Belly Kitchen and Bar is the first restaurant from Instrumental Hospitality Group (Michael Babcock, Wayne Coats, Robert Cissell, and Paul Waxman), and its planned-for March 2020 opening was highly anticipated due to the following Coats and Babcock grew at Garfield favorite Welcome Diner. The pandemic extended that anticipation. Belly ended up opening in November, with Babcock, who heads up the kitchen, having bent his menu to the needs of takeout. This month, though, he plans to swing back to a menu more tailored to dine-in. Most of the dishes I tried, he confirmed, are scheduled to stay.
The restaurant is located in a Melrose space built like a shoebox on its side. Inside, music bumps and the heavy dimness is thinly starred with tabletop candles. It’s a buzzy den of inventive cocktails, surreal art, and dishes that cherrypick mostly from Southeast Asia. Broadly, Belly braids a loose mesh of flavors linked with that region, such as ginger, basil, lemongrass, coconut milk, chiles,
Located at 4801 East Cactus Road in the former Salty Sow building near Paradise Valley Mall, The Mexicano will be a Mexico City-inspired eatery opening in late summer 2021.
Menu items include Mexican restaurant staples (guacamole, ceviche) served in unexpected vessels (the ceviche comes inside a coconut, the guacamole in a scraped-out pineapple skin).
Another menu item of note: the Machetes, 4-foot-long corn masa quesadillas served with your choice of Chicken Tinga, Chipotle Agave Shrimp, Braised Short Rib, and more, a nod to the 5-foot charcuterie boards found at The Sicilian Butcher. Food items range from $7 to $25.
Lauren Cusimano
The drink program will be overseen by mixologist Matt Allen, formerly of The Westin Kierland. The big news: There will be a build-your-own Michelada bar with oysters, shrimp, tamarindo sticks, and more than 40 other toppings (inspired no doubt by the popularity of the BYO bloody mary bar at Hash Kitchen).
You most likely remember Christopher s Restaurant & Crush Lounge, the late but popular eatery and bar manned by the James Beard Award-winning Chef Christopher Gross. It was located at Biltmore Fashion Park for a decade till Gross relocated to Wrigley Mansion to run Geordie s in 2018. (You might also remember the brief Sky Harbor rendition, simply Christopher’s, in Terminal 3 in 2019).
Now, Gross is about to open a new restaurant, Christopher’s at the Wrigley Mansion, next Tuesday, March 23.
Where: Christopher’s at the Wrigley Mansion will be adjacent to the actual historic mansion in a newly constructed building at 2501 East Telawa Trail. The 26-seat, 1,500-square-foot space was designed by architect Wendell Burnett. Christopher’s will offer 180-degree views of downtown Phoenix via floor-to-ceiling windows and a retractable roof. Other features include personal table lamps, a wood-fire oven in view of guests, Soleri Bells (created by an Arizona artist) modified to be
Four days apart in August, under the steady boot crush of the pandemic and the restaurant off-season, two ramen restaurants opened. Both are great.
The first is Origami Ramen Bar in Ahwatukee. Origami is the project Yusuke Kuroda started after being laid off in the spring from the national, reputable high-end microchain Nobu. He came to Arizona and opened a noodle bar Origami also serves donburi, handrolls, a few fried foods, milk tea, and other offerings to channel his reserves of dammed-up passion and energy that built and built in the early, idle, uncertain months of 2020.
Kuroda, an Osaka native, went to culinary school and got his start cooking kaiseki in his home city. It’s no surprise, then, that his takoyaki are first rate. Takoyaki dough spheres cooked on special trays to a brown crust, the rich product shot through with bits of chopped octopus are a food from Osaka. Growing up, Kuroda’s mom cooked takoyaki at home, and the version he makes, he says, channels t
Jackie Mercandetti Photo Pink, red, and regular tortillas from Tru Tacos at Jewel’s Bakery. 1/17 Jackie Mercandetti Photo Cooks shave al pastor pork browned by fire from a vertical spit. 2/17 Jackie Mercandetti Photo