The note tacked on the wall at the Peppersauce Cafe offers it up in a friendly drawl. “If you’re a handyman who will work for food . . . and don’t have a sign . . . we have work, and we have food.” The sign’s something straight out of…
My good friend Roy had made it his personal mission to teach me about wine. I’d met him, appropriately enough, at a wine tasting. But at a careless 24, I was less interested in frou-frou terminology and varietal descriptions than I was in following culinary author M.F.K. Fisher’s adage: “It…
Someone stop me before I have a cow. I don’t want to churn out my own milk. I’m certainly not in it for the slaughter. I’ve just decided I want a pet cow: all deep, velvet brown eyes framed with thick ebony lashes, gentle rubbery lips that feather against my…
Rawsome! is open for dinner just three days a week, and then for only four hours at a time. And for that, I say, thank goodness. It’s not just that I don’t care for the food (okay, I hate it). It’s not only that I have trouble getting into the…
The craving for tacos was all-consuming. It was an unpleasant lust. No ordinary taco would suffice — no abomination of greasy ground beef and plastic cheese from Taco Bell, no deep-fried corn tortilla coffin serving as the final resting place of long-past parched steak from Macayo’s. These tacos had to…
Wherever we were, it seemed sure we weren’t where we wanted to be. The taxi driver had grinned and waved as he sped off, leaving us alone on an empty, pitch-black street somewhere in the middle of Havana. Si, this was where we would eat dinner, he had said, or…
I’m hoping that they’ve got my all-time favorite: garlic octopus. I can only pray they serve that other mouthwatering meal, whole fried snapper tumbled over rice, beans and French fries. Surely, shrimp endiablados will be on the menu — no self-respecting restaurant specializing in, and I quote, “seafood selections found…
I’m so full of Rosie McCaffrey’s beef stew, dunked in great quantities with thick, soft biscotti-like soda bread, that I’m suddenly having a hard time seeing straight. But the waitress assures me that I’m okay; it’s just the local phantom playing tricks again. It happened after that last bite of…
I’m thinking about homemade prime rib. Which I do surprisingly often. But I’m now thinking specifically about the prime rib that a friend of mine prepared for me not long ago. It’s a strange affinity we have — an almost unnatural passion for that particular cut of beef. I don’t…
Now this is a bummer: I’ve just spent $1.25 for a squat plastic bottle of Glaceau Smart Water, and nothing is happening. My 500 milliliters of snazzy-sounding liquid are almost gone, and I still can’t understand a thing my friend is saying. We’re sitting at a cute little table at…
Maybe I should just recruit the guys at Pita Bistro to help me out. The cafe has a very lovely ladies’ room, but more important, the fellows working here are a whole lot nicer than my renovating rogue. At one point, after I place a large order, a guy I…
“You make tuna casserole? Someone with your job actually eats tuna casserole?” My friend is incredulous. If I’d told her I whip up a mean Crescenza-cheese-filled pasta pillow with rosemary, white asparagus, garlic and Parmigiano-truffle butter, she’d be nodding knowingly. Yet I’m sitting in front of her at the lunch…
Food decorates my refrigerator like international artwork. Tucked on the top shelf is the crock of Maui strawberry jam I discovered at a roadside stand in Hawaii. Next to it sits the hermetically sealed cup of Meiji yogurt that wandered from the breakfast buffet at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel into my…
I’d have to be a moron not to go for the deal the Blockbuster guy is offering. I came in for one DVD, but the store is running this special, and the salesman’s got me doing the math. One movie for $4. Two movies for $8. For a limited time…
There’s no language barrier at Yasha From Russia. Despite the deli owner’s heavy Russian accent, I understand quite clearly what he means when he orders me to “get out.” There’s been a spate of Eastern European restaurants cropping up in the West Valley lately, and in most places, I’ve found…
The waitress is trying to explain blinchik. “Have you ever been to IHOP?” she asks. “They’ve got something like it on their menu. Except ours isn’t sweet.” Could she be right? Am I to believe that, alongside pigs in a blanket, omelets and French toast, the fabled pancake chain has…
There’s another migration occurring Valleywide: commuters suddenly crisscrossing the city as never before, savoring our newly (finally) completed freeways. The convenience is great, but I wonder what folks will be missing if they abandon our surface streets for speed. It’d be easy to take I-17 to Thunderbird, and head east…
Sprghzz. That’s an actual quote. It’s all I can muster after filling my mouth with phik khing, a dish that looks like timid vegetables in a friendly brown sauce. But this sauce is sneaky, so thick with infernal Thai pepper that my eyes are watering. Yeah, the menu warns that…
The burning question of the evening involves cocktails. One pal in my group of revelers has decided that the best drink is the Italian ice-lemon, a liquid candy concoction of lemon gelato, Ketel One Citroen, Triple Sec, sweet and sour, and lemon juice in a sugared-rim martini glass. The other…
It’s finally happened. After almost 15 years of living in Scottsdale, I’ve become one of them. Not a yuppie, not yet, though I’ve decided that conspicuous consumption isn’t necessarily a filthy term, but a pretty cool way of life. Here I sit in a fabulous bistro at north Scottsdale yuppie-haven…
I’ve heard of a disturbing movement toward making soul food healthful. There are recipes circulating from a group of Phoenix cooks who are adapting traditional recipes to make them lower in fat and less sweet. These people are crafting mustard greens and black-eyed peas with smoked turkey instead of salt…
