at the time, the only product was wild Maine blueberry jam. Hawkins took over in 2008, and today, she offers jams, jellies, pickled products, and syrups, using mostly local ingredients and Grandma’s recipes. We keep our kitchen stocked with the prickly pear jelly and the bread-and-butter pickles by snapping them up when we spy them at local farmers’ markets. But the crown jewel of the lineup is the fig jam. Made with figs, lemons juice, sugar, citric acid, and pectin, it’s got just the right tex- ture (not too thick, not too thin), flow, and sweetness. You can also find Cotton Coun- try Jam products locally at Woods & Whites, Sphinx Date Co., Noble Eatery, and Pane Bianco. EEEEE Bagelfelds 602-772-6229 bagelfelds.com There is a tragic dearth of good bagels in Phoenix. Luckily, we’ve got Bagelfelds, whose bagels, which are marketed as Brooklyn-style bagels, are phenomenal. Biting into one of these fresh, chewy every- thing bagels smothered in a garlic pepper smear is a borderline New York experi- ence; it’s even better when you know you have more bagels in your paper bag since you splurged on a dozen. The menu in- cludes flavors like fennel seed and golden raisin, and sea salt, and you’ve also got cream cheese options like lemon herb and honey brown butter. They don’t have a for- mal storefront, but you can get your Bagelf- elds fix at stands at Uptown Farmers’ Market, Downtown Phoenix Public Mar- ket, Stoop Kid at The Churchill, and Nel- son’s Meat + Fish. EEEEE Berry Divine Acai Bowls 2816 North 16th Street 602-218-6372 And other Valley locations berrydivineacai.com 194 It’s true that acai bowls can be similar, with basic ingredients that are hard to get wrong. They can also be masterpieces of acai goodness topped with the freshest fruit and granola, like those you’ll find at Berry Divine Acai Bowls. A small Arizona chain started by Sedona resident Todd Shreve, Berry Divine has five locations, in- cluding our favorite on 16th Street near Barrio Café. Our obsession began on a long, late work night when a colleague in- troduced us to the idea of an acai bowl for dinner. Berry Divine does the classic bowl Rainbow Donuts 1347 East McDowell Road 602-256-7404 rainbow-donuts.business.site Since spots like Portland, Oregon’s iconic Voodoo Doughnuts opened in 2003, the game has changed for the oft-one-holed pastry; a slew of spots around the globe have gotten super-creative with their in- terpretations. That’s all well and good, but sometimes a simple fried dough offering satisfies the doughnut craving like no other. Rainbow Donuts isn’t trying to rein- vent the wheel, so to speak. This old- school joint is just concerned with dropping delectable pastries on the daily. Glazed, raised, filled, plain, and sprinkled are mostly what you’ll find in their lengthy glass case. The buttermilk bars are excep- tional, too, but if you arrive at Rainbow too far past sunrise, they will have long been that we like just right: photogenic straw- berry slices, blueberries, and bananas topped with granola and honey, a dash of protein powder, and drips of honey. They’ve got a full menu of fancier bowls and will customize them however you want. The 16th Street location is more ur- ban-style, with limited seating inside and an outdoor patio adjacent to a tiny parking lot. Whenever we eat here, we have the same thought: Health food shouldn’t be this tasty. At Berry Divine, though, it somehow is. EEEEE Mary Coyle Ol’ Fashion Ice Cream 2302 North Central Avenue 602-626-5996 marycoyle.net We admit it: Mary Coyle isn’t the only place in town we eat ice cream. But that’s only because we keep trying to find an ice cream we like better. And we keep failing. It might be that no one else in town has mastered maple walnut, or that no other confectioner has even bothered to attempt salted caramel cashew (a life-changing ice cream flavor in case you’re looking for a new you). Or maybe it’s just that the late Mrs. Coyle’s ice cream recipes are the very best (exactly how much butterfat is in this stuff, anyway?). Every spoonful of Mary Coyle is made in-house, and made as if but- ter pecan, pistachio, rocky road, and mint chocolate chip are the only things that re- ally matter in life. Which, at least at Mary Coyle’s place, they kind of are. EEEEE sold out. Delicately dense and subtly sweet with a tinge of nutmeg, these hearty bars are enough of a reason to put this shop on your route. EEEEE Breezy Pop breezypop.com Ice pops in a plastic tube, known as bolis in Mexico, reach a local height with Breezy Pop, available at farmers’ markets in Gil- bert and uptown Phoenix. A Breezy Pop is a stout, round ice column that, squeezed solid and freezing onto your tongue, ex- plodes with flavor. Brandon Ornelas and fellow family members use their abuela’s recipe to create Latin American-inspired bolis that go beyond the usual suspects and include passionfruit, soursop, and a creamy horchata. Each is made with fresh juice extracted from actual fruit. At $20 for 10, Breezy Pop is reason enough to lug a cooler or insulated shopping bag to the market. EEEEE Zak’s Chocolate 6990 East Shea Boulevard, #116, Scottsdale 480-607-6581 zakschocolate.com This small-batch craft chocolate shop, owned by the husband-and-wife team Jim and Maureen Elitzak, started as one of Maureen’s hobbies but now creates award- winning bars and bonbons from ethically sourced cacao beans. Check out the brownie flights for sure, but our fave is the award-winning white chocolate bar. Made from only three ingredients (organic cane sugar, cocoa butter, and whole milk pow- der), it tastes better than any white choco- late you’ve ever had. The secret? They don’t filter out the solids in the cocoa but- ter. The result? A luscious, caramelly flavor that’ll have you hiding this bar away from your family members. EEEEE Pop’s Exotics 423 North Country Club Drive, #41, Mesa 602-761-0720 popsexotics.com The best lemons-into-lemonade story we’ve heard in a while belongs to Michael Minnis, who opened a business in the same Mesa strip mall where he was once ordered by the state to submit urine tests for a drug arrest. “I had to piss at the TASC [Treatment Assessment Screening Center] office next door,” Minnis says, “and I saw this building for rent.” His store, originally called the Soda Pop Stop, has evolved from a utilitarian storefront that peddled soda, bottled water, and snacks to the TASC’s pee-in-a-cup crowd to a Valley destination for rare and hard-to-find sodas and snacks. Pop’s Exotics, as it’s now known, services a growing subculture that will pay a pre- mium for white peach Sunkist from China, honey chili Doritos from South Korea, squid-flavored Lays from Thailand, and ketchup-flavored Cheetos from Canada. It’s also a go-to for what Minnis calls “nos- talgics” and what some of us refer to as granny-candy: Clark Bars, Chick-o-Sticks, Sixlets. Minnis has also distinguished himself as a savvy internet marketer. He had a few posts blow up earlier this year on TikTok, where he has 125,000 follow- ers and counting. EEEEE Share Tea 21001 North Tatum Boulevard, #36-1230 602-800-7869 140 North Arizona Avenue, #107, Chandler 480-588-2181 sharetea.us The lines are always long at Share Tea. Don’t worry, though: the orders are taken quickly, and within a few minutes, your whole crew will be slurping that sweet boba. A bestseller is the Pearl Black Milk Tea, with boba that’s soft and not too chewy and a sweetness level custom-made to match your preferences. We also recom- mend the Happy Family, which boasts five toppings — red bean, nata de coco, normal pearls, mini pearls, and pudding — in one boba drink. If the mood is for something not-so-milky, an alternate option is mango or peach mojito. You’ll find yourself want- ing to come back for more boba, and good news: Repeat customers are rewarded with a stamp card where you get one on the house after buying 10 drinks. EEEEE Futuro 909 North First Street 602-730-3227 instagram.com/futurocoffee Inside a room that feels like being enclosed in a box of glossy computer paper, Jorge Ig- nacio Torres oversees the most vibrant cof- fee program in Phoenix. Futuro exists inside Palabra, the multipurpose down- town space that also houses the eatery Pas- ado, a hair salon, and rotating displays of up-to-the-minute avant-garde art. The cof- fee, much of it single-origin, pushes new limits creatively, making you reconsider BEST OF PHOENIX 2021 | WWW.BESTOFPHOENIX2021.C0M | SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 f o o d & dr i nk B E S T IC E P OP S B ES T BO B A B ES T I C E C REAM B ES T C HO CO LA T E B ES T CO FFE E HO USE B E S T B A G E LS B E S T D O UGHN U T S B ES T O B SC U RE T REA T S B E S T A C AI B O WL
