If you want a taste of cocktail culture’s cutting edge, head to the farm.I’m being literal: Make your way to the Farm at South Mountain this evening, and try Quiessence’s new Farmhouse Cocktails at a discount.From 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. every last Thursday of the month, chef Greg LaPrad’s award-winning restaurant…

It’s gonna be a blissful weekend downtown, if a new restaurant and next-door watering hole have anything to do with it. Hey, it’s another option for lunch, dinner, and brunch, so things are looking up. Bliss, a New American restaurant, takes over the 4th Street house-turned-eatery that was previously Nine 05…

My good friend and colleague Steve Jansen tipped me off to a call for entries in an upcoming Ouija Board-themed art exhibit at Green New American Vegetarian Restaurant. The public will be invited to pick favorites in the exhibition, and the winner will get two free meals per week for a whole…

Want to open a restaurant but can’t handle the overhead? Cook in the moment with a temporary eatery. Consider what L.A. chef Ludo Lefebvre is doing with his insanely popular “pop-up restaurant” LudoBites, featured on NPR’s Morning Edition today. Every couple months, he temporarily takes over an existing restaurant and…

Although change is coming to a North Scottsdale restaurant, the good news is that locals won’t be deprived of Italian food. The owners of Tutti Santi are taking over the space that has been home to Amarone Ristorante Italiano since late 2008. After renovations, the restaurant will open in September…

Zen 32, restaurateur Lenny Rosenberg’s Japanese-themed eatery and bar at 32nd Street and Camelback, will close August 31, when the current lease expires.Rosenberg planned to renovate the space and change the concept, but says, “we found out at the last minute that the costs came in exorbitantly high.” Rather than continue,…

In researching boba drinks for a blog post awhile back, a reader helpfully informed me that new Boba Juice on 19th Avenue (in the same strip as Da Vang, 4550 N. 19th Ave., north of Campbell), serves vegetarian Vietnamese food.Thanks, whomever-you-are!  I stopped by for a super-cheap, super-tasty lunch that…

I’ve been a fan of SunUp Brewhouse since back in the days when it was still called Sonoran. The name change, a legal result of SunUp’s burgeoning distribution, took place a year ago (wow — time flies!), but the place is just as good of a hangout, with the same…

​It sounds tiny — and alas, there is only one farmer confirmed so far — but there’s a new weekly farmers market launching tomorrow at POOL, the collaborative marketplace located in a former Mervyn’s in Mesa, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Perhaps they should just call it a gourmet market…

The September issue of Bon Appetit hasn’t hit the streets yet, but the word straight from publisher Conde Nast is that local restaurant Noca gets a mention in Nina Elder and Andrew Knowlton’s roundup of “The Country’s Best Daily Specials.”About one recent Sunday special, the grilled heirloom tomato and mozzarella…

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​Turns out it was limited after all: popular North Phoenix hangout Unlimited Coffee, at 7th Street and Glendale, closed last week, much to the dismay of java lovers and folks who frequented the spot as a sort of office-away-from-home.Owner Hans Mathiesen confirms, “Yes, I’m very sorry we have permanently closed our…

This Saturday will be the last chance you can swing by cheese goddess Lara Mulchay’s artisanal cheese and charcuterie spot, Petit Fromage — for the time being, anyway. The year-old business, located inside of D’licious Dishes at 7th Avenue and Missouri, will be “on hiatus,” Mulchay says, as she takes…

So there’s a stylin’ new bowling alley opening next Friday at downtown’s long-awaited CityScape complex — what’s that got to do with you, hungry reader? Turns out, Lucky Strike Lanes isn’t just a place to knock down a mess of pins. The 18,000-square-foot, 12-lane bowling facility also has its own full-service…