Nothing really says “awesome” quite like “family friendly brewery.” Such places are the best of both worlds, contributing to the cycle of having babies because you drink, then drinking because you have babies. New Holland Brewing on 8th Street in Holland, Michigan is one such place. Renowned for its beer, it has a comfortable back patio for kids to hang out at and one very attractive menu.

So, we started with two appetizers to appease the little folks and people who eat like little folks (aka me). These were the Pretzels and Beer Cheese, and the Pepperoni Pinwheels. I feel like they definitely missed out on a golden Holland-related opportunity by calling them pinwheels instead of windmills, but you take what you can get. And what I got was two very delicious appetizers. The pretzels where soft and fluffy with just the right amount of salt on them. The beer cheese was oh so lovely.

The pinwheels were like little mini bites of pizza heaven. They were perfectly cooked dough packed with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. Then, as if to say that they needed more, the pinwheels were topped with shredded parmesan and served with marinara. I know it is unreasonable to consider these anything more than deconstructed and repurposed pizza, but I couldn’t help but feel a deep appreciation for how they were done.

For my main course I went with a pizza that seemed almost tailored for me. It was called the Pork BBQ and was topped with smoked pork, peppadew peppers (yes, I said almost), jalapeno peppers, Dragon’s Milk (a beer of theirs) BBQ sauce, and Michigan cheese curds. I ordered without the peppadew peppers because blech, and my pizza came out looking like a beautiful work of art. The dough was a strong start, the sauce added just the right amount of sweet and smokey, while the jalapenos and pork added some kick and umami. But, with that being said you could probably have put those cheese curds on any pizza and they would have made it amazing. They added a thickness, a creaminess and a bold cheesy flavor that is almost upsetting in that it took me until age 34 to eat such a flavor.

New Holland continued the tradition of breweries having delicious and even creative food. It also brought the concept of pepperoni pinwheels and cheese curds as a potential pizza cheese into my purview and I couldn’t ask for much more than that. Oh, and the beer was pretty damn good too.

I’ll be the first to admit that long ago I wrote off Kona Grill as a generic bar and grill kind of spot with reheated food for yuppy types. Yet, when my coworkers and I ventured out for lunch one day and found ourselves at Kona Grill in Chandler, I didn’t protest because it still deserved a fair shot and who would I be to not give it one?

While literally everyone else at the table ordered the chopped salad, obviously I was not going to take that route. Instead, I went with the BBQ Chicken Flatbread. It was topped with cheddar cheese, BBQ sauce, the chicken itself, gouda, red onion and cilantro. Looking back, it was probably the gouda that sold it for me more than anything else because gouda is god’s cheese. I ordered it without the onions and eagerly awaited the hungry looks on everyone else’s faces.

The hungry looks came as they realized just how cheesy this flatbread was and certainly I was happy to find this cheesiness as well. In fact, it even seemed like the flatbread was actually prepared in the kitchen because it was slightly misshapen. Admittedly, it was pretty satisfying. I mean that in the sense that Kona Grill did what it had to do. Was it anything special? No. And while I would never seek out Kona Grill just to get a taste of that flatbread, it at least proved to me that I could find something reasonably good to eat if I found myself there again.

I’ve probably never thought that Middle Eastern food is the type of food that needs innovation and modernization. Give me some well-executed schwarma nearly any day of the week and I will be a happy man. Yet, Pita Jungle not only exists in the Phoenix area, but it has multiple locations that demonstrate a pattern of success. Oh, and it just oozes modern Middle Eastern.

Sure, hummus and schwarma are on the menu as old standbys, but it would be kind of silly to order them. Instead, we started out our meal with Cilantro Jalapeno Hummus. It was a beautiful thing to behold, aside from the random diced tomatoes and onions in the middle of the dip. Moreover, it weirdly only came with one piece of pita and any extra was an upcharge.

For my main course, I ordered the Asada Lavash Pizza they were offering as a special that night. Lavash Pizza is always on the menu, which is another one of their modern takes, but the asada aspect was unique to that night. It included the aforementioned asada, crema, avocado, some of that cilantro avocado hummus and a few veggies that I had no interest in. The result looked like a really sexy matzah pizza, and tasted even better than that. There was plenty of beef which tasted like you would expect Mexican beef at a Middle Eastern restaurant to taste (solid, but confusing) and the rest of the ingredients melded together really well.

Pita Jungle is essentially the Middle Eastern food you never asked for, but are glad to have. I’m still on the lookout for the more traditional side of Middle Eastern (which Pita Jungle has, but at a premium), but I have no qualms with what Pita Jungle has been able to do to bring the old into the new.

Being in the media has its advantages. Case in point: getting to check out the menu and beers at SanTan Brewing Company in Chandler. For this event, SanTan wanted to highlight beer pairings and the normal menu without any specials, but also showed off the backroom where the brewing is actually done. Unlike other breweries I’ve been to, we were encouraged to bring a beer along for the tour, and that beer was the StrataBlaster IPA, part of the brewery’s pilot series and a great place to start.

SanTan founder Anthony Canecchia (a Four Peaks “defector”) stands between the tanks that started it all for SanTan, which were acquired from the DuClaw Brewing Company in Baltimore, Maryland. SanTan just celebrated its 10th anniversary, making it seem a bit old in the world of craft brewing, but the DuClaw tanks show that craft and micro brewing have been around long before the recent trend.

The MoonJuice IPA was paired with a salad, so whatever on that. But the IPA was tasty, being brewed not with the more well-known Cascade or Bavarian hops, but with Galaxy and Nelson-Sauvin hops originating from Australia and New Zealand, respectively. You could say it’s out of this world, but considering how grounded (in a good way) the IPA tasted, I’ll just say it’s from the other end of the world.

The HefeWeizen was paired with the Pesto Chicken Pizza. And while the pizza is not exactly unvegan-friendly – featuring mushrooms and spinach, I could appreciate the core of the pie – namely the crust and pesto sauce. I’m also not generally a hefe fan, but the Arizona heat seems to be pushing me in that direction. Despite looking the contrary, SanTan’s hefe is not filtered, but the cloudiness simply settles out in the brewing process, leaving a crisp, if not overly exciting hefe. Full disclosure, I haven’t had an exciting hefe in a very long time.

The Devil’s Ale is probably the best-known of SanTan’s beers, if for no other reason than the fact that the Arizona State Sun Devils make their home not far from Chandler and have pretty much adopted the beer as their own. It’s a very drinkable American Pale Ale and pairs so well with the carnitas enchiladas that I got to thinking they should rebrand it as Cerveza del Diablo to start getting it into all the local Mexican restaurants.

Ah, the Winter Warmer. It’s a beer that probably has no place in the Phoenix area due to the lack of a concept of winter, yet just felt right at SanTan. It was borne out of necessity due to the Great Hop Shortage of 2008, which was actually a thing, but has become a favorite of local SanTan drinkers, drawing a line annually when it taps. Like any good winter warmer, the beer evolves as it warms, leaving you with a very different final few sips than the first few – in a good way. The winter warmer is always served with the house made ginger snap cookies that some people like to throw into their beers for an added touch. But not me, I was perfectly happy to switch off between bites and sips, enjoying every last drop and morsel.

If you want to be the second (because we were the first) to try out the 2017 Winter Warmer, SanTan is hosting a vertical tasting on November 15th, giving you the chance to go back in time to 2014, 2015 and 2016 and taste the difference that a few seasons of winter warmers can make.

Or, you could show up on November 20th for the official tapping, but then you’d be the third group to try out the 2017 Winter Warmer and while getting the bronze medal might still get you on the Olympics Podium, you’ll always know you could have done better.

Sauce has been a staple in the Phoenix area for a good amount of years now. And it’s a good thing that it’s established itself, as other fast casual pizza spots have been sweeping the nation. And while Sauce is about more than just pizza (they have pasta and salads too), it’s the pizza that drew me, and presumably almost everyone else in.

I ended up ordering the Spicy Chicken Sausage Pizza. This was topped with, surprisingly, spicy chicken sausage. But it also had poblano peppers, which I am strangely okay with in certain circumstances, and used smoked mozzarella instead of the boring normal kind.

The pizza was prepped pretty quickly, but not quite as quick as the fancy new places. This was fine, though, because speed does not always = good. I was definitely impressed by the amount of kick in the pizza, but somewhat disappointed by its not having enough sausage. Regardless, the sauce was pretty solid and the thin crust was pretty tasty as well.

Overall, though, the pizza just wasn’t too special to me. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t disappointing, it was just satisfactory. And that’s fine for the most part, but when the world (or at least Phoenix) gives you so many options for pizza, you can do a lot better than satisfactory.

Phoenix may not seem like a pizza town, but it unquestionably has some great stuff. There’s Pizzeria Bianco, of course, but also a number of other pizza places that have made Phoenix their second homes. Call them snowbird pizzas if you want. Humble Pie is one that has seen success in the area with a few locations. I headed to the one at Desert Ridge to see what it was all about.

There was a pizza there that I simply couldn’t not order. It was simply called The Egg Pizza, but the ingredients weren’t so simple. I mean, sure, there was a sunny side up egg on it, but also smoked mozzarella, prosciutto and simply extra virgin olive oil as sauce. When it arrived, I was a little surprised that the egg was just kind of in the center and just placed there, but I quickly set to work on unleashing the runny yolk and devouring the pizza.

Where this pizza went well, it went really well. For example, the smoked mozzarella was fantastic to the extent that I almost think every pizza with mozzarella should consider swapping it out for the smoked variety. The egg was also cooked perfectly. As for the rest, I have some gripes. Namely, the pizza seemed to have just spent too much time in the oven. The crust was charred, and not like in a cool artsy dough bubble way. And the prosciutto followed suit, being dried up from too much time spent in the oven where it maybe shouldn’t have even been in the oven in the first place, because prosciutto doesn’t need to be cooked.

Alas, this pizza showed a lot of potential. With the right cooking time, it probably could have been amazing. Unfortunately, Humble Pie just couldn’t quite get there.

The world has a few different styles of pizza: New York, Italian, Chicago, Detroit, etc. Yet, it takes a bold pizza purveyor to deliver something that doesn’t quite fit into a predetermined style. Mancino’s Pizza, which seems to have a series of somewhat affiliated locations around the midwest, has done just that. It was in Petoskey, Michigan that I snagged one of these pizzas for the first time.

I went with the Buffalo Wing Pizza, which could have probably been better named the Buffalo Chicken Pizza, since it was topped with slices of grilled chicken breast, then doused with cheese and buffalo sauce. And by doused, I mean there was an insanely thick layer of cheese on this pizza. This alone seemed novel, but the crust is what made Mancino’s pizza so much different than expected. It seemed to skirt the very thick line between New York Style and Chicago Deep Dish, meaning the crust seemed to serve as a means of keeping the ingredients in, but foregoing the full casserole route.

I was surprised by just how spicy the sauce was, but otherwise I was very happy with Mancino’s pizza. I mean, it’s hard to go wrong with a boat load of cheese and solid sauce and toppings. And while I was impressed by the pizza’s audacity to not be classified, it also didn’t break barriers in a way that made me feel like it is going to change the world like the aforementioned pizzas may well have. Regardless, it’s worth grabbing a slice.

In my ceaseless quest to find the best breakfast in breakfast heaven (Arizona), I found myself at the creatively named Breakfast Kitchen Bar in Scottsdale. Yay for sarcasm. But while the name wasn’t creative, the menu had a few things I had never seen before, one of them being the Breakfast Pizza.

I mean, sure, I’ve seen breakfast pizza before, but usually that just means a regular pizza with some level of eggs thrown on top. Here, this was described as a hash brown crust, topped with fontina cheese, bacon and two eggs any way I liked. I ordered mine sunny side up and they looked beautiful when they arrived, with a touch of paprika on them for looks.

But what was strange was that it wasn’t round or even really pizza-like, unless the definition of pizza is “something with cheese melted over it,” in which case basically everything I eat is pizza. And I should add that I’m cool with square pizza too, but this wasn’t that. Instead, it was kind of like two hash brown patties topped with amazingness. When I say that it was amazingness, I really mean that. It was like the perfect combination of savory flavors. The hash browns were crispy, but forgiving, the eggs were perfectly runny and the bacon was cooked to a crisp. But probably the biggest kicker was the use of fontina cheese instead of your more typical cheeses. This took the “breakfast pizza” to another level that left me begging for more when I was finished.

So far, this may take the cake of breakfasts in the Phoenix area. There’s plenty more out there, but it’s twists like these that the world needs more of, even if it all was borne out of a misnomer.

When you need breakfast or brunch in Encino, where do you go? Well, when the opportunity presented itself to me I found myself at Claudine, which is like a bakery and restaurant in one. You order at a counter, and seats are hard to come by on the weekend, but I managed to snag a table right out from under an old lady. To be fair, all she needed was 2 seats and we needed 6 so I found another table for her. Sheesh.

As for the foodstuffs, there was one thing on the menu that called my name annoyingly loudly. It was called Breakfast “Naan”-zza, which is fancy bakery-speak for pizza on a piece of naan bread. The menu said this was to be topped with gruyere, sausage, bacon, a farm egg, jalapeno relish and grilled onions. I wanted nothing to do with the onions and ordered thusly. While Claudine heeded my order, they failed to tell me that this naan-zza would come topped with a devious handful of arugula.

I don’t know what the hell they were thinking, but you cannot be so damn careless with arugula. Maybe they thought that nearly $13 for a mini pizza with those toppings would be an easier pill to swallow if they added one more ingredient? However, this was subtraction by addition and it’s one thing to throw the mess in a bowl or on the side, but strewn atop my pizza was something that could not be forgiven. And that’s a real shame, because everything else about the naan-zza was great, including the explosive yolk of the egg.

Instead of leaving Claudine singing the praises of the naan-zza, all I was left with were the thoughts of what might have been.

LA isn’t an easy place to have sustained success. And I’m not just talking about the entertainment industry, I’m talking about food. You see, one day you can’t get a reservation at a place and the next it’s being replaced by a hot new thing. Yet, there are exceptions, like In-n-Out. But also Bestia, an Italian spot downtown that still requires reservations months out.

But reserve we did and set to work on tackling what looked like the best things on the menu. It began with the Burrata Pizza. This pie was topped with castelvetrano olives, oregano and fermented chilies. To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less about what kind of olives they were because I wanted no part in them, but allowed them for the team. Even with a couple olives picked out, this pizza kicked some ass. The chilies added a bit of a kick, but most importantly the burrata cheese, tomato sauce and dough worked in holy harmony together.

Thus, we moved on to the Roasted Marrow Bone. Unlike your typical marrow, which is served with some sort of toast and maybe salt or another thing to sprinkle on the marrow, this bone was found in a bowl. It was surrounded by spinach gnochetti, bread crumbs and aged balsamic. The idea was to scrape the marrow out, mix it up with the gnochetti and then go to town. Marrow purists may have thought this was silly, but I loved it. Sure, I wouldn’t have chosen spinach as my typical gnochetti flavor, but I still love gnocchi (which is grown up gnochetti) and the combination of these two made for something special.

For our main course, we picked two pastas to pick apart. The first was the Agnolotti alla Agnello. For lack of a better explanation, this dish consisted of braised lamb stuffed into ravioli-like pasta with a saffron sauce, currants and pine nuts. It was unbelievably good and I especially enjoyed the bits of currant that added a sweetness and tartness to the dish and gave it great balance. You can market food online, as well as retail stores if you have a food business. Check out more information here.

The other pasta was the Cavatelli alla Norcina, which had ricotta, housemade pork sausage, black truffles and grana padano cheese. Like the dish before, this pasta was just incredibly complex in its flavors and each felt like it had been thoroughly thought-out and executed to perfection. I loved the mix of sausage and black truffles, but it just wasn’t quite as good as the Agnolotti. Perhaps it was the lack of currants or the fact that there seemed to be just a bit too much sauce, but the consolation prize here could have easily taken first place anywhere else.

And so Bestia bested this unvegan. I left fully satisfied and just the right amount of full. The dishes are by no means big, but they make up for their size with flavor. Sometimes quality is better than quantity and Bestia’s quantity of patrons that make getting a reservation here insane seem to prove that point.