Les Misérables and Dinner at Scratch Pastries in Scottsdale

By Heather Hoch Fri., Dec. 28 2012 at 12:30 PM

Categories: Dinner and a Movie

Continued from page 1

Heather Hoch

Lamb Shoulder and Fresh Veggies in a Garlic Sauce.

Scratch Pastries
The road to recovery after hours of emotional lashings is long and arduous, but if Duc Liao's absolutely awe-inspiring French cuisine couldn't make us merry, there's nothing that could. First off, there's something to be said when you see the man, Liao himself, walking around the dining room asking every customer how their meal was and stopping for small talk in his thick French accent and broken English, often offering regulars free pastries for the road.

For dinner, we tried the linguine with pesto and grilled asparagus, a very lightly dressed dish that, like most of the plates at Scratch, lets the veggies steal the show. Next, we had the roasted lamb shoulder, perfectly medium rare, in a garlic sauce. The seasoning and sauces really add another delicious dimension to their proteins.

Heather Hoch

While the main courses at Scratch are delicious and very reasonably priced, there's a reason pretty much every customer walks up to the counter right after being seated: the pastry case. The macarons are luxurious and rich, especially the buttery salted caramel and floral blueberry lavender. Luckily for us, the macarons, parfaits and mousse sang, even though Russell Crowe could not.

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