There are few things in this world that go better together than football and wings. So when I was taken to Zipps Sports Grill in Scottsdale to watch Michigan play some football, I decided that wings were the only things fit to go in my mouth. Well, wings and fries. Zipps offered a few different wing flavors, and I ended up going with one that looked pretty interesting – Golden Spicy.
Finally, the inevitable has happened. You’ve probably been wondering how many trips to Phoenix it has to take for a food blogger to tackle Pizzeria Bianco and the answer is far too many. Pizzeria Bianco, for those who are not in the know, has regularly been recognized as the greatest pizza in the country and that is no small claim, especially considering we are talking Phoenix here and not New York or Chicago. With that title, as expected, the place is nearly impossible to get a seat at, at least during normal eating hours. During abnormal hours, like 4:45 on a Thursday afternoon, things are a little different and we found multiple open tables and took one for ourselves.
Pretty much since I first started visiting my fiancee’s parents in Carefree, I’ve had Brisam’s and their supposedly amazing burger pointed out to me on nearly every trip through Cave Creek. Finally, I had enough and demanded we go so I could check out the burger for myself.
Brisam’s is essentially a sports bar and things probably get pretty crowded at night, but we ended up going for lunch and got a quick seat and a quick look at the menu. While their signature Brisam’s Burger probably attracts the most eaters, I couldn’t get into it due to the pile of mushrooms it claimed to have. Instead, I opted for the Blackened Burger, which had some Cajun-style spices and was topped with blue cheese. It came with lettuce, tomato and onion on the side to add to the burger, but I told the waitress that they didn’t need to waste those veggies on me. On the side I had a choice of a couple salads, cole slaw and fries and went with the obvious choice of salad. Err…I mean fries.
Passing through Palm Desert on the way to Phoenix, I opted to stop at a real restaurant rather than any of the fast food chains that are sprinkled along Interstate 10. The real restaurant of choice ended up being Mario’s Italian Kitchen, a neighborhoody place with an extensive menu and load of different specials for just about every day of the week.
As a man who loves to take down burgers, I was a pretty excited man when Short Order rolled into town at The Farmers Market next to The Grove. But then the mixed reviews came in and I pushed Short Order down in my burger eating priority list. It didn’t help that it wasn’t exactly in a part of town that I find myself in too often. My chance came when meeting some friends from the East Side and I was ready to see how it would stack up to those mixed reviews.
The Miracle Mile is often considered to be a culinary dead zone. In the beginning of the food truck explosion, the trucks took full advantage of the lack of good food to dish out grub to those hungry workers. So when I was meeting someone for dinner and they suggested Yuko Kitchen in the Miracle Mile, I was a little bit surprised. They knew I had a food blog, right? It turns out that yes, they did and they were more than a little concerned about what might happen after I got my hands…errr…chopsticks…on Yuko Kitchen’s food.
Originally situated near USC, Mo-Chica was a place I’d been wanting to get to for a while. The only trouble was that…well…why would I ever hang out around USC? Fortunately, earlier this year they moved to central Downtown LA to bring their Peruvian delights to a more cultured audience. I found my way to Mo-Chica for lunch and quickly found out they had themselves an interesting lunch special. And by interesting I mean that you couldn’t order any entrees without getting the lunch special. The lunch special included two sides and a dessert, which were different every day. In truth, they could have said all entrees come with two side items and a dessert, but for some reason the wording made me feel like I was somehow being cheated.
Until my most recent visit to Phoenix, the only Windsors in my mind were a Canadian city across the river from Detroit, a castle in England and way to tie a tie. But now I know better, because the Windsor in Phoenix that Heather and Albert brought me to rivals all of the other Windsors combined. Why? This Windsor has possibly the most productivity-annihilating happy hour I’ve ever experienced. From 11 am to 5 pm, Windsor offers wine, cocktails and mini beer pitchers for the low price of 5 bucks. In other words, lunch break becomes drunk break.
Is it a nut? Is it a fruit? Is the question of whether or not it’s a nut qualify to make the lychee a strange fruit? I sure think so, but if that’s not enough for you, consider that the lychee is the only member of the litchi genus. That’s right, it’s an orphan, which automatically makes it strange. While canned lychees can be found pretty much everywhere, they really don’t do the fruit justice. It must be eaten fresh to truly appreciate its strangeness and flavor.
In Phoenix and in need of anything not called cold cuts, I found myself at Delux Burger. With a pleasant blue-colored theme, the look of the restaurant was almost cooling in the sweltering Arizona summer. The air conditioning didn’t hurt either. The three of us each took a stool at the counter that runs through the middle of the restaurant. Strangely, the stools were nailed to the ground and I found myself sitting much closer to the random dude next to me than I would have liked, but figured he was a good man and burger lover due to his being at Delux.