Dining Guide from p 35 open, breezy, immaculately Midcentury Modern restaurant is in a gloriously weird league of its own. Arizona is absolutely everywhere, from the wall art to the Melrose sign on Seventh Avenue to the lattes, which contain corn, squash, cajeta, and chiltepin. Blaise Faber, previously beverage director at Tratto, shows off stunning range in his 2.0 role as liquid virtuoso. Somehow, he works heirloom ingredients like Native squash and candied pink corn into a murder’s row of mind-blowing hot and cold coffee beverages. The cocktail selection is just as erudite and original, twanging with simple-yet-sophisticated bangers like a salted radler and an old fashioned that braids cacao bitters and piloncillo. Chef Donald Hawk, most recently of The Gladly, has fine-tuned a menu of wood-fired fare that hums with the harsh spirit of the Sonoran Desert yet is creative and highly polished. Valentine’s food, like its drinks, could certainly be called New Arizonan. Humongous hush puppies are built from fragrant red fife. Avocado toast on bread made from dough that incorporates squash takes the tired brunch dish into eye-opening charred, smoky directions. The steak and eggs come with intensely flavorful beans and flour tortillas pasted with huitlacoche. The potential of this young restaurant already feels limitless just a few months in, and that’s before we even get to Antonia Kane’s excellent pastries. 4130 N. Seventh Ave.; 602-612-2961; valentinephx.com. ($$) Verdura: Verdura is billed as Phoenix’s hot, vaguely vinyl-themed vegan restaurant, and the names of the dishes reflect that: the London Calling, the CBGB salad, and so on. But this counter- service, plant-based eatery isn’t messing around with the food. Popular items include the seitan-made carne asada nachos and a po’boy made with flash-fried mushrooms and served on a Noble baguette. The Goth Waffle is also agonizingly good. Incorporate each element of this dessert into every bite: the warm, black-in-color bubble waffle (made with activated charcoal), the tart, raspberry sorbet, the shaved coconut, raspberry sauce, the strawberry. Looking down at you from big framed photos on the wall, Prince, Joan, Bruce, and Bowie would be proud. 5555 N. Seventh St., #108; 602-283-5168; verduraphx.com. ($$) SCOTTSDALE/ PARADISE VALLEY Andreoli Italian Grocer: At his shop-meets-restaurant in north Scottsdale, Giovanni Scorzo has assembled a wide-ranging se- lection of Italian food, including groceries, pastries and sweets, and sit-down-style dishes. Though not cheap, Italian flours, olive oils, canned vegetables, and other larder gems beckon from their shelves as you wait in line. Under the glass case up front, you’ll find sweets like chocolate-shaped tools, cannoli, and more regional Italian favorites like sfogliatelle and torrone, both strong versions and about as good as you can eat in metro Phoenix. Most people come to Andreoli, though, to eat on-site. The dining room that spills away from the ordering counter is casual but retains a formality (and an element of timelessness) you’d experience at meals in Scorzo’s native country. Though he hails from Calabria, Scorzo’s cooking often reaches from far southern Italy into the north: risotto with seafood, giant slabs of bistecca Fiorentina, the rare Tuscan steak. Salads like Caprese, sandwiches like porchetta, and a fleet of pastas anchor a menu that prizes tradition over change. A white board revealing rotating specials tends to delve deep into the annals of Italian gastronomy. As with any Italian restaurant that looks back in time, the kitchen is at its best with regional specialties and plates closest to the earth or sea, like the simple grilled squid with parsley and lemon. 8880 E. Via Linda, Scottsdale; 480-614-1980; andreoli-grocer.com. ($$) Atlas Bistro: Atlas Bistro is located inside the Arizona Wine Company in Scottsdale, tucked away in a small room with white tablecloths. The bring-your-own-bottle, dinner-only restaurant has been around since 2001, with Chef Cory Oppold presenting ever-changing modern dishes that originate from his French-driven cooking style. Diners may experience a $65, three-course, prix-fixe meal powered by keywords like organic, hand-foraged, local, wild, line-caught, sustainable, and exotic. Courses from this locally owned eatery have included chilled chicken breast presse, Hudson Valley foie gras mousse, Niman Ranch pork belly, and seared wild Nordic halibut from Chula Seafood. Desserts and cheeses are also on the menu, which includes petite beignets, and a plate of soft, aged, blue cheese accompanied by accoutrements, nuts, and toasted Noble bread. But the best part may be the relaxing atmosphere this sliver of a restaurant offers its patrons. 2515 N. Scottsdale Rd., #18, Scottsdale; 480-990-2433; atlasbistrobyob.com. ($$$$) 36 Chula Seafood: Established in San Diego in 2009, this family- owned operation started selling never-frozen fish by the pound six years later in Scottsdale (a second location opened in Uptown Plaza in 2019). Sustainability is a big thing at Chula. The owners have a 68 Hoquiam harpoon boat (aptly named Chula) on which they travel the Pacific waters seeking deep- sea buoy swordfish and other California coast species. But the flavors are why you come to Chula Seafood: the poke bowls, the confit tuna sandwich, the swordfish tacos, and weekend treats like the lobster BLT. Or the grilled oysters, the Mexican wild shrimp, the Thai peanut noodle bowl — we could go on. 8015 E. Roosevelt St., Scottsdale; 480-621-5121; chulaseafood.com. ($$) FnB Restaurant: We probably don’t need to tell you about FnB, the Scottsdale kitchen helmed by culinary sage Charleen Badman. You probably already know she scours local markets for common and arcane ingredients from our state’s popular and marginal family farms, about how she plates food braid- ing gastronomic threads from the Sonoran Desert to South America to the Levant. You might not need us to tell you how into vegetables she is, or how she still cooks in her restaurant kitchen just about every night, more than 10 years after start- ing in Old Town. And probably, you don’t need us to vouch for FnB, because the James Beard Foundation did just that in 2019, honoring Badman with the first award to a local chef in more than a decade. Maybe, too, you don’t even need us to tell you about FnB’s drink program. Co-owner and beverage guru Pavle Milic curates one of the more interesting wine lists in town. It kicks with enough Arizona options to give you, in just a few visits, a crash course in the wondrous vintages of fermented grape juice our state has made — and is making. Milic even stocks up-and-coming Arizona beverage artisans, which he knows in the same way Badman knows our state’s farms and ranches. Maybe, too, you don’t need us to tell you that the tucked-away FnB bar might be the restaurant’s best spot to drink and eat. Maybe you know about FnB’s quirks and lore, its layers of greatness. But we’re excited to tell you anyway. 7125 E. Fifth Ave., Scottsdale; 480-284-4777; fnbrestaurant.com. ($$$) Hearth ’61: When you enter the Valley’s scattered hotel-and-resort enclave of finer dining, you enter a different world. One of the great fixtures and masters of resort cooking in Arizona, Charles Wiley, has traveled this side of our restaurant culture for decades. These days, he captains the kitchen in Mountain Shadows: Hearth ’61. The beauty of Hearth ’61 is that it ensconces you in an elegant, vanished midcentury world of old, polished Arizona comfort. Somehow, not breaking this enchantment, the food is New American with an emphasis on dramatic plating and the restaurant’s namesake hearth. From the hearth come flatbreads smothered with seasonal produce and playful touches, like artichoke relish and smoked cheddar. Thoughtful, refreshing elements pervade the menu and change over time. A pork chop is embellished with spicy peaches and beer mustard. Roast chicken goes nuts with pistachio mole. Cavatelli in hearty Bolognese stays more traditional, though lemon ricotta dolloped in the dead center leans modern. If you’re a fan of eating at the bar, the one in Hearth ’61 is dynamite. The tight, U-shaped counter is paneled with sleek wood and edged by blue-upholstered chairs. It has the same timelessness as the restaurant, only with a bit more enigma and electricity. 5445 E. Lincoln Dr., Paradise Valley; 480-624-5400; mountainshadows.com/dining/hearth. ($$$) Hush Public House: The emergence of Hush as one of the most exciting places to eat in metro Phoenix is the product of many melding influences. Like Chef Dom Ruggiero’s signature oxtail-centric riff on a Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich, molten with cheese and showered with soulful giardiniera, all the elements here come together harmoniously. First, there’s Charles Barber, captain of the classic-leaning cocktail program and the genuine general manager highly visible at the front of the long, warm, rectangular dining room. Then there’s the room itself: intimate, filled with cordial chatter and nostalgic rock, cooking sounds and smells washing out from a wide-open kitchen. It all primes you for Ruggiero’s food. The chef, formerly of La Grande Orange-owned restaurants like Chelsea’s Kitchen (and lately of the tiny Carefree butcher The Meat Market), cooks New American food with finesse, character, and soul. There are the crab-perfumed hushpuppies to start, plus grilled slab bacon, a cauliflower steak with harissa that will haunt your daydreams, and a chicken liver mousse with seeming miles of depth. The menu changes a lot, sure, but what doesn’t change is the kitchen’s stunning facility with vegetables, fish, and meat. Being a butcher, Ruggiero can nail a flatiron steak. Being a barbecue guy, he can smoke mean beef ribs. But being a Renaissance man in the kitchen, he can plate glorious swordfish steaks or ceviche, plus simple plant-driven dishes like hard-cheese-showered snap peas that honor their name. 14202 N. Scottsdale Road, #167, Scottsdale; 480-758-5172; hushpublichouse.com. ($$$) Lon’s at the Hermosa: There aren’t many white-tablecloth Southwestern restaurants quite like Lon’s, a Paradise Valley haven that delivers the total package: ruddy mountain views, a stellar bar, a broad patio sweeping out from a small brown inn accented with turquoise, and, most of all, thoughtful food with deep roots in the Valley and its greater region. The kitchen offers standard and prix fixe menus that go deeply seasonal and lean creative. These bring crudo lifted by pickled plums, SEPT 2ND – SEPT 8TH, 2021 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
