We can all agree that Phoenix is not LA. Good, now that that’s settled, Phoenix does appear to get an event or two on occasion, and the first since I made the big move was the 8th Annual Arizona Taco Festival, which converged at the Salt River Fields in Scottsdale. While the place is better-known for MLB spring training, the vast field was put to good use in hosting dozens of vendors pushing mostly tacos, but also drinks, desserts and the occasional t-shirt.

Although the RFID cashless money-loading system was great in theory, it actually put a damper on the experience from the get-go on an already unseasonably hot day because it forced people who had already purchased tickets to wait in an airport security-esque line to get wrist bands and load funds.

But aside from the temperature, that was all but forgotten upon entering the festival and setting to work to down some tacos. Here are the highlights:

Machaca Taco – Chico Malo

Look, I get that you are prepping tacos en masse and that you can’t exactly make food to order. That’s why I’m willing to see past the pickled onion and mushrooms in this taco, as well as the fact that seemed be a bit cooled off despite the billion degree weather. Because at the end of the day, this was an amazing homemade tortilla with perfectly braised machaca on top.

Barbacoa Taco – Creations by Sergio

Unlike most vendors, Creations by Sergio is not a restaurant, but a catering company. At the taco fest, Sergio went for quality over quantity, churning out little tacos with a punch of taste. The barbacoa taco was packed with flavor and amazingly tender meat. Plus, there was no fancy business with toppings, opting to go for the classic street style of onions and cilantro.

Pork Belly Taco – Crujiente Tacos

I’m not normally a fan of kimchi, and Crujiente Tacos did nothing to change my opinion in that regard. But I had to try their Pork Belly Taco despite the kimchi because it just sounded like a nice change of pace (and perhaps because I subconsciously miss all the Korean food in LA). The good news is that that kimchi really took a backseat to the pork belly in this taco, only rearing its ugly head occasionally and letting the pork, cilantro and sriracha aioli do their jobs.

Shredded Beef Taco – Dos Gringos

I was fully prepared to hate this place because of the name, but was pleasantly surprised by the taco, which I ordered without lettuce. The beef was solid, the cotija cheese was a nice touch and the splash of salsa verde tied it all together.

Frozen Key Lime Pie Bar – Pinnacle Peak Pie Company

In heat like this, anything cool and refreshing was a winner, but the Frozen Key Lime Pie Bar on a stick from Pinnacle Peak Pie Company (also lacking in brick and mortar location) was the ideal way to cool me off. With a thin, but mighty crust and flavorful filling, this got the desert job done.

While I couldn’t try everything (and wish I could have), it was obvious that there are some pretty amazing tacos out there for the eating in the Phoenix area. The majority of the vendors were local and even those that weren’t amazing were still pretty darn good. Tacos Huicho deserves its own special shot out for rolling out real tacos al pastor off of a spit, and even though the taco itself didn’t overly impress, I am sure if I paid their real location a visit I would have been mighty happy.

After all, what’s a good old fashioned food event for, if not to whet the tastebuds and leave you wanting to try more?

My lack of any sort of need for dessert has been pretty well-chronicled on this blog by now. Yet, there is one dessert that I have a hard time passing up and that dessert is pie. So, when I found out that Arizona’s best pies were on the way to Prescott before taking a quick trip to, uh, Prescott, I knew we had to make a stop at Rock Springs Cafe in Black Canyon City.

Unlike many pie purveyors, Rock Springs Cafe is about more than just pies, so I settled in for a meal. Since it was before 11:00 am, they would only serve from the breakfast menu and I found their breakfast burger to be right up my alley. It was a half pound, topped with a fried egg, bacon and cheddar cheese. It also came with country potatoes that were amazingly available without the onions and green peppers that usually go into such potatoes.

It came out with a perfectly shining, glistening egg yolk. The burger had clearly been hand-formed and cooked to a perfect medium rare, while the bacon was crispy AF. The only thing strange was that the cheese had not actually been melted onto the burger and sat atop the bacon instead of the other way around. I would explain it, but I can’t. Fortunately, being sandwiched between burger and egg softened it up and made it reasonably tasty considering cheese is almost never bad in any non-moldy state. I was also a huge fan of the country potatoes, which had been fried to a nice crisp on the outside and pillowy goodness on the inside. They were like Taco Bell’s potatoes and I mean that as an utmost compliment.

I finished off with the most important thing of all – pie. Per my disposition, I went with the banana cream pie and was in awe when the waitress brought out what amounted to a massive double slice. She claimed that she gave me two small slices, but I certainly wouldn’t have complained about just one of them. The pie was more cream than banana, which is not how I would have usually preferred it, but it was a good cream and not overly sweetened. The crust brought some nice salty balance to the pie and while I probably could have scarfed down both slices in one sitting, I exercised discipline and saved one for the road.

In my mind, Rock Springs Cafe is a must for anyone making the trek between the Phoenix area and either Flagstaff or Prescott. It’s basically right off the highway and if my experience is any indication, it’s hard to go wrong whether you’re going for a meal or just a slice.

Along with The Apple Pan over in West LA, Pie ‘n Burger is renowned for not only having delicious burgers, but for having seemingly not changed at all in its 50+ years of life. Sure, there are a lot of classic burger spots around, but they have all had tweaks here and there as owners have been exchanged, neighborhood demographics have changed or competition has increased. At Pie ‘n Burger, the only noticeable difference is the price.

And sure, just under $10 for a burger a la carte seems like a lot, but you’re truly paying for quality here. No, this is not a gourmet burger, but a simple burger topped with thousand island, pickles, lettuce and cheese. It’s cooked on a griddle to keep it juicy and while it’s not very big, you can immediately tell that it is no fast food burger. Instead, it’s a great grind of beef that is a savory sensation. The thousand island is house-made, and is a little sweeter than the usual thousand island, playing a nice balance to the meat. As you might expect, I have nothing to say for the pickles or lettuce that my burger refused. The only problem is that it’s gone too soon.

But after it’s gone it’s time for pie. One of their pies is made from olallieberries, which I learned is a crossbreed between loganberry and youngberry (thanks to the internet, not from the waitress who simply said it was some sort of mix of berries). Having never heard of this berry before, I had to have it. It was undoubtedly a delicious pie and worthy of sharing the namesake of the restaurant with the burger. Having never had blackberry pie before, the olallieberry tasted like what I always believed blackberry pie would taste like.

Pie ‘n Burger has definitely earned its place at the table with some of LA’s best burgers. And when we’re all riding in our flying cars driven by robots, it will likely still be going strong.

Although it seems like the last Dine LA Restaurant Week ended a couple months ago, it seems that it has returned, which means a lot of food and some difficult choices for the unvegan. These difficult choices usually stem from the fact that it is tough to find a veggie-free prix fixe menu. Fortunately, Culver City has a relatively new restaurant called Waterloo & City with an unvegan-friendly restaurant week menu.

Waterloo & City is named after a Tube line in London that consists of two stops – one called Waterloo and the other called…Village. Wait, no, it’s called City. As you may be able to guess by the name, the restaurant serves English food. That’s right, English food, also known as the worst international food ever. The kind of food where when people go to England, the favorite thing they ate was Indian. Well somehow the English food at Waterloo & City had garnered the place accolades for being one of the best new restaurants in LA, so despite the ancestry of their food, they had to be doing something right.

The appetizer that appealed to my unvegan sensibility the most was their Pan Fried Blood Cake, which came with fried organic egg and toasted pain poilane (which is just fancy-speak for toast). I wasn’t entirely sure what blood cake was, so before committing, I asked the waitress and she told me it was really like a cake made with pig blood and pig fat. I guess blood cake sounds a little better than fat cake, so that’s where the name blood cake came from. With a tinge of fear, I ordered it, still not quite knowing what to expect. When it did arrive, I was at first disappointed by the heirloom tomatoes upon my cake. I brushed these off and then took a look at the blood-splattered plate. Not exactly red velvet, the cake looked like Hannibal Lecter’s version of marble cake. Unlike your average cake, this was like a spread, which I wiped across a piece of toast. Then I took a bit of egg to put on top and bit in.

It’s kind of hard to explain the taste, which wasn’t bad at all, but also wasn’t especially good. It was kind of like a savory jam, where the bits of fat were like chunks of fruit and the rest of it tasted kind of like your own blood when you cut yourself. Do to my lack of experience with eating blood, I can’t really say if Waterloo & City did a very good job, but I can say I was glad I tried it and don’t really have any desire to try it again.

With the blood gone, I moved onto my main course, a Prime Beef and Bone Marrow Pie, with Potato Puree. Since this dish wasn’t on the normal menu, I kind of expected it to be some sort of mass-produced Shepherd’s Pie with marrow, but it turned out to be no such thing. Instead, it was a massive, yet individual pot-pie-looking dish that resided in a pan with a giant marrow bone sticking out of the middle. And the potato puree wasn’t even part of it and came on the side in its own bowl. Although the thing was taking forever to cool, I couldn’t wait and started digging in. Inside the delicious, crispy crust, I found some of the meatiest and tastiest pie-filling in the world. After some mild mouth and tongue burns, I found the beef inside this pie was perfectly tender, juicy and flavorful. Plus, every bite got a nice little spoonful of marrow, which add some nice gelatinous flavor to the already-perfect pie. The potato puree made an unnecessary, but delicious addition to the meal. Where the pie packed a powerful punch of flavor, the puree sort of balanced the mouth out with a much simpler flavor.

I also ate some of the House Merguez & and Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder, which the girlfriend had ordered. Unbeknown to us, the Merguez was actually a sausage. I would think an English restaurant would have food items written in plain English, but this was not the case. Luckily the sausage was tasty, but it wasn’t as good as the slow-cooked lamb shoulder, which was so tender it almost melted like butter in your mouth. I think we both would have liked if the dish had a higher lamb shoulder to sausage ratio, but it was still a nice dish.

Finally, there were the desserts. Since there were only two choices, we each got one of them. The first was the Glazed Doughnuts with Jam and Custard. These looked more like doughnut holes, but also looked nothing short of delicious. Glistening in the dim light, I couldn’t wait to take a bite, and when I did I was not disappointed. Differing from normal doughnuts in the US, the English doughnut was less cakey and more bready. There was no lack of sweet, though, as the glaze was loaded with what I thought was caramelized sugar. The best part of the doughnuts actually happened to be the salt crystals that had been sporadically sprinkled upon them. This added a subtle, but much-needed balance to the doughnuts.

The second dessert was Sticky Toffee Pudding with Milk Ice Cream (didn’t realize there were other kinds of ice cream, other than vegan). By the time it arrived, the ice cream was mostly melted, so that was a bit disappointing. On the other hand, the toffee flavor was really good and almost made up for the ice cream. The doughnuts ended up being the better dessert, but had the ice cream been unmelted, the matchup would have fared better for the toffee pudding.

My Restaurant Week experience at Waterloo & City was a surprisingly delicious experience. The surprising part was because it was English, but the positive reviews I had heard turned out to be correct.