Archive for the 'Valleywide' Category
October 1st, 2009, 3:11 pm by Jess Harter
Queen Creek isn’t known as a dining destination, and this isn’t going to help its image: One of the town’s longtime institutions, the Queen Creek Café, is the Valley’s worst offender in the latest round of Maricopa County restaurant inspections.
A routine inspection of the café, 22002 S. Ellsworth, on Sept. 11 resulted in 11 major violations. The inspector noted:
• “Walls, floors, ceilings & shelving in the kitchen & walk-in units are heavily soiled with food debris, grease/oil buildup, etc.”
• “Various containers of gravy, cooked beef and chicken and prepared over 24 to 48 hours ago not date marked.”
• “Metal container of chicken salad in the wait station upright reach-in cooler found with a date mark of 9-1-09.”
• Only “15 out of 27 food service workers have obtained food handler cards.”
Other East Valley dishonors for the week go to Red Dragon in Chandler and Golden Egg Roll in Tempe (7 major violations apiece), La Parilla Suiza in Mesa (6), and Café Michelle in Mesa, Chompies Deli in Scottsdale and Dunkin Donuts in Ahwatukee (5 apiece).
For more info, go to restaurant ratings.
Posted in: Valleywide • Dirty Dining • Queen Creek Cafe | Post a Comment »
September 28th, 2009, 4:01 pm by Jess Harter
Congratulations to Higley High School grad Julie Fiedler (right) and her International Culinary School classmates at the Art Institute of Phoenix, Katelyn Remick and Tyler Burke.
The trio may have lost their culinary battle against Michael Symon on the Food Network’s popular “Iron Chef America” Sunday, but the magnanimous Iron Chef offered them a sweet consolation prize: internships at his prestigious Cleveland restaurant Lola.
Sunday’s battle marked the first time culinary students had competed against an Iron Chef on the TV show. The featured ingredient was balsamic vinegar.
You can catch repeats of the hour-long episode featuring Fiedler, who also attended the East Valley Institute of Technology, and her teammates at 8 p.m. Thursday, 3 a.m. Friday, 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday and 2 a.m. Sunday on the Food Network.
Posted in: Valleywide • International Culinary School | Post a Comment »
September 21st, 2009, 5:54 pm by Jess Harter
If the recession is hurting the Valley’s restaurant industry, it’s not readily apparent at Joe’s Farm Grill in Gilbert.
More than a dozen customers are standing in line to place their orders at the window of the retro-looking burger stand on Wednesday night.
Outside on the grassy grounds, picnic tables are filled with families devouring hamburgers, hot dogs and milkshakes.
“We’re sometimes surprised there’s a recession because we see so many people eating out at restaurants,” says Kristina, a 30-something mother of two who declined to give her last name.
Read the rest of this story on EastValleyTribune.com
Posted in: Valleywide • Cork • Joe's Farm Grill • Joe's Real BBQ • Liberty Market • The Deli | 1 Comment »
September 2nd, 2009, 11:16 am by Jess Harter
NYPD Pizza will celebrate National Cheese Pizza Day on Saturday by selling $1 slices of cheese pizza from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The offer is good for dine-in or takeout at all 10 Valley locations.
Posted in: Valleywide • NYPD Pizza | Post a Comment »
August 10th, 2009, 6:10 pm by Jess Harter
Bashas’ announced plans Monday to close another 14 grocery stores, including 10 in the Valley, following the closure of 10 such stores last month.
While the media have focused on the effect on grocery shoppers, this also is very bad news for some restaurants. In most cases, Bashas’ stores are the anchors of shopping centers that have eateries and other small businesses already battling the worst recession in the state’s history.
 For example, last month’s closing of the Bashas’ at Ray and Cooper roads in Chandler left a huge, empty parking lot in front of Taiko Japanese Restaurant. A couple miles away, the newly targeted Bashas’ at McQueen and Pecos roads is the main neighbor of Venezia’s New York Style Pizza.
Perhaps most discouraging is Bashas’ plan to close the AJ’s Fine Foods at Alma School and Chandler Heights roads in south Chandler, leaving the fledging Cork, the southeast Valley’s finest restaurant, in a mostly empty shopping center.
It’s time for Valley developers to reconsider the wisdom of putting shopping centers anchored by a big-box retailer, home-improvement center or grocery store on every corner. When these anchors go out of business, the over-sized spaces often sit empty for years.
In the meantime, if a Bashas’ (or any other anchor store) goes out of business in your neighborhood, please don’t forget to support the worthwhile restaurants that are left in its wake.
Posted in: Valleywide • Bashas' | 1 Comment »
August 7th, 2009, 6:50 am by Jess Harter
“Julie & Julia” is actually two movies in one. The first is the story of famed chef Julia Child. The other is the story of blogger Julie Powell.
Much like a parent who makes a child eat his or her vegetables before getting dessert, writer-director Nora Ephron makes moviegoers sit through the Powell portions in order to savor the Child portions.
Not that it’s altogether unpleasant trade-off. Powell’s story isn’t exactly liver and onions. It’s more like, say, meatloaf — OK, but nothing to get too excited about.
The allure of the film, though, unquestionably resides with Child, brilliantly portrayed in all her teetering, warble-voiced splendor by Meryl Streep.
“Julie & Julia” begins with Child and her diplomat-husband Paul (the ever-solid Stanley Tucci) moving to Paris in 1949. It’s in the City of Light that Child experiences a culinary revelation, prompting her to enroll in the city’s famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.
 Powell’s story, which takes place a half-century later, is full of parallels. Both Child and Powell had government jobs. Both were searching for something meaningful to do with their lives. Both found salvation in cooking.
For Powell (Amy Adams, pictured at right), the result was a popular blog, “The Julie/Julia Project,” in which the Queens, N.Y., resident attempted to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s landmark “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year.
(The two women’s lives never intersect. Powell, who began her blog in 2002, never met Child, who died in 2004.)
Ephron, whose chick-flick pedigree includes “When Harry Met Sally …” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” deftly interweaves the two women’s stories into 123 minutes, but fails to capture the humor and soul of Powell’s writing, leaving a depressing after-taste with her half of the tale.
Streep, on the other hand, channels all the vivaciousness and swagger of the 6-foot-2 Child, even displaying a bawdiness that occasionally stretches the film’s PG-13 rating.
And to her credit, Ephron does a masterful job of portraying the passionate relationship between Child and her husband, as well as the frustration of the chef’s decade-long struggle to publish her groundbreaking cookbook.
By the time “Julie & Julia” ends — with the publication of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 1961 — you’ve pretty much had your fill of Powell’s story.
But you sure wish you could have another helping of dessert.
Posted in: Valleywide • Movie reviews | 1 Comment »
July 30th, 2009, 11:58 am by Jess Harter
Native New Yorker is celebrating its 30th anniversary today by giving away free chicken wings: Stop in any of its 24 Valley locations to get six free wings with the purchase of any beverage.
The offer is dine-in only — no to-go orders.
Posted in: Paradise Valley • Valleywide • Native New Yorker | 1 Comment »
July 29th, 2009, 9:06 am by Jess Harter
It’s been a tough year for restaurants. Now we know how tough.
According to a report from the NPD Group, a leading market research company, there are 4,000 fewer restaurants in the United States than a year ago.
Fine dining was the segment hit hardest, and almost all the category’s losses were among independent fine-dining restaurants.You could see it play out locally with the closings of such indies as Tapino, Sea Saw, Fine’s Cellar and, most recently, Canal.
Fine-dining chains, on the other hand, actually saw fairly nice increases.
The other big category loser over the past year was family restaurants, especially small (50-99 restaurants) and mid-size (100-499 restaurants) chains.
The number of diners with children, a demo that makes up a third of the restaurant industry’s traffic, has dropped for three consecutive quarters.
Posted in: Valleywide | Post a Comment »
July 20th, 2009, 7:20 pm by Jess Harter
Starbucks is promoting its new line of pastries by giving customers a free pastry Tuesday. All you have to do is buy any beverage and download this coupon. (You don’t even need to print it out; just show it to the barista on your PDA or smartphone.) The offer is good until 10:30 a.m.
Posted in: Valleywide • Starbucks | Post a Comment »
July 17th, 2009, 11:24 am by Jess Harter
For years, Valley diners wondered why Arizona didn’t have a restaurant week promotion like those popular in dozens of large cities across the country.
Suddenly, we have two.
Fifteen Valley restaurants are participating in Yelp Eats!, which starts Monday. For seven days, the restaurants will offer special three-course menus — most typically a choice of an appetizer, entrée and dessert — for a set price of $25.
It’s similar in concept to Arizona Restaurant Week, which debuted last fall and returns Sept. 19-26.
This month’s promotion is sponsored by Yelp, a user review Web site of local businesses. The San Francisco-based site features nearly seven million reviews, about a third of them restaurants.
Yelp employs “community managers” in approximately 25 cities who are tasked with coming up with promotions tailored to their respective markets. Last year, Yelp Eats! was introduced in Chicago.
 “Hearing about Chicago’s success with its restaurant week, it seemed like a good fit for the Valley,” says Gabi Kepes, who’s been Yelp’s community manager in Phoenix since November 2007.
Kepes contacted a number of Valley restaurants, and the event was limited to the first 15 to sign up.
“We wanted to keep it small since it was the first time,” Kepes says, adding the week, if successful, may be expanded next year.
The initial participants include some of the Valley’s most highly regarded restaurants, such as The Mission, Roaring Fork, Roka Akor and Digestif.
Digestif, which recently closed to move into a new location, will re-open Wednesday to take part.
Kepes says Yelp’s promotion isn’t meant to compete with the much larger Arizona Restaurant Week, which will feature more than 150 restaurants offering three-course menus for $29.
“We actually tried to work to work with them last year, but it didn’t come to fruition,” she says.
 The Yelp Eats! deals will be available to anyone, not just those people (known as “Yelpers”) who post reviews on the Web site. The $25 price does not include tax or tip. Reservations are recommended but not required.
For Yelp, which had 22 million unique users in June, such events are a way of building its brand and increasing its user audience.
“The Phoenix community has grown nine-fold since Gabi was hired,” says Stephanie Ichinose, Yelp’s director of communications. “More than 13,000 reviews of Valley businesses have been posted so far.”
Yelp Eats! participating restaurants
Atlas Bistro, 2515 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, (480) 990-2433
Cheuvront Restaurant & Wine Bar, 1326 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, (602) 307-0022
Coup des Tartes, 4626 N. 16th St., Phoenix, (602) 212-1082
Digestif, 7133 E. Stetson Drive, Scottsdale, (480) 425-9463
Eddie’s House, 7042 E. Indian School Road, Scottsdale, (480) 946-1622
Metro Brasserie, 7114 E. Stetson Drive, Scottsdale, (480) 994-3663
Pasta Brioni, 4416 N. Miller Road, Scottsdale, (480) 994-0028
Roaring Fork, 4800 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, (480) 947-0795
Roka Akor, 7299 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, (480) 306-8800
San Gabriel Mexican Café, 7000 N. 16th St., Phoenix, (602) 371-0111
Sol y Sombra, 20707 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale, (480) 443-5399
The Mission, 3815 N. Brown Ave., Scottsdale, (480) 636-5005
The Vig, 4041 N. 40th St., Phoenix, (602) 553-7227
Un Bacio, 7704 E. Doubletree Ranch, Scottsdale, (480) 609-6969
Z’Tejas, Valley locations in Chandler, Tempe, Scottdale and Phoenix
See all the $25 Yelp Eats! menus here.
Posted in: Valleywide | 5 Comments »
July 14th, 2009, 3:59 pm by Jess Harter
Jack in the Box has introduced a new combo meal: A cheeseburger, a taco, small fries and a small drink for just $2.99.
If memory serves, this resurrects a deal Jack in the Box offered several years ago, although back then I think it was $1.99.
Still, the $2.99 price undoubtedly will appeal to the same diners who’ve made McDonald’s $1 Menu such a huge success in recent years.
Posted in: Valleywide • Jack in the Box | 1 Comment »
July 14th, 2009, 8:32 am by Jess Harter
Short on cash today? That’s no impediment to getting something to eat:
• Famous Dave’s Legendary Pit Bar-B-Que’s Mesa Riverview location continues its summer promotion sending its four catering trucks out to the streets of south Scottsdale to hand out free BBQ sandwiches between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. today.
• Wienerschnitzel is celebrating National Hot Dog Month and National Ice Cream Month by giving away a free chili dog or a free Tastee Freez cone from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at its restaurants in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa.
• Long John Silver’s, which introduced a 99-cent Baja Fish Taco three weeks ago, promotes its new menu item by giving away the tacos (one per person) after 2:30 p.m. today.
Posted in: Valleywide | 2 Comments »
June 29th, 2009, 5:58 pm by Jess Harter
If you’re a member of Fox Restaurant Concepts‘ VIP club, you can get 25 percent off your bill (including alcohol) at most Fox restaurants Saturday.
Participating eateries are Blanco, Bloom, The Greene House, North in Scottsdale, Olive & Ivy, True Food Kitchen and all Sauce locations except Chandler.
To join the VIP club, which is free, go to foxrc.com and click on “ENews.” An e-mail will be sent out Thursday to registered users explaining how to get your discount.
Posted in: Valleywide | Post a Comment »
June 29th, 2009, 8:52 am by Jess Harter
Chick-fil-A restaurants across the Valley are celebrating breakfast this week by giving away a free menu item each morning until 10:30. Today, you can get a free order of three Chick-n-Minis.
The rest of the week’s giveaways: sausage biscuits on Tuesday, chicken breakfast burritos on Wednesday, chicken biscuits on Thursday and Chick-n-Minis again on Friday.
No other purchase is necessary, but there’s a limit of one item per person per day.
Posted in: Valleywide • Chick-fil-A | Post a Comment »
June 29th, 2009, 8:00 am by Jess Harter
Americans celebrate Independence Day on July 4, but the lesser-known Independents Week — a Valley shopping holiday of sorts — starts today.
 The latter is an annual event, now in its seventh year, from Local First Arizona, a non-profit organization that promotes locally owned businesses. It runs through July 5.
By printing a “Golden Coupon” available on the group’s Web site, shoppers receive 20 percent off almost any purchase at more than 80 participating businesses. The coupon can be printed multiple times for purchases at multiple businesses.
Many of the participants are restaurants and food-related stores, ranging from eateries (such as Cowboy Ciao) to ice cream shops (such as Udder Delights) to retailers (such as Pop the Soda Shop).
The wide variety of non-restaurant businesses includes Changing Hands Bookstore, Phoenix Rock Gym, the Hotel Valley Ho, Hoodlum’s music store, the Heard Museum and Mood Swings Salon.
You can find the complete list of participating business and print coupons here.
Posted in: Valleywide | Post a Comment »
June 23rd, 2009, 12:26 pm by Jess Harter
If you’re into cooking, there’s a cool new website that just launched today. One of those “aggregators” that brings together related content in one place, Good Bite rounds up posts from some of the country’s most popular food bloggers.
The 10 spotlighted blogs include such sites as Simply Recipes, David Lebovitz and Smitten Kitchen.
Good Bite also has other features, such as a weekly panel discussion on a cooking topic. Recipes are accompanied by how-to videos for those whose kitchen skills are less than impressive (cough, cough).
Good Bite is already in my browser’s bookmarks. You also can follow it on Twitter at @goodbite.
Posted in: Valleywide • Web | 1 Comment »
June 9th, 2009, 12:12 pm by Jess Harter
Taking a cue from other fast-food chains, Dunkin’ Donuts is experimenting with a 99-cent breakfast item called a Wake-up Wrap.
The wrap, which has fewer than 200 calories, is made with a 5-inch tortilla, one-half of a scrambled egg and a slice of cheese. You can add bacon for an extra 30 cents.
It’ll be available for about a month at participating Dunkin’ Donuts.
Posted in: Valleywide • Dunkin' Donuts | Post a Comment »
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