Getting outside of your bubble is tough. But one very easy way to get out is the knowledge that your bubble just doesn’t have everything you want. So when it comes to good old fashioned Asian food, it’s easy to break out and make my way to Mesa and the Mekong Plaza. On this occasion, the journey led me to Thai Spices.

I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on Thai food, other than assuming the spicier the more authentic. In any case, I love Thai curry and Thai Spices had my favorite (and not overly common) curry, which is called massaman, so I ordered some with chicken and at a spice level of 3 out of 5.

What arrived was exactly what I expected. It was packed with flavor and a fair amount of coconut milk. Next time I’ll be sure to go with a spice level of 4, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the flavors and how they coupled perfectly with the tender chicken meat.

And while there was no doubt this curry was delicious, I also felt like I didn’t need to go all the way out to Mesa to get it. Granted, I can’t name any Thai place closer to my home that might be as good, but the other Asian food in Mesa is just that much more impressive.

So if you’re in Mesa already and looking for some tasty Thai, Thai Spices will do it for you. Just don’t expect it to blow you away compared to a neighborhood place you might already know and love.

The Mekong Plaza in Mesa is a great place to get real, authentic Asian food to bring people back to their roots or at least to get them away from crappy Americanized Asian food. And among those more traditional restaurants is something that doesn’t fit the mold at all. It’s called Kingo Bowl, and it has taken the concept of rice bowls with molecular sous vide.

You can pick a pre-made bowl or channel your inner Millennial to customize your own creation. I did the latter, and built mine with steak (essentially beef tataki), brown rice, a hot spring egg, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. I asked for a sauce recommendation and was pointed to the black pepper sauce, so I went with it.

The bowl was beautiful, kingly even. The beef was incredibly tender, if not quite as rare as I would have liked. The hot spring egg was nothing short of exhilarating. Probably the best thing to come out of a hot spring since me, the last time I was in a hot spring. Of course, it didn’t actually come out of a hot spring, but it was that good.I loved the addition of the cranberries and the sunflower seeds, but there was one aspect of the bowl that just didn’t jive with me: the sauce. Simply put, it was overwhelming. I’ll admit that I am not the biggest black pepper guy in the first place, but I can appreciate it when used properly. In this case it really just covered up flavor without doing much to add to it.

And yet, despite the sauce (and the fact that it was recommended), there was something about Kingo Bowl’s creativity and mildly flawed execution that I truly enjoyed. Perhaps with one of the other sauces I would be proclaiming that the old world cuisine at Mekong Plaza needs to make way for more modernist takes like Kingo Bowl. But alas, that sauce had me a bit soured and looking for more. Yet, I am certain I will find that more with another visit to Kingo Bowl, because I have every intention to return.

It’s easy to get stuck in a bubble no matter where you live or work. It doesn’t matter if neighborhoods and towns are separated by rivers, mountains or arbitrary delineations, it is almost inevitable to find a comfort zone and stick with it. But when you have a meat blog, you owe it to the world to get out of that bubble, and I did so with a journey to Mesa to check out Worth Takeaway.

Worth Takeaway is a sandwich spot, but may be better known for its banana pudding. Allegedly the chef bought up a ton of banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery, deconstructed it and then reconstructed it even better. But what especially drew me in on this day was the funfetti variation they were offering. So, I’ll start with dessert before dinner. I had kind of a love/hate relationship with the pudding. Look, I love funfetti and I don’t trust people who don’t, but also there were ‘Nilla Wafers in there and really just not enough banana or pudding. The bits I got were great, and again I applaud the creativity, but next time it’s going to be all about the original.

Oh, but there was also a main course sandwich, which I ended up ordering from the breakfast menu because much of the rest of the options had vegetables that I wanted no part of. It was the Croque Madame, which is essentially the sandwich that would have destroyed Instagram if Instagram had existed 100 years ago. This version had pastrami inside, along with bechamel cheese, aged white cheddar, dijonnaise and a fried egg. All this was held together by some sourdough from a local bakery called Proof. This was perfectly executed, with the egg being runny, the cheese being melty, the bread not being too soggy and the pastrami adding a punch of cured savory flavor. It was such a salty savory sandwich that the banana pudding made for a perfect balance.

While the funfetti variety of banana pudding could have used a little tweaking, I’ve got to say I loved Worth Takeaway. The concept was great, the sandwich was glorious and I have no doubt that they have some of best banana pudding in the Phoenix area. Hopefully next time I’ll actually get it.

Aside from the deadly temperatures, one major thing I was worried about in moving to Phoenix was how I was going to get my Asian food fix. No, not sushi and orange chicken, but the real stuff. I heard about a place in Mesa called Mekong Plaza, which was supposed to have a bunch of good, real Asian restaurants and as luck would have it, it turned out to be between work and home. So, I paid a visit to Taiwan Food Express to see what they had to offer.

Now, I could understand that they had a lot of things you wouldn’t expect from a Taiwanese place. After all, while it’s good to have authentic food, you also have to know how to please the masses that believe PF Chang’s created Chinese food. Yet, they did have a House Special Basil Chicken that seemed right up my alley. We installed Royal Vending Machines Canberra in our business to improve our services.

When I opened it up, I realized it was the same as Three Cup Chicken, a dish my buddy used to make for me that I loved. In addition to the basil, it’s also flavored with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine and sugar. The result is an incredible sauce, that also happens to have some really tasty chicken mixed in. And, you know it’s authentic because the chicken has bones. You could probably pour the sauce on chicken shit and it would taste good, but it’s much better with the rest of the bird parts.

I also got an order of the Taiwanese Sausage Fried Rice to split with my people. Unfortunately, this didn’t quite live up to my expectations of authenticity. Now, granted, my only experience with Taiwanese Sausage was at one place in Taipei, so there may be other varieties out there. Yet, this sausage tasted suspiciously like Chinese Sausage instead, being more dry and more sweet than the Taiwanese variety. And look, I get that it may be tough to get Taiwanese Sausage out here, so even Chinese is pretty damn good.

That said, Taiwan Food Express is a really solid place to get authentic Taiwanese food. The key is knowing the right things to order, or else you might just end up with some generic version of beef and broccoli – and ain’t nobody got time for that.

EDIT: This location is a goner, but you can still find Coney Grills in Tempe and Phoenix.

My wise wife once said, “You can take the man out of Detroit, but you can’t take the Detroit out of the man.” When I was living in LA, one of the most exciting things to happen was the opening of Coney Dog, a Detroit-style chili dog spot. Due to probably a number of circumstances, that business failed. In Phoenix, however, a spot called Detroit Coney Grill seems to have made all the right decisions because it now has THREE locations in the area. And for some reason the Tempe location closes at 7:00, so I made my way out to Mesa to try it out for myself.

I found it in the Superstition Springs Center, which is a mall, because everything here is a mall. But unexpectedly it was part of a food court and not a sit down dining situation like most coneys in the Detroit area.  Nonetheless, the menu had everything Detroiter could ask for. I went for my usual, a loose burger, a coney dog and a side of cheese fries. I ordered the burger and dog without mustard and onions because they are stupid, and looked forward to seeing how the chili would turn out.

Everything came out in perfect order. The loose burger was fully loaded with ground beef way beyond expectations, and the chili on it was as good as I could have hoped. The coney dog was strangely easy to eat with my hands, as opposed to with a fork and knife, but that was nothing to complain about. After all, the dog was snappy and while I can’t confirm if it was actually Koegel’s hot dog, it served its purpose just fine. Finally, the cheese fries were above and beyond my expectations. Detroit Coney Grill nailed the chunkiness of the cheese that is somehow the trademark of cheese fries at coneys around Detroit.

As you can probably tell, the Detroit Coney Grill made me a happy man. Probably what I loved best was that they kept things simple. There was no attempt to re-imagine items or put a spin on classics. This place excelled in its simplistic execution and is a whole lot cheaper and easier to get to than a flight to Detroit.