News from the Great Beyond

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 1/25/05

Sunday afternoon the Hubby and I hopped in our car after church and headed to my next target for culinary adventuring... and discovered that the place is closed on Sundays.  Denied! 

Man, I hate that.  I mean, if I was working there, I'd be glad to have a day off and all, but Sunday after church is a great time to be open for lunch, and we enjoy taking our friends out to try some of our new food finds every now and then.

After that disappointment, I was at a loss for a backup plan... so, we went to Panda Express, and decided to try again last night.  Thankfully, Bistro di Napoli was open, and it was worth the wait.

Two impressions struck me as we entered the restaurant: sight and scent.  The windows were tinted so much that I rather expected the interior of the restaurant to be dark, but instead I found a pleasant, light and bright room, decorated with colorful prints and displays of various Italian food items.  The scent - heavenly, rich and garlicky.  The staff was very friendly - this is a family owned and operated place, and they know how to make you feel at home.

The menu includes wood-fired oven baked pizzas, some pretty standard fare of soups, appetizers and salads, a good selection of pastas, and a handful of fabulous-sounding main dishes - veal, chicken, shrimp, eggplant, take your pick.  Many of them featured mushrooms, and nearly all of them sounded scrumptious, which made it really hard to decide.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 1/11/05

I need a gyro
I’m holding out for a gyro ‘till the morning light...

OK, I'm reaching a bit.  However, a good gyro will make up for a lame parody any day... and a couple of weeks ago, Hubby-head and I tried a new Greek restaurant that cropped up in a nearby strip mall a couple of months ago, in hopes of finding just that.

JT Gyros is located in the former home of a BBQ restaurant on the northeast corner of 35th Avenue and Greenway.  The new proprietors appear to have taken some pains to redecorate - the carpet, paint and tables appear to be fresh and brand new, if a bit on the generic side.  Aside from the name of the place, your biggest clues that this is a Greek restaurant are the menu above the counter, featuring full color photos of a variety of Mediterranean specialties, and the atmospheric music pouring from the speakers.  (Note, if you stay long enough to eat in the restaurant, you may notice that the atmospheric music appears to be one long CD track on endless repeat.  Here's hoping the management springs for a few new CDs for variety's sake.)

The photographic menu board includes short descriptions of the main dishes, which - along with the photos - helps a lot for folks who haven't branched out into many Greek dishes.  You have your standard gyros (and chicken gyros), kabobs, and hummus... but without the assistance I'd never have had a clue what falafel was (and how intriguing it looks).  Tabbouli, baba ghanouj, dolmas, spanakopita... the menu is exotic and interesting - and as a bonus, each menu item is numbered for those who don't have the guts to try to pronounce the names of the dishes.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 1/2/05

In my various and sundry voyages down Bell Road in Phoenix, I happened upon a place called Ollie's Omelette House.  From the outside, it appeared to be a family restaurant type of deal, and of course one would assume that they sold... well, omelettes.  This sounded intriguing and I'd been saving this place for a day when I was really craving breakfast-y food on one of our Sunday afternoon restaurant jaunts.

Luckily, they DO sell omelettes.  Fifty-one different kinds.  And?  They're great.

Adventures in Phoenix Food x3

We have been remiss.  For the last couple of weeks, our weekly forays into trying new restaurants in the  Metro Phoenix area have been put on hold for various reasons, but we have three restaurant reviews that Hubby-head and I just haven't written and posted.  In the interest of a fresh start in the new year, I'll give you a quick rundown as best I can recall.

For the week of  11/14/04 (I think...), we were looking for something fast and easy on a Tuesday evening, and decided to check out a little Chinese place tucked into a nearby strip mall:  Golden Rice Express.  The atmosphere - not impressive.  The menu was fairly extensive, however, and the items we selected were quite tasty.  We started out with crab puffs - as you may recall, my baseline standard for judging a new Chinese restaurant is the crab puffs.  Had to try them.  They were tasty - a bit skimpy on the filling, but very cream-cheesy and with nice puffy fried wrappers.  Hubby tried their General Tsu's chicken (apparently an alternate name for "General Tzo's chicken", which we've had at other restaurants).  This was not available in a small portion size, and when they brought it out, we were astounded.  There was a full plate of rice, along with a full plate of the chicken and sauce, garnished with about 2 cups of broccoli florets.  Really.  I had the lemon chicken, which was superior.  The chicken was a good quality breast, fried crispy and sliced, and the sauce was not too tangy but not too sweet.  A word of advice: If you can get the smaller portion size, go for it.  If not, plan to share.  Or make room for a lot of leftovers.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 11/7/04

The Hubby-head and I awoke Sunday morning to an overcast, drizzly, mild day in Phoenix. I must say, I love days like this - we get far too few of them in the desert, and I relish each and every one of them. Unfortuately, this spelled doom for our church picnic and softball game, which has been rescheduled... on the bright side, the cancellation made it much easier to continue with our Sunday afternoon tradition of trying something new.

On Friday night, while waiting outside the local Hometown Buffet before our church women's meeting, I had spied a restaurant across the shopping plaza that I had not noticed before, so Hubby-head and I indulged our curiosity on Sunday and headed to Jan's European Restaurant and Bar.

The menu is primarily Russian and Polish, with a smattering of other Euro cuisine - borscht and samsa, gyros and goulash, stroganoff and pierogies, dolma and blintzes... it all looked interesting and pretty filling. After some deliberation, the Hubby-head and I settled on lamb samsa, Hungarian goulash, and meat pierogies.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 10/31/04

This week, we flipped a coin between either Blue Agave Mexican Cantina or Kona Grill, and ended up going to Blue Agave.

I don't think either choice would be terribly disappointing considering how much we hear about both places from the on-air personalities on KTAR-AM, but I was not only not disappointed by Blue Agave, I was even pleasantly surprised beyond my already-high expectations.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 10/17/04

Just so you know, for the last ten years or so, my baseline standard for judging a Chinese food restaurant has been their crab puffs. 

A week ago last Sunday, the Hubby-head and I wandered down to a new Chinese buffet near our church, and you can bet the first thing I tried off of the buffet line was their crab puffs. They were a bit stingy on the filling, but since it was an all-you-can-eat situation, I'll forgive them that.  The important part is really the flavor and texture of the filling anyway, and that was excellent: creamy, with plenty of crab.  New China SUPER BUFFET!!! (no website available) passes the Songstress7 Crab Puff Test, and therefore I can move on with this review.  Heh.

New China SUPER BUFFET!!! (sorry, the phrase "super buffet" just screams for all-caps and multiple exclamation points) appears to be a common name for this sort of place - I cannot tell for sure whether this restaurant (located at 7th Avenue and Bell Road) is related to any of the others of the same name, but I'm relatively sure it's not related to the New China in Mesa, which has a .PDF menu posted on the Phoenix New Times dining guide.  This place does not have a menu.  It's all buffet, all the time, and it's pretty good stuff.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 10/10/04

Because of our aforementioned electrical problems, we spent last Saturday night in a hotel near our church in order to get a night together in a big comfy bed and a hot shower at our own pace before service on Sunday morning.

We stumbled upon a new place that's been right by the church as long as we've been going there that we've mostly ignored but decided to hit up because of its proximity.  Boy, were we missing out all this time.  As Songstress pulled the car into its parking space, we mused something along the lines of "Hey, maybe this place will have a bunch of fancy gourmet bagels and some spiffy cream cheeses."  Turns out the place is called Bagel Gourmet, and I must say we weren't let down on either count.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 10/3/04

During my last two years of high school and off and on during college, I spent a good amount of time at my friend Anji's house.  Eating at her home was always an adventure, because of the multi-cultural household: her father is from India, and her mother is from Puerto Rico.  I was a pretty picky eater at the time, but I do recall trying some of her dad's dishes.  Since then, I really haven't gone out of my way to eat Indian food, but since I have fond memories - and have become much less picky in recent years - the Hubby-head and I decided that today was the day to venture out for Indian cuisine.

A little online research led me to the Arizona Republic's "Best Indian Food" pick for 2002 and 2003, which happens to be located three miles from home: Maharaja Palace.  Hubby-head and I arrived after church, ravenous and (at least I was) a little trepidacious about picking something off of a relatively unknown menu.  Lucky us, as we discovered when we approached the storefront, Maharaja Palace has a lunch buffet.

Adventures in Phoenix Food, 9/26/04

In our last episode, our brave culinary adventurers tried to experience the fabulous first-rate fascination that is fondue, but were thwarted by the restaurant's eeeeeeevil hours of operation.  Will they finally fonduify?  Find out NOW.....

The Melting Pot was open this time!  Yaaaayyyyy!  We brave adventurers sallied forth toward the great unknown, which turned out to be a mellow, cozy little place.

Big-band and Rat Pack music streamed from the speakers, and muted lighting illuminated decor that was as warm and rich as the cheese fondue.  Did I mention they had cheese fondue?