When you haven’t been to a place in more than three decades, you can expect a fair amount of evolution and even revolution in its dining scene. After all, just think of all that’s happened in Texas over the past 30-plus years, especially in the larger cities. So when the invite came through to eat my way around Phoenix, I was not in any mood to resist. I remember the food being good but simple my only other time there - meat and potatoes, mostly consumed at entities that resembled country clubs more than restaurants. Last week, moving through a series of Phoenix resorts and spas (all celebrating their ten-year anniversary, which was pretty weird), I realized just how far we’ve traveled from all those country clubs.
Clearly, one of my favorite experiences of the trip was at a place called deseo, a hiply Nuevo Latino joint originally created by my old chef-friend Douglas Rodriguez. Doug has moved on to other restaurant projects around the country and probably world, but deseo at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa is in the very capable hands of the chef de cuisine he installed, Roberto Madrid. Ceviches like the one in the bowl above are a big deal at deseo, as are the Millionaire Tacos built around lobster. At the other end of your meal, there are several incredible desserts. My personal fave (pictured at the top) is the trompe l’oil spectacular mimicking a Cuban cigar complete with book of matches. And it tastes really good too!
Though the bulk of my meals in Phoenix were in fine dining restaurants at the three resorts and spas - the Westin, plus the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass and the JW Marriott Desert Ridge - there was one welcome departure from the straight and narrow. And that was a comfortable, also-hip food and drink hangout called St. Francis. As in other cosmopolitan cities, some chefs are exploring what can be done within the intriguing framework of a “neighborhood restaurant.”
Chef-owner Aaron Chamberlin has come up with a host of fascinating dishes, including the two pictured above. The first is an unforgettably bubbly and comforting pork stew in the Mexican-Southwestern style, and the second is a dish of meatballs tasting more like North Africa and Greece than Italy - which would, by definition, make them a bit Sicilian.
Like most restaurants serving up any variation on comfort food, two of the greatest hits at St. Francis (named after the Phoenix neighborhood but also winking at the chef-owner’s culinary background in San Francisco) are the desserts and the bread. Whether it’s cake or pudding or anything else, the desserts show up in jars and other interesting containers that blend country with city. And the breads - well, Chamberlin is a baker by training, so he hits that balance of chewy to crispy just right. It’s this wooden crate of fresh baked, in fact, that says hello the moment you walk in the front door.
Up till just a couple years ago, Tuscany at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge was another of those “hotel restaurants” - and you know the kind I mean, more formal and, yes, more expensive than anyplace serving Italian food has any right to be. The recession took care of that, ushering in a new era of house-made pastas and hand-crafted pizzas that just about anybody would and can afford to love. We had a dinner tasting outside in the dark, which was terrific and delicious fun for me but not so much for my camera. So I sneaked back inside the next day (actually I was taping radio with the resort’s executive chef about their weekly Chocolate Affair, but “sneaking in” sounds way better) to give you a sense of just how attractive and comfortable Tuscany has become.
Intellectually (and yes, we do eat with our minds as well as our mouths), an eye-opening meal awaits at the fine-dining, dinner-only Kai at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass. The Pima Indian word for “seed,” Kai is quite unusual - being the only Five-Diamond, Five-Star restaurant owned by an Indian tribe. As such, there’s considerable effort made to reflect the foods and culture of what’s now called the Gila River Indian Community, combining the Pima and Maricopa tribes. Yes, there is a tribe-owned casino nearby, but it has nothing to do with the Sheraton resort and spa, and perhaps even less to do with this uber-sophisticated restaurant.
Chef Josh Johnson rolled out an amazing multi-course spread using tons of local ingredients: from the “Salad Inspired by the Local Farmers & Children of the Gila Crossing School” to the Grilled Tenderloin of Tribal Buffalo with smoked corn puree, cholla buds, merguez sausage and scarlet runner bean chili with saguaro blossom syrup. Until you get to this part of Arizona, turns out, the only saguaro cactus you’ll ever see are in Warner Bros. cartoons. After an upscaled version of “native” fare like this, what could dessert be if not Black Forest cheesecake with cherry chutney, Minus 8 gastrique and puffed amaranth crunch. From posh resort to welcoming neighborhood, Phoenix can be proud of the eateries it produces these days, especially considering how few of them existed when I visited 30-plus years ago.
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