This time of the year, few East Valley restaurant patios are big enough to handle the hordes of diners hungry for an alfresco meal in our beautiful spring weather.

I get deluged with calls from readers wondering where to find the best restaurant patios: the biggest, the quietest, the liveliest, the most picturesque … and so on.

One type of patio I hadn’t found — until now, that is — is an all-patio restaurant. That changed a couple weeks ago when I discovered Pier 54 in Tempe.

Situated on the edge of a manmade lake between Rural and McClintock roads just south of Baseline Road, Pier 54 was opened in 2006 by Al and Michelle Taylor, owners of Special Moments Catering.

Longtime E.V. residents may remember the former Charley Brown’s restaurant (or one of its subsequent incarnations) next door. Pier 54 is just south of the building, now a private rental facility called The Waterfront, and uses the same parking lot.

The Taylor’s waterfront restaurant consists of a round concrete bar and 21 blue-painted tables spread over three levels of open-air deck. About half the tables and the bar, which has two TVs, are somewhat protected by blue fabric stretched over a metal framework overhead.

Cooking is done in what looks like a small boathouse (pictured above), but there’s no seating inside. A surfboard out front lists daily specials, and a seashell collection adds to the lake motif.

It’s a pleasant, quiet environment, far from any busy streets or crowds. About the only distraction are the resident birds, eager to pick at any leftovers the moment you leave the table.

The bar offers four beers on tap, including Kronenbourg, Four Peaks Hefeweizen and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, as well as domestic and imported bottles. A half-dozen wines also are available.

And the food, which at first glance might look like basic snack bar-type fare, is surprisingly good.

Appetizers — buffalo wings, onion rings, queso dip, etc. — are mostly sports-bar quality and nothing fancy. I was impressed, however, by a strawberry-kiwi salad with dried cranberries, big candied walnuts and a tangy raspberry vinaigrette ($5.95, pictured at left).

All five salads come in two sizes, petite and full, and include a dinner roll. Unless you’re really hungry, the smaller size will be plenty.

A soup-and-half-sandwich combo ($7.95) is an everyday deal. On one of my visits, the soup of the day is tortilla, which pairs nicely with a chicken panini that includes roasted bell peppers and basil aoili on grilled marbled rye.

The Southwest burger ($8.50, pictured at right) and Southwest chicken sandwich ($8.75) — both of which come with Anaheim chilis, chipotle mayo and pepperjack cheese on a ciabatta roll — also are winners. Both include steak fries.

The lunch menu — served until daytime temperatures get too hot this summer — focuses on salads, sandwiches and burgers, but the dinner menu offers a few more options, including three pasta dishes (each $10.95), fish tacos ($10.95) and a lemon-dill chicken over rice pilaf ($12.95).

I look forward to trying more of them, as I plan to return to Pier 54 as long as spring-like weather continues.

>> Pier 54, 5394 S. Lakeshore Drive, Tempe (halfway between McClintock and Rural roads, a quarter-mile south of Baseline Road), is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily (evenings only in summer). (480) 820-0660.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Restaurants - Tempe, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.