Phoenix Food Blog

You're lucky, readers--this recipe was crafted just for you by Chef Greg LaPrad of Quiessence Restaurant & Wine Bar.

Nicki Escudero

Red Wine Braised Beef with Winter Squash "Mash" and Apple Gremolata

​LaPrad made this dish using ingredients currently available at Quiessence, which rotates its menu daily. The dish uses a braising technique, which is applicable to many different cuts of meat. That's important to LaPrad, since Quiessence uses the whole animal, rather than one part from many.

"It's a dish that's reflective of the philosophy of what we do here," LaPrad says. "It's part of sustainability."

It's hard to believe Greg LaPrad, executive chef and owner of Phoenix's farm-to-table sensation, Quiessence Restaurant & Wine Bar, almost didn't make it as a chef.

Nicki Escudero

Greg LaPrad at Quiessence

​The 28-year-old, originally from Connecticut, got his start cooking weekend meals with his father when he was a kid, but his parents weren't too keen of his chef aspirations, instead encouraging him to hit the books.

"I think at the time, the idea of cooking wasn't really thought of as a lofty profession, not necessarily a good career choice," LaPrad says. "This was 15 years ago, so Food Network was very new then, so cooking wasn't as pop culture and exciting as it is today."

Nicki Escudero

Tomato Caper Braised Halibut

​When head chef Matt Alleshouse of Tommy V's Osteria Pizzeria created this recipe, he was looking to put a new twist on an old meal--the hunters-style dish.

Typical hunters' dishes are made in one pot, cooked with the meat the hunter caught. It's a technique that's been used hundreds of years, but in this case, Alleshouse uses halibut instead of a land meat.

"It's almost like peasant food, and to me, that's where everybody got their start," Alleshouse says. "The inspiration behind it was, how do I make a peasant dish appealing and taste fantastic even though they were doing it hundreds of years ago?"

Nicki Escudero

Chef Matt Alleshouse at Tommy V's

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When most chefs were graduating culinary school, Tommy V's Osteria Pizzeria's Matt Alleshouse was already cooking up delicacies at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa.

The 29-year-old, currently the head chef at the newly opened Tommy V's, has been in the Valley for more than 10 years. He got his start as an intern at the Biltmore, eventually moving up to head chef at the resort's upscale Wright's and working with Smith Hospitality, which owns several Valley restaurants and banquet halls, including Stoudemire's Downtown and Bar Smith.

While Alleshouse admits he feels pressure to succeed as a young chef, he says he thrives on the excitement.

"Some days, you're going to fail, but you're going to learn from it," Alleshouse says. "For me, it's about challenging myself. When you're that much younger, you're able to take that time and grow that much longer in your industry."

Heather Hoch

This tasty dish is a dinner menu-only item, so here's the recipe to try it anytime.

​Running a restaurant is a lot like entertaining guests at home for chef David Traina, our Chef Talk subject for this week. He keeps the dishes on the menu simple with ingredients he knows and loves.

Several of the dishes at Liberty Market are things Traina would serve right out of his home kitchen. But one dish has more sentimentality than the rest.

The apricot glazed chicken has ties to how Traina met his wife and business partner Kiersten and is particularly special for him. The two met while catering an event together and the main course was, you guessed it, an apricot glazed chicken.

The tangy, sweet apricot sauce is served over the grilled chicken with a healthy dollop of whipped sweet potatoes.

Heather Hoch

Chef David Traina in front of his big wood-burning pizza oven.

​Chef David Traina seems very relaxed in his restaurant Liberty Market, which is surprising because the Gilbert hotspot opened just over a year ago. It's safe to say that his hospitable nature is the key to his success.

Traina runs Liberty Market with his wife Kiersten and his business partner Joe Johnston and his wife Cindy. It seems the husband and wife team have no issues mixing business with pleasure.

"I wouldn't be able to do what I do without my partner and wife," Traina said. "I always joke that she hasn't started to cook, but if she did, she would cook me out of the kitchen."

Traina says it is important to him to treat restaurant guests like he does the guests at his own home. He has formed two rules to running Liberty Market that keep him on track.

Heather Hoch

The tuna sashimi carpaccio is one blue fin above the others.

​Sushi chef Shin Toyoda likes to keep his dishes simple at Sushi Roku, letting the super-fresh, high-quality ingredients speak for themselves. However, he does admit there are a lot of other sushi restaurants near Old Town Scottsdale that he has to compete with.

One thing that sets Toyoda's sushi bar apart from all the other sushi joints is their variety of four different kinds of tuna. For the Tuna Sashimi Carpaccio, Toyoda uses blue fin tuna that's so fresh you could swear it was just swimming.

Heather Hoch

Sushi Chef Shin Toyoda tending his sushi bar at Sushi Roku.

​Armed with a super sharp sushi knife and some of the freshest fish to be found in a desert, sushi chef Shin Toyoda takes Arizona tastebuds to Tokyo, one happy customer at a time.

Toyoda got his first job in a restaurant when he was 16 as a busboy and has been in restaurants ever since. His upbringing and his 30-year career -- 11 of which have been with the Sushi Roku company -- has made Toyoda very particular about his representation of the cuisine.

"I have to keep Japanese food traditional," he said. "It's my way."

Heather Hoch

Goat Cheese Medallions at Lola Tapas.

​Chef Felicia Ruiz loves using fresh, often locally grown ingredients to create her dishes at Lola Tapas. One ingredient that remains a constant on the Lola menu is honey. Ruiz explains that she loves honey so much because each area has its own flavor.

"People don't realize that local honey actually tastes like the region it's from," she said. "I can use it in everything."

This week, Ruiz shows us her pan-seared goat cheese medallions topped with orange blossom honey. The tangy creaminess of goat cheese is offset by a drizzle of sweet honey over the crisped outside of the cheese.

Heather Hoch

Chef Felicia Ruiz on her newly opened outdoor patio.

​Chef Felicia Ruiz is totally adorable. Okay, we don't mean to gush, but she's that special kind of person that makes you feel automatically welcome and at ease, especially in what she calls her second home, Lola Tapas.

We guess her relaxed attitude might stem from her culinary education. Ruiz never went to culinary school... big freakin' deal. Instead of spending time learning technique from decaying professional chefs, she taught herself through family experience and traveling.

The hangar steak is just one of many recipes taught Saturday at BLT Steak.

​Forget the wine, we want to cook with beer. Not just any beer, mind you, but beer of the tasty locally microbrewed Four Peaks variety. Lucky for us and other amateur foodies, Chef Marc Hennessy from BLT Steak is offering to show everyone how on Saturday.

That's right. From noon to 2:30 p.m., Hennessy is teaching a class full of helpful hints and demonstrations on how to use Four Peaks beer in the kitchen. The dishes will not only have beer in them, but attendees will also learn the art of pairing beer with various dishes in a four-course meal.

The cost is $75 for the class, which includes beer and a full meal. The extensive menu for the event is as follows: Popovers and grilled bacon, panzanella salad, asparagus antipasta with prosciutto, homemade sausage with pickled vegetables, and a spice rubbed hangar steak. For dessert, there will be a grilled pumpkin pound cake with apple-cranberry compote and chantilly mascarpone, which seems worth the trip alone. Make sure to call BLT Steak ahead at (480) 905-7979 and reserve your spot!

Heather Hoch

Don't be intimidated by the Smoked Salmon with a Tater Tot.

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Joshua Riesner and fellow Atlas Bistro chef Keenan Bosworth like to switch up their menu day by day, while goofing around in the kitchen together and bugging their intern.

Riesner is an avid foodie and says he could cook with bacon, fennel, and tarragon everyday. His creative culinary tower, Smoked Salmon with a Tater Tot, has tarragon and fennel (sorry bacon), and as Meatloaf wisely put it, "Two out of three ain't bad."

Smoking salmon may seem a little intimidating, but Riesner guides us through the process step by step.

Cooking is all about the rock 'n roll lifestyle for chef Joshua Riesner. He stays up late, wakes up at noon and sometimes gets to enjoy a drink before Atlas Bistro opens.  His menu is based on whatever he has in stock for the day, and he enjoys the freedom to make a different delicacy each day. Plus, he says he gets paid to drink wine.

Heather Hoch

Chef Joshua Riesner hanging around in the kitchen.

"Sometimes I show up to work drunk," Riesner says, joking (or at least we think he's joking).

Riesner says he began working at restaurants when he was about 10, helping out in the kitchen where his mother bartended.

"It was free babysitting and I got all the Dr. Pepper I could drink," he says.

PETA caused some hullabaloo (shocker) a couple months back with a billboard posted in Jacksonville, Fla. that said "Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian." The billboard had a picture of a heavy-set lady on the beach in a not-so-itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie pink polka-dot bikini.

Really, PETA? Really?

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Understandably, issues were raised questioning PETA's sensitivity and compassion for the folks the billboard makes a jab at. However, our immediate reaction to the billboard was this: Since when is vegetarian food healthy?

Donuts, French fries, and greasy quesadillas are all fine for non-carnivorous types, but we wouldn't suggest them to a dieter -- unless, like us, they are naughty vegetarians. So, to prove PETA's insanity once more, we gladly present our top ten favorite Valley vegetarian dishes that will give you your very own blubber -- with repeated consumption, of course.

Heather Hoch

Asian Pepper Chicken Wraps, ready to be assembled.

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Michael Leung of Asian Cafe Express says each of his dishes have a specific taste, smell, temperature, and color that set them apart from other restaurants. As far as we can tell, the specification for most of those qualifications is delicious.

Leung's finger-lickin'-good chicken wraps are one of the most popular items on his menu. He says some of his customers come in and order them time and time again, refusing to try anything new.

This handheld hot salad, as he describes it, takes about 20 minutes to make from start to finish, making it a perfect dinner option for busy nights.

62-year-old Michael Leung has been working in the restaurant industry for almost 50 years. Yes, your math is correct; Leung got his first job as a line cook at a restaurant in Hong Kong when he was 12. This is probably why he already owns his second restaurant in the Valley.

Asian Café Express in Mesa has a different philosophy than Leung's first restaurant, Gourmet House of Hong Kong, or any of the other restaurants he's worked in Stateside. While still providing authentic Hong Kong fare, which he says is a rarity in Arizona, he is focused on getting good food out quickly and inexpensively.

Heather Hoch

Michael Leung says he's "getting too old" for a big fine dining restaurant.

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Leung's target patron, unlike the business crowd of his last restaurant, is "young people," he says. Located at Main Street and Dobson, Asian Café Express is perfectly located for ASU and MCC students alike, he adds, and as we sit talking with him, there is an abundance of youngsters flowing in and out of the building.

To accommodate the low-income college kid, Leung has made his menu affordable. The dishes even come in different sizes, in case budget or stomach size doesn't permit a full entrée. Leung says he put pictures of each dish on the walls of his restaurant to give his clientele a crash course in legit Chinese food. Why?

Heather Hoch

The Mixed Grill with beef, chicken, and adana kebabs.

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Edip San has been cooking meat with a thirty-year-old secret family recipe. The recipe has wowed everyone from ASU frat boys to the Moroccan prince and princess. And San gave it to us... well, almost.

San wouldn't tell us exactly what goes into the marinade. He admits he's left out one ingredient. Hard to blame him. After all, you don't get an edge over the other Mediterranean restaurants by sharing secrets.

However, we did manage to get most of the super-secret marinade and cooking instructions from him so you can make your kebabs the Med Fresh Grill way... well, almost.

Med Fresh Grill has been a Mill Avenue constant for four years, surviving the wave of desolation the downtown Tempe stretch has faced in recent times. Like many restaurants on Mill, Med Fresh serves quickly and on disposable plates, but one taste of the food shows what sets this spot apart.

Edip San and his two brothers have had restaurants in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, California, and most recently Tempe. In 1983, their tasty Mediterranean fare attracted royal clientele: the prince and princess of Morocco.

The San brothers serve up traditional Turkish dishes such as meat kebabs, hummus, pita, falafel, dolmas, and baba ghanouj. So what's San's secret?

"We use the same family recipe for over 30 years," San says. "Customers realize everything is from scratch and that's why we have repeat customers."

Heather Hoch

Edip San cooks his fresh fare right where you can see him.

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San's food is so fresh and unique that he says they've never had to advertise, attracting all their business through word of mouth.

"It's the best to hear customers say, 'we heard how good you are,'" he says.

Heather Hoch

We wish this picture of Local Breeze's Firecracker Shrimp was scratch and sniff.

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Sid Campbell runs a restaurant a lot like people plan for a party. He takes special care to make Local Breeze an enjoyable atmosphere, because he says his restaurant is as much about the ambiance as it is about the tasty food.

"It's more about the feeling I'm trying to create," he said. "When I go out to eat, I want it to be relaxing."

Heather Hoch

Sid Campbell stands in front of the bar near the entrance of Local Breeze.

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Local Breeze opened up in May in a converted home off of 4th Avenue and Fillmore. Campbell quickly snatched up the location after it's previous tenant, Palatte, closed. He loved the location for its massive outdoor patio, perfect for lounging and relaxing.

Heather Hoch

Chitarra Alla Amatrciana at PastaBar

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Wade Moises says most Italian dishes are region-specific. The local recipes are created by "townies," as he calls them, and they think their hometown has the best food to offer. Similarly, Moises keeps his ingredients local and fresh, which is what makes his dishes so authentically Italian.

Moises says Chitarra Alla Amatriciana (pronounced: key-tar-ra alla ama-treet-chee-ama) is from the town of Amatrice, north of Rome. Unlike most Italian dishes that use pancetta, Chitarra Alla Amatriciana is marked with its use of guanciale.

While similar to pancetta in structure, guanciale is specifically made from the jowls of the hog. The guanciale cooked with red onion, hot peppers and tomato form a lightly acidic but equally rich sauce.

When Moises makes the dish at PastaBar, he uses thick, homemade chitarra noodles for his take on the classic Amatriciana recipe. While this dish is traditionally made with the bucatini noodle, Moises' fresh chitarra pasta is the perfect compliment to this rich sauce.

Many restaurants that use local produce love to brag about the fact, plastering the words all over their menus, windows, and Web sites. But you won't see Wade Moises use hip buzzwords like organic and locally-grown on his menu.

What he does say is that creating dishes from local foods should be the rule, not the exception. As Moises sees it, it shouldn't be a big deal for a restaurant to buy ingredients locally. In Italy, Moises says, regions and towns will have their own special dishes made with area-specific foods, and that's just how Italian food is done.

Moises opened PastaBar in downtown Phoenix in February with a focus on simplicity and quality of ingredients, using locally grown produce to comprise each dish. But his journey to opening his own restaurant took him from biker bars to Babbo, Mario Batali's famed New York City restaurant.

Heather Hoch

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Lauren Gilger

The Firebird, or The Chicken from Hell, at Bryan's Black Mountain Barbecue in Cave Creek.

Chef Bryan Dooley is all about the red, white, and blue, from his food to his music, to his sense of humor. Same goes with the food he serves at Bryan's Black Mountain Barbecue.

"I love American food," he says, "and I just seem to always be drawn to that -- like I'm drawn to blues music, like I'm drawn to country music, I'm drawn to the same, original foods."

But, from the beef brisket and the pulled pork to the potato salad and coleslaw, there's nothing ordinary about Dooley's cooking. He makes a baked potato salad, and olive coleslaw. The meat is all treated with his signature spice rub, smoked over pecan wood and then served with his vinegary barbecue sauce. There's a pulled squash sandwich for the vegetarians out there, and for dessert, sarsparilla floats that will make you feel like you're sitting in a saloon with a cowboy by your side.

Today, Dooley is offering up a recipe that's not on his everyday menu. He nicknamed it The Chicken from Hell, but there's nothing funny about this flaming dish.

Stuff a napkin in your collar and get the hand wipes ready, this one's gonna be messy -- in the tastiest way there is.

Lauren Gilger

Chef Bryan Dooley.

​It says something when a chef names his restaurant after himself. In our opinion, it says something good.

After Bryan Dooley spent 15 years as a chef at the luxurious Fairmont Scottsdale, he opened Bryan's Black Mountain Barbecue in downtown Cave Creek. Yep, that's right, barbecue -- not chilled soups or seared scallops or reduced sake. Just straightforward, impeccably executed, good-old American meat.

"I wanted to do something a little more my style, a little more down-home," he says. Unlike the kind of food that's arranged artfully in a tower in the center of your plate, Dooley puts it in a bun, for the most part. Just the way our forefathers intended.

Not the usual fare for a chef who was trained in the classical style at one of the most prestigious culinary schools in the country, the Culinary Institute of America, which sits atop the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York -- though you can see the influence.

"I come from a whole family of great cooks," he says. "I remember my Grandma and Grandpa...they gave me the same regard for quality ingredients."

Lauren Gilger

Chilled Cucumber Buttermilk Soup with Blue Crab and Dill Salad at Metro Brasserie.

​It's all about doing things right for Matt Taylor.

In the kitchen of Metro Brasserie & Bar in Old Town Scottsdale, his staff of 12 guys is loose and laid-back during the day. But, in the kitchen, things change.

"When we're actually cooking, there's a set way we do things," he says. But, unlike a lot of chefs you'll find in French restaurants, "there's not too much yelling and screaming," he says.

Lauren Gilger

Executive Chef Matt Taylor in Metro Brasserie in Old Town Scottsdale.

​A traditionalist and an up-and-comer at once, 25-year-old Matt Taylor is probably the youngest executive chef around, and he's one of the most well known.

Taylor is a curious combination of discipline and ease, both a risk-taker and a culinary purist. Maybe that's how he got to be the head honcho at one of Scottsdale's most promising young restaurants, Old Town's Metro Brasserie & Bar, after less than 10 years in the kitchen.

His menu includes usual brasserie fare like steak-frites and onion soup, but his favorite ingredients are maple syrup and bone marrow. He is a strict believer in French technique when it comes to food but never did his requisite year in France. Instead, he went to New Orleans.

A Canadian transplant to Arizona, Taylor began his restaurant career at 15, when he got a job washing dishes at the restaurant where his brother was a server. Ten years later, he's running the kitchen of one of Scottsdale's most talked-about restaurants.

Lauren Gilger

Seared Scallops with Sweet Corn and Vanilla Bean Sauce from 98 South.

​When one of Chef Brian Ferguson's young cooks wanted to leave his restaurant, 98 South in downtown Chandler, to move out of Arizona for the first time in his life and cook in Oregon, Ferguson said, "Take-off young man, go see the world!"

"That's what the guys that brought me up taught me," he says.

He's referring to three different chefs -- two in Virginia who mentored him when he was first out of culinary school, and another in Lyon, France, where he studied for a year at Pierre Orsi.

When he was in France, he says, "the chef would bring me to the market at 3, 4 in the morning where we bought fish and rabbit with the fur still on and beautiful cheeses."

"It was very, very eye-opening," he says.

Now, he takes his "platoon" of cooks, all hand-picked from a large pool of applicants, to the farmers' market in Chandler every Thursday.

Lauren Gilger

Chef Brian Ferguson outside of 98 South in downtown Chandler.

​Brian Ferguson runs the most organized, least serious army platoon in town. It's also the tastiest.

Those are his words, by the way, "army platoon." He describes his team as "a very tight, cohesive unit. You don't have to have a lot of explanation or talking; the guys know exactly what to do.

"Heads down and focused," he says.

Of course, his platoon of four young men wear chef's whites instead of camouflage, and they  run drills in the kitchen of 98 South in downtown Chandler instead of in the Middle East.

But they're just as disciplined -- if you ad in a healthy dose of dirty jokes and, oh, umm...cooking. The group of culinary school graduates create the French/American cuisine at this downtown Chandler hot spot, under the tutelage of Chef Ferguson, a Navy vet from Louisiana (he pronounces it, Loo-si-anna), who has a sly smile, perfect manners and a touch of Southern charm.

Lauren Gilger

Chef Deborah Knight in the kitchen of Mosaic.

The travels of Deborah Knight are documented in her recipes.

She's visited almost every continent (Australia and Antarctica seem to be the only two left off her list) and she's getting ready to head off again, when her restaurant, Mosaic closes for two months on August 1st.

The chef, who was an Anthropology and Religious Studies major in college, approaches her cuisine with a distinctively academic eye.

"I get very interested in certain parts of the world," she says, and then relishes the experience of "introducing people to something that may be a little out of their boundaries," with the flavors she brings back.

Today, she's offered up one of her all-time favorite dishes for you to try: a Vietnamese Pepper Pot.

After six years as a vegetarian in Boulder, Colorado and a lifetime of adventurous travel, Knight is dedicated to three, simple qualities in every dish she makes: "Healthy, fresh and delicious."

Lemongrass Broth:
(makes 1 gallon)

10 each lemongrass stalks, crushed and chopped
½ lb. ginger, washed well and sliced
8 each shallots, sliced
15 each garlic cloves
6 cups sake
30 each makrut lime leaves, torn
2 cups fish sauce
1 gallon chicken stock
4 disks palm sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 cup sambal oelek

Combine vegetables with sake in a large saucepan. Reduce sake by 3/4. Add chicken stock and the remaining ingredients. Simmer for 30 minutes. Strain through chinois and adjust seasonings.

May be frozen and used for soup base. Great with added coconut milk and curry paste for curry dishes for fowl or seafood.

Lauren Gilger

Chef Deborah Knight in the entrance to Mosaic in North Scottsdale.

Deborah Knight would simply not make it on Fox's Hell's Kitchen.

It's not that she's not good enough. She's just too nice.

She teaches rather than barking orders, which may be why her employees call her "Mom." And they tend to stick around for five or six years -- an absolute anomaly in the restaurant world.

The chef and owner of Scottsdale's Mosaic has been cooking since her grandparents -- who were institutional chefs themselves -- taught her the way around a kitchen as a child. She became a vegetarian and studied Anthropology and Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. But she decided to take a different path after graduation.

It was, as she tells it, a kind of epiphany in the library -- "at midnight on a Saturday night when I'm doing a paper on 18th century burial practices of Northern Japanese women," it occurred to her that, "I think I'd rather be doing something a little more social than sit in the Ivory Tower."

Knight moved to San Francisco, started eating meat again and earned a third degree -- this time, as a chef. But don't make the mistake of thinking that her approach isn't still academic.