Lauren Cusimano Multiple Locations The oven-baked chicken tandoori wings from Cornish Pasty Co. are kind of a blackened dry rub offering from this well-loved pub. The darkened edges of each wing are crispy, and meat is fall-off-the-bone tender, and the tandoori flavor features a mild kick and a sneaky sweetness. The six or so wings come with cucumber and tomato slices, and a cup of lemon mint yogurt dip, which goes quick.
Editor s note: This story was originally published on July 29, 2020. It was updated on January 9, 2020.
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King Coffee 1020 South Mill Avenue, Tempe There’s something about this pint-sized cafe that we just adore. King Coffee certainly has all the hallmarks of a casual college-town cafe (artwork made by some dude’s friend? Hand-drawn posters for local house shows? Yes and yes). But contrary to the classic college coffee shop ethos, King doesn’t slack when it comes to quality. King Coffee’s staff do good work with beans from local roaster Cortez Coffee.
Cartel Coffee Lab 810 South Ash Avenue, Tempe Open daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the downtown Tempe location of Cartel Coffee Lab has a usual customer base of students, creatives, and Tempe locals with a laptop (usually). This spot offers espresso, filter drip, and other coffee creations, plus tea, pastries, and some high ceilings.
All throughout 2020 since March, anyway a song rattled around in my head: People Who Died, by the Jim Carroll Band. It was a minor hit in the early 1980s; maybe you know it. Carroll, the punk-poet author of
The Basketball Diaries, wrote it as a sort of tribute to friends he knew who died before their time. Some of them met wild ends: a guy killed by bikers, a woman who jumped in front of a subway train. Others left Earth via less dramatic but nevertheless heartbreaking routes. My favorite line goes:
Bobby got leukemia, fourteen years old / He looked like sixty-five when he died / He was a friend of mine. The chorus goes:
AZ Pho & Grill 885 North 54th Street, #5, Chandler
The Vietnamese restaurant AZ Pho & Grill has opened its third location, this time in west Chandler. Menu items include pho and noodles, banh mi, and stir-fried specials.
California Fish Grill 1855 South Stapley Drive, #101, Mesa The first Arizona location of California Fish Grill, a fast-casual seafood restaurant out of Los Angeles, has opened in Mesa.
Cold Beers & Pizza 4222 North Scottsdale Road, #102, Scottsdale Neighboring the original location of Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers in Old Town Scottsdale, Cold Beers & Pizza serves thin-crust and Neapolitan-style pizza as well as Italian sandwiches and pasta dishes. The Square One Concepts restaurant will also offer more than 50 beers (draft, cans, and bottles), wine, and cocktails.
In the beginning, Scottsdale Community College faculty member Danielle Carlock’s sabbatical project was meant to address food insecurity for students. This was to be done through a farmers’ market-style event at SCC, where Carlock would distribute free vegetables and edible plants from the campus food garden.
But when SCC shut down due to COVID in the spring, she had to let go of that plan. Students weren’t on campus. So she instead expanded the other part of the project: the free Maricopa Native Seed Library. Now, Carlock is addressing food insecurity for the whole Valley … sort of.
“My main focus in the seed library is supporting pollinators,” Carlock says, decked out in outdoor gear, speaking near a small, fenced plant at Mesa Community College s Red Mountain campus. If we don’t support the pollinators by conserving the plants that they use, we are not going to have anything to eat.”