatest challenges any kitchen faces. Here's a perfect example of why.

Szechwan Palace

www.phxchinatown.com/szechwan.html

668 N. 44th Street

Phoenix, AZ 85008

602-685-0888

Birria Blitz

Birrieria & Taqueria Del Yaqui	Dominic Armato

One of the things I've been told about the Mexican restaurant scene in Phoenix is that it's very homogenous. Though Baja and Chihuahua aren't far, Arizona's southern border is completely flanked by the Mexican state of Sonora, so it's no big surprise that the bulk of what you see driving around is Sonoran restaurants. That said, my hunch is that said homogeneity is overstated. I don't really have any reason to believe so. Call it a hunch. But it's a hunch that I'd like to put to the test, and what better way than taking a week to focus on one of the signature foods of Jalisco?

Going back a couple of weeks ago, a post popped up on the Phoenix Chowhound board... a fellow who was looking for birria. Tacos, specifically. Though most closely identified with Jalisco, birria is widespread enough that I was surprised only a couple of places were mentioned, neither of which were dedicated birrierias. Figuring there had to be more, I did the simplest thing I could think of to find some. I ran "birrieria" through a Google Maps search, and came up with four places that were named such. So I posted them, and was even more surprised that nobody, apparently, had tried them. Huh. Well, Yelp's not my style, but they're more widely used these days and the whole race to be first thing means their coverage is usually a little wider. Across all four spots, only one review. Clearly, I'd have to take matters into my own hands.

To quickly bring the uninitiated up to speed, birria is a dish most often made with goat, lamb or beef, where the meat is seasoned with a blend of roasted dried chiles and other spices, braised, steamed and/or sometimes roasted until fall-apart tender, and then served most typically in a bowl of the resultant broth, or dry in tacos. To be clear, I'm no birria expert. Not by a long shot. But I'm not unfamiliar with dish, and hey... the only way to learn is to get out there and eat as much of it as possible.

	La Barquita	Dominic Armato

First stop wasn't one of the mysterious four, but rather La Barquita, one of only a couple of places in Phoenix that turned up any birria buzz on the 'net. Though not a dedicated birrieria, the dish is sold as a house specialty and since it's gotten some press, I figured it'd be a good benchmark from which to start. Cute place. A little divey, but cozy, and the folks are friendly. There's a large menu to which I didn't really pay attention as I went straight for the main event. So as not to cover too broad a niche, I decided to stick to the goat at all five places, so that's what I ordered. La Barquita's birria is focused a little more heavily on the meat than the broth, arriving in a shallow dish rather than a soup bowl. I'm hot and cold on Barquita's birria. The meat I enjoyed an awful lot, with good flavor and a little body. No spent stew meat here. But the broth really threw me for a loop. It came across as too aggressively reduced and waaaay off-balance, with an unusually strong sour component that threw the entire dish out of whack. I didn't notice if they serve birria tacos, which I bet would be rather tasty. But this dish -- the $15 house special -- just wasn't enjoyable.

Birrieria & Taqueria Del Yaqui	Dominic Armato

Next up was Birrieria & Taqueria Del Yaqui, named after a local Native American tribe that will no doubt be familiar to residents of Phoenix. Whether this meant that the folks running Del Yaqui hailed from Sonora -- also home to the Yaqui -- or were simply honoring a local, ancient tribe, I don't know. But the birria was a drastic departure from La Barquita. The best way I can think to describe Del Yaqui's birria is no-frills. It gets the soupy treatment, chunks of meat swimming in a big bowl of soup with a plate of onion, cilantro, cabbage and lime to add as you see fit. The meat wasn't nearly up to La Barquita's standard. This was clearly the leftovers from making the broth, not without charm but kind of anemic, almost devoid of fat and mostly bled of its flavor. It was obvious where the flavor went, however. The broth was deep, clean and very comforting. Almost too comforting. Bordering on boring, really. It was served with two accompanying salsas, one tomatillo and one tomato-based, but I didn't find either of them particularly well-suited to the broth. But I appreciated that they'd achieved a nice, round if overly mellow flavor, and on that basis alone I found it considerably more enjoyable than La Barquita's, not even taking into account that it was half the price.

	Birrieria Obregón	Dominic Armato

The second mystery establishment was Birrieria Obregón, most likely run by Sonoran folks, since it's presumably named after the city in the south of the state. Obregón was a lively spot at lunchtime on a weekday, most of the tables filled in a semi-enclosed space that was delightfully airy on a warm-but-not-too-warm spring afternoon. I again went for the goat with soup, and got something wildly different than the previous two -- or any other birria I've had, for that matter. Birrieria Obregón is, apparently, all about the spicy. The meat's nondescript and lean like Del Yaqui, but completely shredded without the slightest hint of a chunk or fat or connective tissue or anything. The broth is rather oily, which I might ordinarily consider a downside, but here I think it works -- and may even be intentional -- as a means of carrying the heat from an enjoyable and potent blend of dried chiles. Sadly, it was the opposite of Del Yaqui's broth, all interest without a good, solid base. The folks at Obregón could take a lesson from Del Yaqui in developing some depth. But it was still a tasty bowl of soup despite its weaknesses, and it'll get you sweating after just a few spoonfuls. It could've been more, but I enjoyed it.

Birrieria El Gordo	Dominic Armato

Birrieria El Gordo, erroneously listed in a number of places as Birrieria El Gorvo, isn't the most pleasant of restaurants. It's cave-like and a little dingy, lit by exposed CFL bulbs of competing color temperature. So of course it ended up being one of my favorites. This was a really delicious, nicely-rounded broth with a great, full flavor, and the meat was a great improvement over Del Yaqui and Obregón. Rather than the stringy, lean meat of those two, these were moist and tender chunks of goat. And though many will not consider this a positive, the fact that there was a good deal of silky fat and connective tissue made it even better. The broth was easy on the chiles and, to my palate, in need of a little more heat, but the red salsa -- mostly pureed chiles with a little vinegar, I believe -- was a great complement to the broth, unlike the salsa served at Del Yaqui. The vegetables at El Gordo are served from a bar up front, and distinguish it slightly from the others. As well as offering chopped radishes and cucumbers, both the cabbage and the onion and cilantro mix are finely shredded, cearly with a food processor, rather than minced and sliced by hand. While I prefer the texture and body that the latter provides, El Gordo's approach wasn't entirely without merit. It had the effect of almost acting like a thickener, making the dish feel less like a soup and more like a stew. But again, not to my preference. Even considering, however, El Gordo ended up being my favorite of the five.

	Taqueria Y Birrieria Jalisco	Dominic Armato

Though not by a huge margin. My last stop on the Birria Blitz was Taqueria Y Birrieria Jalisco, named for the dish's home state. Jalisco is exclusively an open air establishment (though under roof or canopy), which made it breezy and comfortable, and the superfriendly staff only helped. Though I didn't feel Jalisco's birria was up to the level of El Gordo's, I suspect it has broader appeal. Their broth was also delicious, and felt like it had been rounded out with a little (or a little more) tomato, though I couldn't say for sure. It was undeniably a meat broth, but the vegetable flavor was a little more forward here. It needed a little more zip, but came with a fiery, pure chile puree that achieved that end quite nicely. The meat, to me, was the weakness. Definitely more enjoyable than Del Yaqui and Obregón, but without the life of La Barquita's or the succulence of El Gordo's. Even so, I found it very enjoyable. If I just couldn't handle lunch in a cave that day, I'd certainly be happy with a bowl of birria from Taqueria Y Birrieria Jalisco.

Chile Puree	Dominic Armato

So I guess the short answer is that there's a lot more birria out there than the widely-acknowledged La Barquita. And of course there's way, way more than this. These were just the most obvious and easy to find. Heck, while leaving Taqueria Y Birrieria Jalisco, I noticed another birrieria directly across the street, El Lorito, that was little more than a roach coach with a vinyl banner, canopy and a few folding tables. It was actually busier than Jalisco, which might be an indication that I should get back there sooner rather than later. But even barring future discoveries, I hit some places this week that I'll be all too happy to revisit. While I wasn't much enamored of either La Barquita or Del Yaqui, I can see myself returning to all of the others. El Gordo was definitely my favorite, but Jalisco wasn't far behind. And even though it had significant faults, the birria at Obregón was unique and interesting enough that I expect I'll be hitting it for a change of pace. Or maybe when I have a cold. It's got some fire, all right. Overall, an enjoyable and educational week, and here's hoping (and expecting) that more good birria spots will turn up.

La Barquita 2334 E. McDowell Road Phoenix, AZ 85006 602-275-5994	Birrieria & Taqueria Del Yaqui 2920 N. 43rd Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85031 602-269-0611

Birrieria Obregón 3146 W. Van Buren Street Phoenix, AZ 85009 602-442-5142

Birrieria El Gordo 2650 W. Glenrosa Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85017 602-995-1317

Taqueria Y Birrieria Jalisco 615 W. Broadway Road Phoenix, AZ 85041 602-268-1020