For years, two Australian mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP, have sought to build a massive copper mine in Oak Flat, a region of the Tonto National Forest east of Phoenix that is considered sacred by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and other regional Native American tribes. The proposal, which was approved by Congress in 2014, involves swapping 2,422 acres of federally protected forest land in that area for over 5,000 acres of private land and constructing a roughly mile-wide crater to extract copper deposits located underneath Oak Flat. Critics of the project argue that it will be an environmental disaster and decimate indigenous sacred sites.
The Global Ambassador Hotel
The Global Ambassador Hotel Will Have a Huge Rooftop Restaurant
Sam Fox, the restaurateur behind Fox Restaurant Concepts (Culinary Dropout, Wildflower, Zinburger, etc.), is getting into the hotel business. The Global Ambassador will be a 141-room luxury hotel at 4455 East Camelback Road. But with lodging comes dining, and Global will offer five original dining venues, including an 18,000 square foot rooftop restaurant yielding killer views of Camelback Mountain. This will apparently be the largest rooftop restaurant in the state upon opening in fall 2023.
The Tacos Chiwas People Pop Off Cocina Chiwas
Tempe is awash in taco joints. But that doesn’t mean its residents aren’t stoked to hear about Cocina Chiwas opening in the east Valley city sometime in 2022. The owners of Chiwas Tacos, Nadia Holguin and Armando Hernandez, are opening the new concept, which focuses on entrees from Sonora, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa. Cocina Chiwas will be one of the dinin
The Brickyard Downtown
Extended Patios Are So Over in Downtown Chandler
The City of Chandler s City Council has decided to quit the On the Street outdoor dining program, which will forever go down in our memories as the time downtown Chandler restaurants (The Brickyard Downtown, Mingle + Graze, and SanTan Brewing Co.) offered parking lot patios to extend al fresco dining during COVID. While it was meant to be temporary, some spots like The Brickyard and Pedal Haus Brewery have been in support of making these outdoor spaces permanent. But it looks like those decks are on deck to be disassembled this summer.
SanTan Brewing Company
Beer flows into SanTan’s 10,000-gallon tanks through hoses, then into kegs and cans. “When you start the fermentation process, you want no oxygen to ever be introduced to the beer again,” Canecchia says. “Everything is run in a closed system.”
Therefore, the oxygen must be purged. Before, SanTan was purchasing carbon dioxide to pump into its system to clear the oxygen out. “The fermentation lasts about seven days, and that tank is just spewing carbon dioxide onto the ground,” Canecchia says.
During the pandemic, the SanTan team was able to pause and look at how much carbon dioxide was involved in this process both the amount being bought and the amount being put into the atmosphere.