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.

It turned out that the Blackened Burger was a great choice. Not only were the spices perfect, the burger was juicy and cooked to a nice medium-well. It had just the right amount of blue cheese to keep balance with the spices and the roll-like bun did a fantastic job of keeping it all together.

The fries were also great, being crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Brisam’s is definitely a place I would recommend for visitors to Cave Creek. The Blackened Burger is definitely a winner and I certainly could eat a few more of those.

One benefit of getting married is the tastings. Not so much tasting food that the guests will eat, but traveling back and forth between Arizona and LA to plan things, and knowing there will be food in need of eating. On my most recent foray into the Grand Canyon state, we went out to dinner at a place called Tonto Bar & Grill in Cave Creek. Tonto is quite the popular place, with an outdoor patio looking out onto a golf course and an old Western eclectic interior. The menu ranges from some fancy salads to super fancy steaks, but somewhere in the middle there is burgers. And having gone at least a couple days without crushing a burger, I felt it was time.

The Tonto Burger is essentially a build-your-own burger, starting with either a corn-fed or grass-fed patty. I’m not sure what sort of crazy person would choose corn-fed over grass-fed, especially with them costing the same, but I suppose it’s possible. So over course I went with the corn…er…grass patty, then topped it with sharp cheddar, avocado and bacon. I noticed that lettuce, tomato, pickle planks (yargh) and crispy fried onions were included for free in every burger, yet for some reason in my head, I decided that I had to mention them in order for them to be included. Stupid, stupid unvegan. It was a mistake I hope to never make again, because when my burger I arrived I found a lot more than I bargained for.

Yes, all those dastardly vegetables were found in between my buns and my face immediately turned from smile (“We’re eating at a place named for the Lone Ranger?!”) to frown (“I’ve made a huge mistake…”). But the gods weren’t entirely angry at me, because I found that the pickle planks (yargh) were actually quite dry and their juices didn’t destroy my burger from the inside. Yet, where I took solace in the light pickling, I was saddened to find that they used shredded lettuce in true Southwestern fashion. It was quite an effort to get this burger ready for eating, but when I did I found it a truly enjoyable burger. The patty had been cooked to a perfect medium rare and simply could not be contained by the bun. The sharp cheddar was as expected, as was the avocado. The bacon, though, was not the usual applewood smoked or regular smoked bacon, but a pepper bacon. This was an interesting twist that added a little something to experience. But if I may, I’d like to get back to the bun, which was not only too small for the burger, but also not thick enough to contain this meaty monster. Midway through, the meal became a battle to keep my food together. It was a worthy battle, though, and in the end I won.

Was it a groundbreaking burger? Not exactly, but it was still pretty tasty. If you find yourself in Cave Creek in need of a burger, you won’t go wrong with Tonto. But you may want to be smarter than me and order yours without and of those preposterous vegetabled.

Remember playing Cowboys and Indians as a kid? Thankfully, there is a place in the world where that fantasyland still exists. It’s called Arizona, and while not everyone runs around with a gun loaded with 223 ammo, there are places you could picture saddling up a horse just as easily as stopping by in a hybrid. One such place is the Cave Creek Coffee Company, affectionately known as C4 by locals. The facade is reminiscent of Tombstone, but the interior is pure class (not that Tombstone was lacking in class…).

And despite the name, there were no caves or creeks to be seen and the menu was not limited to coffee. Instead, the menu had a nice-looking selection of breakfast food, sandwiches and a little something called Lahvosh, described on the menu as traditional Mediterranean cracker bread. This stuff was served kind of like a pizza and one of them caught my eye pretty easily. It was called the T-Rex and was topped with genoa salami, pancetta ham, prosciutto, garlic olive oil, fresh basil and of course mozzarella cheese. I knew it had to be mine, and made it so.

When it arrived, the thing certainly looked like it could feed a T-Rex. It was about the size of an extra large pizza, and despite the lahvosh being a lot less filling than dough, I knew I wouldn’t be able to tackle this beast in one sitting. Despite its size, though, the T-Rex was nothing short of beautiful. The evenly dispersed sprinkle of meats made my mouth water and I carefully separated out a piece before going to town.

In the T-Rex, I found an awesome mix of meaty flavors, which went great with the subtle cheese. Despite being loaded with meat, the lahvosh was not at all overwhelming. It could almost have been called a “lite” meat-lover’s pizza, and not “lite” in the way that usually means you’re giving up flavor. Nope, this T-Rex was full of flavor and that garlic olive oil made the cornucopia of meats taste even better. The use of lahvosh definitely made for an interesting experience very different from a normal pizza. The crust was hard like matzah, and was actually pretty tough to eat without shattering it into cracker bits. I wonder what it would have tasted like on a more bread-like crust, but also wonder if that might screw up the balance that the T-Rex had achieved.

With a couple slices left to go, I threw in the towel. I am no carnivorous dinosaur and the the T-Rex was too much food for me to handle. Nonetheless, the food was quite good. Local cowboys would be impressed with the delicious meats and I could easily imagine a T-Rex asking for a few more rounds.

For a little lunch pickup in Cave Creek, Arizona, just north of Scottsdale, I was told we would be ordering from a local sandwich shop called Bad Donkey (not to be confused with Bikkuri Donkey). Although actual donkey was no where to be found on the menu, it seemed they had come up with some very creative names to make up for the lack of donkey. Their veggie sub was called Grass on a Roll and their Reuben was creatively called Reuben Worth Choosen (yes, choosen and not choosin’).

Of these creative names, the only one that mattered to me was their Perturbed Bird, which was their take on a buffalo chicken sub. This came with grilled chicken, buffalo sauce, blue cheese crumbles, veggies and the ambiguously and slightly ominously named Donkey Sauce. As I listened to my girlfriend order the “putrid chicken” (followed by laughter and a quick correction), she ordered mine without the generic “veggies” and we were good to go.

The sub had been prepared on a wheat bun (for my rigid health regiment) and looked like…well…just about every other buffalo chicken sub I had ever eaten. With this in mind, I dug in and found that yes, this was just like every other buffalo chicken sub I had ever eaten. On one hand, this was good because it tasted just fine, but on the other hand it was a little sad because it seemed that most of Bad Donkey’s creativity had ended after they named their subs. In other words, the bird I was eating was not nearly as perturbed as I had hoped. I guess what I’m trying to say is that although I was happy with my sandwich, I also felt like I could have gotten something just as good at Subway, which made me sad.

As for the frightening Donkey Sauce, I really couldn’t distinguish it from the buffalo sauce and blue cheese, which I think is a good thing because it just worked well with the sub. I’d be curious what it tasted like without, but was perfectly happy with the sub as it was.

So in the end, Bad Donkey fell a bit flat. It wasn’t a bad sub by any means, but I just felt like they could have taken the sandwich above and beyond to truly make it a Perturbed Bird instead of an ordinary buffalo chicken sandwich.