▼ Café A Valley Mexican Classic Presses Refresh The stars may align at this progressive hotel restaurant BY CHRIS MALLOY R ecently, unexpectedly, I had a moment while eating at a dark restaurant bar. This was not long after using crisp, greasy tortilla chips to shovel a sur- prisingly pleasant mild salsa into my mouth. But then I had to stop with the chips. I was here for a two-pound smoked beef short rib, after all. I was sipping sotol when my plate came: two stark bones clad with deeply burnished beef, one propped on the other, both looking cut from the femur of a mast- odon. I knifed into the glacier-like slab. The flesh parted as if it were an omelet. The music was fast. Strings. Drums. Howling voices. Made for that first rush of hickory-perfumed beef, which was webbed through with hot fat, the flesh melting on the tongue like top-notch shredded barbacoa though it was a thick mass, like brisket smoked for 12 hours. I sipped my grassy spirit, made from a shrub in Chihuahua. It wiped away the beefy husk like a Zamboni. Then I went in for more of the two-pound slab. It wasn’t just intense and fantastically tender; it was brightened by drifts of limey gremolata, by tamarind barbecue sauce, and by dollops of cool yogurt jazzed with poblano. The flavors, the sound, the motion in the dim room! They had swung into a kind of warm harmony. My utopic state descended as a surprise. Not just because I was eating gremolata and yogurt at a Mexican restaurant. Not just because I was doing this in metro Phoenix, where serious, progressive Mexi- can cooking is rarer than dinosaur bones. Not just because I had paid $49 for barba- coa when I could have paid $7 somewhere else. And not just because the $49 version was, against all odds, worth the price. I was surprised, rather, because of what had come earlier: a healthy dose of chaos. The Mexican restaurant was La Haci- enda, one of the many immodestly priced SKIP A FORGETTABLE FAJITA, AN ITEM MEANT FOR OUT-OF- TOWNERS. eateries in the Fairmont Scottsdale Prin- cess. It is old, but newly renovated. Com- pleted at the end of summer 2018, an extensive remodeling has enhanced La Hacienda’s lounge, stone patio, and high- end Mexican menu. The tequila cellar, sporting more than 240 bottles, has been tricked out with more mezcal and fringe spirits. And the food, brain- stormed by Rich- ard Sandoval (the globe-trotting chef with his name on the menu) and For- est Hamrick (the day-to-day executive chef), has a few pro- gressive additions that might miss with the hotel guests from Wisconsin, but should intrigue locals. Most of these live in the new “grill & barbacoa” section of the menu. That said, once in the dim lights and long shadows of the baroquely furnished dining room, you may find a full new menu elusive. In mid-December, there was only a truncated version due to the hotel’s Christmas festival. It took me four tries and two broken promises to get my hands on the new full menu a month later. (Tip: Around big events like Christmas, call to ensure they’ll be serving the full lineup.) New menu open, fingers damp with chip grease, I ordered a reposado sotol. Five minutes passed before my bartender said to another, “Hey, where’s the sotol?” They didn’t have the bottle in question — the menu wasn’t updated. Man. Unless you stick to Mexican and Mexican-American staples like fajitas, guacamole, and big-box tequila, you may hit an ordering snag or two at La Hacienda. This can be frustrating for an eatery where prices sail high, but the severs are kind, at- tentive, and well-intentioned to the point that, to some extent, you don’t mind. Besides, it’s worth some harmless has- Jackie Mercandetti Save room for the two-pound smoked beef short rib. sle to get your lips around some progres- sive Mexican food in this town, where, but for outlying exceptions like Barrio Café Gran Reserva, CRUjiente Tacos, and Ro- land’s Market, old-school Mexican and Mexican-American food is the way. Even at La Hacienda, most of the food leans traditional, with varying touches of ingenuity. Caldo de pollo, chicken soup, has little of the wintry vibes native to chicken soup, even though chipotles give the broth some early dusk. Big pieces of chicken, creamy avocado swaths, barely cooked zucchini, and fragrant masa molded into mushroom-cap shapes (chochoyotes) come together as a vivid whole, like the swirling brushstrokes of a painting. Not many chicken soups are so nimble and elegant. Shrimp and purple octopus — ceviche — rise from a bright, spicy pool. The platter is clean and bracing, though >> p 28 27 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES JAN. 31ST–FEB. 6TH, 2019
