▼ Café | CHOW BELLA | Under the P All Aboard Platform 18 is a bar pretending to be a choo-choo train. BY ROBRT L. PELA T he interior of the club car is dark. Yet somehow the scen- ery passing the windows of this make-believe train is splashed with daylight. It’s magic, of course, and precisely what my friends and I have come to Platform 18 hoping to find. We’re also here, as it turns out, to con- sume cocktails so potent that after con- suming a single drink called The Man Behind the Curtain, my friend Dan an- nounces that he is bombed. From a fellow unfazed by a pitcher of martinis, this is an assertion more unusual than a room full of people pretending they’re passengers on a Prohibition-era train club car. Bored with leftover chestnut stuffing, we’re visiting Platform 18, one of three turn-of-the-20th-century-inspired cock- tail bars at Century Grand, an immersive- experience joint hosted by the Barter and Shake hospitality team at 3626 East Indian School Road. We’ve been escorted directly from a steamy train platform piled with vintage suitcases to a wee four-top just inside the rear door of this fantasy club car. It’s dark enough that, if I squint, I can imagine we’re the wisecracking cast of a pre-code Warner Bros. two-reeler set in a Pullman. Perhaps Sydney Greenstreet will stumble past in search of the clip-joint dame who played him for a sucker. “I’ll have the Mafioso,” our friend Caro- lyn tells Brian, the slim young thing who wants to bring us drinks. It was Carolyn who found this place, and Carolyn who’d sent us a link to Platform 18’s pages-long fictionalized history, something about a rich guy named Pennington who’d col- lected rare spirits and was sharing them now that temperance and Prohibition were a thing. Rebecca orders a Linen Closet, a drink made with things she’s never heard of like hibiscus-infused Cointreau Noir and An- gostura bitters. I want a scotch on the rocks, but Brian’s carefully arched eyebrow makes it plain I should be a sport and order one of the menu’s craft cocktails, many of which have locomotive-themed names (Three Burst of the Whistle, the Boxcar, Wake the Conductor), each of them com- prised of a long list of showy, fermented in- gredients. I order something called Dead Man’s Pocket Watch, made with rye and bitters and (for God’s sake!) soy sauce. Two sips of this stunner render me numb- lipped and speechless. I’m quietly impressed with the club car’s period-correct decor and the caliber of Tin Pan Alley-era tunes blaring away in my left ear — Cab Calloway is singing “Minnie the Moocher” just now — though I miss a lot of what my friends are saying. From what I can hear, Rebecca is con- cerned that we keep passing the same snow-covered rock. “Maybe,” I slur, “this train is on a round track.” “Or maybe,” Carolyn says, “we’re cut- Robrt L. Pela Radar These five greater Phoenix eateries are hidden gems. BY CHRIS MALLOY hoenix covers 517 square miles. Once you add in the outlying towns, we have a truly massive sprawl in the style typi- cal of Southwestern cities, many of which took shape in the age of the car. This means, too, that we have plenty of space to spread restaurants and bars through. Here are a few of my favorite highly-underrated eater- ies that I’ve enjoyed visiting recently. ting a tunnel through the time-space con- tinuum so that time and space are taking place at regular intervals around us.” After which no one knows what to say and so we just sit there, smiling. After a while, Dan admits he’s confused by the quick change of seasons outside our window. Shouldn’t the foamy stream we’re passing be frozen solid, given the great piles of snow we whizzed past a few min- utes ago? I want to offer a theory that perhaps this is a su- personic express train, but my mouth isn’t working so well and just then the car enters a pretend tunnel and we all get big-eyed and stop talking because this is what we’re here for: the chance to get loaded while playing choo-choo. Talk turns to travel — the real kind, involving packing and passports and dread — and right after I hear Dan say “... and then we’ll fly from New Zealand to Disneyland and go on the teacups ride,” I signal for the check. Our allotted 90 minutes are nearly up, anyway. Carolyn leans in to whisper that I may have to help her exit the train. Once we do, we discover we’re still in Phoenix. “See?” I sneer as my friends and I stum- ble toward our designated driver. “I told you that thing was on a round track!” Chris Malloy Pasado’s chile Colorado tamale made from nixtamalized heirloom blue corn. masa. The earthtone plateware, sculpted by Miro Chun, feels ancient but starkly modern, mirroring the food. Pasado 909 North First Street (inside Palabra) This glass-paned kitchen tucked in- side of the futuristic, right-angled Palabra isn’t a hidden gem, seeing as it serves a tight, ever-evolving menu of immaculately sourced and plated Mexican food in the heart of down- town Phoenix. It has a cult following. It should have a wider following and be in more conversations about our city’s best Mexican food. The kitchen takes highly precise aim and doesn’t miss. Pozole hits all the homey, herby, spicy, warmly aromatic notes. Ceviche is wildly fresh. You can sip natural wine beside barbacoa tama- les pressed from heirloom blue corn >>p 29 27 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES DEC 9TH– DEC 15TH, 2021
