24 Feb 16th–Feb 22nd, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | music | cafe | film | culTuRe | NighT+Day | feaTuRe | NeWs | OPiNiON | feeDBacK | cONTeNTs | After all, there’s nothing this town loves more than a giant pile of meat, and it’s the pastrami that will inspire Phoenicians to face their greatest fear: a ticketed parking lot. There’s plenty of space and the restau- rant validates. You can do this, people. I believe in you. Little Pickle’s pastrami won’t seize the title from heavyweights like New York’s Katz’s, and Phillips knows it, but this pink- hued pugilist can go the distance. I figure it’s a matter of time before there’s an adoring crowd, and you bet I’m doing my damnedest to manifest one for entirely selfish reasons. Food this good feels like a slam dunk, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve killed better restaurants than this, and there’s a reason Little Pickle’s fate is still in limbo. The average diner assumes a place like this — stripped to the essentials with no table service and a skeleton crew — is raking it in with every $15 pastrami sand- wich. But here’s the dirty little secret: In its current form, Little Pickle can’t stand on its own. The Katz’s of the world may survive on volume, but Little Pickle just isn’t that big. So, from a business standpoint, the diminutive dining room is effectively a marketing front for a catering service. Stopping by for lunch is all fine and good, but Phillips and May aren’t hoping you’ll preorder bagels and lox for the big meeting. They’re counting on it. The good news is that Phillips is committed. For him, the motivation is the act of building community around some- thing he feels is missing — something he needs, something he thinks others need too, something he can share with them. That isn’t a feeling that fades if the margins are slim. Financial survival and a little community love will probably do the job. So we’re left with the mantra I’ll repeat to any Phoenician who will listen: We get the restaurants we support. Phillips believes Little Pickle will get the support it deserves. I do too. It’s too good not to. But we’ll see. If a game-changing pastrami sandwich doesn’t guarantee restaurant longevity in Phoenix, we have only ourselves to blame. Little Pickle 8 a.m. - 2 p.m. Monday through Friday 2501 East Camelback Road, #40 602-466-7098 littlepickleaz.com Sandwiches $10-$18; Starters and Salads $10-$16; Breakfast Items $6-$10; Bagel with Shmear $3 love to hear about our adventures, and suggested I post the journal online. Shortly thereafter, “blog” entered the lexicon, and I rolled that writing into my first food blog, Skillet Doux, in 2005. I spent a number of years writing in a purely amateur, if voluminous, fashion, both for my blog and a pair of community food discus- sion sites — LTH Forum in Chicago, which I helped moderate, and PHXfoodnerds, which I launched when my family moved to Phoenix. But with the advent of social media, the writing was on the wall. It was so easy to snap a quick photo and write a short caption rather than taking the time to compose a thoughtful post on a discussion board. So I pitched Phoenix Magazine on letting me write about some of the city’s lesser-known gems, in the hopes of reaching a larger audience. I got my hands on the big bullhorn a year later, when Howard Seftel retired and the dining critic’s position opened up at The Arizona Republic. In a little over five years, I tried roughly 1,200 Valley restaurants, sampled over 12,000 dishes, and wrote more than 500 articles for the paper. I needed a break. So I took one. But after a couple of years on the sidelines, I started getting the itch again. What makes the Phoenix food scene special? What makes it special are the incredibly unique foodways we have here in the Southwest — the unusual ingredients, the atypical growing seasons, the influence of indigenous foods, and the culture of Mexico, past and present. And while folks rightly poke fun at Phoenix for being a magnet city where almost everybody is from somewhere else, the resulting mix makes for a combination of tribes who cling fiercely to their hometown foods, and an unusual amount of cross-polli- nation between culinary traditions that don’t always have the chance to meet. What makes it quirky is how the climate effectively turns a major metropolitan city into a seasonal resort town. How its residents aspire to live in a sophisticated, diverse dining scene, but never quite shake their meat and potatoes sensibilities. And how the public’s demand for better, more wholesome food collides with its desire for dinner to be cheap. What makes it exciting is how the abun- dance of talented, creative food folks that call Phoenix home work their tails off to make Love from p 23 Rick Phillips slices exceptional salmon at pop-up deli Little Pickle. Welcome from p 21 Dominic Armato
