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Golden Doesn't Suck, But I Do
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Two things that suck: When my first crack at a place is an off night, and when I miss a great spot sitting right under my nose.
While doing a little legwork on Arabic food a number of years ago, a friend (you were totally right) insisted that Golden Restaurant & Bakery,
on Scottsdale Road in the Scottsdale/Tempe red light district, was
turning out some really nice stuff. So I fell in, ordered seven or eight
dishes, and it was... fine. And I promptly forgot about it.
Jump
now into the thick of the pandemic, circa winter 2020: We’ve burned
through just about every delivery and carryout option I can think of,
and then I remember Golden. And I think, hey, why not.
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And it’s surprisingly good.
And
I shouldn’t be surprised, because it’s practically in my freaking
neighborhood and it was, literally, my job to find restaurants like
this. All of which is a very long-winded way of saying both that I suck
and that you should probably drop into Golden if you’re in the ‘hood.
The
place is equal parts low-key, dirt cheap and awfully tasty — a counter
service strip mall indie with a massive light-up menu board and tiny
little Styrofoam cups of Turkish coffee. You get there at the right time
and the place’ll be jam-packed, though there’s plenty of outdoor
seating for those who — like me — are keeping the indoor stints brief
these days.
In
some ways, the menu is more functional than artisanal. There’s no grand
statement about the refined sophistication of Arabic cuisine. They’re
just trying to cook you a good, fresh meal and send you on your way. But
everything (almost
everything... looking at you, shakshouka) is steaming, well-seasoned and
pretty damn tasty, and a few of the dishes are real gems.
“Bakery”
is right there in the name, so in addition to sweets and pastries that
include a killer baklava, half the menu is either baked on or wrapped in
flatbread, and another 10-15% is served with it for dipping. The one I
just can’t get away from is the zatar manakeesh, its namesake blend of
oregano, thyme, sumac, sesame and who knows what else mixed with olive
oil, painted onto flat dough and baked in the oven until the dough puffs
and steams and the topping crisps and crackles, the spice mix taking on
this kind of electric, crispy texture, like a deep, mossy green carpet
of microscopic fried herbs that almost sizzles when you bite.
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Flatbreads
topped with cheese tend towards the very clean, simple end of the
spectrum, while the meatier options get all kinds of interesting. I’ve
plowed through about half (there’s a lot), and my two favorites so far
are the soujok and the safiha taraboulsi. The former is a robust, dry
sausage seasoned with a direct and aggressive mix of cumin, garlic and
red chiles, while the latter starts with a meat and vegetable base and
weaves in sweet aromatics like tahini, mint and pomegranate molasses.
I’ve
had an awful lot of shawarma wraps around town, and Golden’s is
particularly good. I haven’t done a thorough autopsy and I couldn’t
identify the source of the mojo, but there’s no special sauce here. It’s
all of the usual ingredients, just unusually good.
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clockwise
from top left: mosabbaha plate with hummus, garbanzobeans, tahini
sauce, green chile, lemon juice and olive oil | muhammara
with tomato, hot pepper paste, breadcrumbs, black caraway, pomegranate
molasses, spices, walnuts and olive oil | safiha taraboulsi
flatbread with ground beef, tomato, onion, garlic, bell pepper,
pomegranate paste, tahini, fresh mint and spices
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Hummus
is good, hummus topped with seasoned ground beef is a little extra
special, but my go-to permutation is the mosabbaha, studded with tender,
whole chickpeas and loaded with fresh green chiles. The heat level is
wildly inconsistent and the more it hurts me the more I like it, but
even on its days off it’s a great dish. The muhammara, OTOH, is pretty
much guaranteed to be spicy — a blend of tomato and red bell pepper
studded with walnuts, sweetened with mint and pomegranate molasses and
fired up with an intense, ruddy chile paste. Of course, if you need
something a little cooler like creamy baba ghannouj or thick, garlicky
labani there’s plenty of that as well.
I
haven’t delved too deeply into the kabobs just yet, but the ground beef
and lamb kabob (kofta or similar) is great — juicy and allium-rich,
perfectly seasoned and served atop saffron-scented rice.
Excuse me, there’s a braised lamb shank in my crosshairs.
BRB.
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The Deliciousness of 2021
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Look, I know. Sending out a Best of 2021 list on January 9th
is just straight-up pathetic. But for sixteen years I’ve never missed
publishing The Deliciousness, and I’m sure as shit not going to stop
now.
Back up... that’s incorrect. Per tradition, The Deliciousness is NOT
a best list, nor is it about any other criteria in particular beyond
the fact that it’s comprised of dishes that I tried for the first time
in 2021 and that — for whatever reason — left an indelible impression.
So without further ado, in order determined by random.org, here is The Deliciousness of 2021:
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You
guys, there is something special going on at Bacanora. I have never
been as excited about a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix as I am about this
one, and so long as we’re not too dense to listen, Rene Andrade’s food
will teach Phoenix that it doesn’t know nearly as much about Sonoran
cuisine as it thinks it does. Look, I love a cheese crisp and a goopy
enchilada as much as the next guy, but cripes, this food is alive
with smoke and salt and spice. The pollo asado is (rightfully)
approaching critical mass as the restaurant’s signature dish, but as
many times as Bacanora blew me away in 2021, nothing tops Andrade’s
grilled octopus. Huge fricking chunks of deep golden potatoes tossed in a
brilliant sauce with octopus so light and crisp and smoky with a soft
and supple core. Everybody has a trick for making octopus tender, right?
Andrade’s, apparently, is to cook it longer. Cue collective facepalm.
This was a special that seems to have disappeared, but I have faith that
it will one day return... one day... it has to.
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The
Fat Ox rehabilitation tour continues. Man, are these guys firing on all
cylinders lately. I had a bunch of killer pasta dishes at Fat Ox this
year, but the one that really sticks is the caramelle — a snappy little
collection of candy wrapper pasta packets filled with smooth ricotta,
swimming in brown butter and mingling with smoked almonds and cubes of
charred rutabaga and crisp apple. Not enough textural interest? Throw in
some crisp breadcrumbs as well, and this fish flipping pops. When it
comes to fussy, fancypants pasta, I’m generally a hard sell, but damn...
good is good.
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Lom
Wong continues to turn out the most exciting Thai food this city has
seen from a little residential kitchen near Old Town. Same as last year,
the only question is which dish to pick for the list, and this year I’m
going with the Yam Som O, a spicy-sweet salad of pomelo and shrimp,
thick with the fragrance of fish sauce and makrut lime, and sporting the
chaotic texture of toasted coconut and slivered lemongrass. The only
upside to getting this newsletter out the door a week and a half late? I
get to share — for those who missed it last week — that Yotaka and Alex
Martin have finally found a space, and Lom Wong is moving out of their
kitchen and into a brick and mortar establishment very, very soon. I’m
so flipping excited I can barely stand it.
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What
I love about the new Pa’La Downtown is how Claudio Urciuoli and Jason
Alford have dovetailed so effortlessly. It shouldn’t be a surprise —
Italian and Japanese have comingled in South America for an awfully long
time now. Still, it’s like these two are working with one mind, and
heck yeah, I’m going with the scallops. These fellas were so perfectly
done, deep golden crown atop a creamy core, splashed with lime,
sprinkled with za’atar and topped with a dollop of the secret weapon — a
cool hit of pureed green apple. That I had to share these two specimens
with three other tablemates is a gorram travesty.
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One
of my New Year’s resolutions is to try to spend more time down as
Shimogamo. It’s always been good, but they’ve really turned things up
over the past couple of years. I was already starting to fall for the
place, but man, this dish cemented it. It’s a block of house-made
mushroom tofu, with a gentle, almost mochi-lite chew, swimming in an
insanely intense and crystal clear mushroom consommé. That amber elixir
anchored the dish, but the garnish brought a little pizzazz, a kind of
shaved raw mushroom salad involving four or five different breeds, the
gently fragrant punch of slivered myoga, and an abundance of tiny,
crispy rice puffs. A lot of technique went into this dish, and man, was
it impressive.
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Sitting
on the far end of the outdoor patio on a chilly winter evening, I could
smell this dish coming at about six paces. By the time Stephen Jones
dropped it on our table, we were blanketed in the thick scent of fennel
pollen, and things only got better from there. Grilled branzino is
everywhere, but not like this. Jones paired his charred and flaky fish
with shishitos and a sweet winter citrus salad, added a handful of
crushed Arizona pistachios and finished the whole shebang with a bright
splash of Meyer lemon vinaigrette. Geezum crow, this dish had pop, a
beaming ray of sunshine on a dark and cozy evening.
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The
problem with dining at ShinBay is that I tell myself Shinji Kurita’s
gives you just as much as you need and nothing more, and then I want MORE, damnit!!! (I don’t, really, but... *arrrrrrrrgh*) No-doubters
for The Deliciousness are rare. (I, uh... eat a lot of good stuff.) But
I’ve been mentally saving a slot for this one since September. I know
those delicate chilled seafood bites and slim little fingers of nigiri
are his specialty, but sweet Jesus, Kurita’s nanbanzuke is a drop-dead
showstopper. I don’t have a lot of experience with typical nanbanzuke,
but I know it’s rarely (if ever) as refined and intense as this — little
morsels of fish flash fried in a batter that turns almost crystalline,
then paired with bell pepper, onion and a little bit of jalapeño in a
liquory-slick sweet sour sauce with a white hot vinegary punch. I keep
telling myself I want to try ShinBay in every season possible, but man,
it is REALLY hard not to plan around this one.
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Donald
Hawk has a serious knack for banging out distinctive signature dishes
with character. (No, I am not talking about the Hawko.) You’ve got the
brown butter hiramasa that everybody adores, and his new shrimp toast
was a late contender, but in 2021, his elote pasta stole my heart. A
localized, spiritual riff on cacio e pepe, it takes some devastatingly
delicate tagliarini and bathes it with whatever sharp cheese strikes his
fancy that week, crisp freeze fried corn kernels and a healthy shot of
Southwestern chiltepín. What I love is that with this dish, Hawk resists
the urge to overreach. He gets what makes great pasta great. He takes a
classic, gives it a subtle, unique little spin, and then absolutely
sticks the landing. This is a tremendously mature dish.
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When
we tasted this dish, I started giggling and the friend to my right
wrinkled her brow. And I knew instantly what was going through her head.
The dish was so familiar but she couldn’t
place it. A date- and sausage-stuffed chicken roulade with cheesy grits
and paprikash sauce? Certainly haven’t had that before. And yet, she KNEW that
flavor. And so did I. It might not look the part, but you’re staring
down a plate of chicken enchiladas. Tarted up and fancified, of course,
but the soul of this dish was the chicken, cheese, corn and strong aroma
of smoky chiles. I love it when a high-concept dish hits the mark. And
David Bowman nailed it.
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This
is probably unfair. Is the Deliciousness about cooking or sourcing?
Doesn’t matter, I remind myself. One of the most drop-dead spectacular
dishes I had this year was the Full Nelson at Nelson’s Meat + Fish. This
one’s an overflowing Nelson, if you want to get technical about it.
What, am I supposed to just let those perfect diver scallops and briny
sea urchins sit there in the case? And not only does Chris Nelson source
some incredible stuff, but his crew knows how to handle it. I could’ve
taken a bath in the liquor they left in those oysters. Raw seafood
towers are one of my greatest weaknesses. And this one’s a doozy.
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Distant Deliciousness of 2021
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In
2021, we could travel again! And then we... kind of could? And then we
probably shouldn’t have, but we squeezed in one more juuuuuuuust before
Omicron came crashing down. Suffice it to say, I will not be taking
travel for granted anytime soon. And we did enough of it this year that
I’m breaking my travel eats out into their own little mini Deliciousness
spinoff.
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Dr.
Doux is big into meaty stuff these days, and it’s hard to think of any
chef I’d feel better about supporting than St. Andrés, so on a stint in
Vegas, yeah, we dropped into Bazaar Meat. And yes, my favorite dish at
one of the nation’s premiere steakhouses was a little bundle of
vegetables. Flashy, exotic vegetables? Nope. Freaking leeks. But these
leeks were so good, so sweet and so pure, like gentle little allium
pickles dirtied up just a touch with an ash made of their own tops,
crisp and delicate and perfect.
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I tried so hard to hate this dish. It just screams
influencer bait — the geometric presentation, the perfect pentagon of
eye-catching colors, the predictable mix of contemporary flavors, and a
hashtag (#XLB) that’s guaranteed to rack up the hits. But I just can’t.
The “Five Guys” XLB at Dragon Beaux in San Francisco were so freaking
good. Traditional pork, crab with a turmeric-stained wrap, black
truffles enshrouded in a silhouette of squid ink, a bit of beet to wrap
up the beef, and my favorite — surprising nobody more than me —
xiaolongbao made with freaking spinach and kale. The construction lacks
that robotic precision that Din Tai Fung has, unfortunately, caused
people to expect. But good lord, the flavors on these fellas. And
gushers, every one.
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In
2021, this is the dish that caused me to lose my everloving shit. I
took a bite of the Wagyu toast at State Bird Provisions and I think I
experienced a dissociative event. I... I don’t even know what was going
on here. There was dancing involved, there were fists in the air, there
was probably pounding on the table (sorry neighbors), I dunno, you’d
have to ask my family, who were probably equal parts entertained and
horrified. TL;DR: This dish just fucking rocked, those slivers of
glistening, marbled beef gently melting over shredded cabbage and
delicate toast, all touched with a bit of soy ginger glaze and stardust
and unicorn dew and powdered leprechaun. All I know is that the time I
spent eating this dish was like the missing minutes of the Watergate
tapes — I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I know it was very, very
important.
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See,
now this is a clever little dish. The folks at Pidgin did a kind of
Italian/Korean crossover dish, plying tteokbokki with an intense,
gochujang-spiked Bolognese. It’s like comfort food piled upon comfort
food, fermented chile hum warming you up as a meaty umami bomb sucks you
in, anchored with something that’s kind of pasta-ish but not quite
really, and a sprinkling of toasted hazelnut to boot. Fusion done right,
both witty and stupid delicious.
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Oh
wow, this dish opened up a wormhole between 44-year-old Dom and
8-year-old Dom. I grew up on the taramosalata at Central Gyros, the kind
of Northwest Chicago institution (still there!) where an evening
wouldn’t be complete unless a minimum of three police officers stopped
in to grab a gyro sandwich for dinner. The taramo at Central wasn’t
exactly refined, but it was bold and delicious. And I reveled in telling
horrified elementary school classmates how much I dug on fish eggs.
This year, I was treated to adult Dom taramo, smoooth and light, perked
up with the pop of pickled salmon roe, and served with some sweet
grilled shrimp. Dynamite dish.
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So You're Just Going To Act Like
Disappearing For A Year Never Happened?
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Another holiday season, another year without any fucking pears on my doorstep.
I
love pears. LOVE pears. They are my favorite fruit. And lo and behold,
there is this legendary brand, Harry & David, that is ALL ABOUT
sending people pears as a gift for the holidays. And every year I watch
as food-obsessed friends (you know who you are) complain
about getting box after box of gorgeous pears because somehow, when it
comes to pears, people whose food opinions I otherwise admire and
respect suddenly turn rock stupid. Like pears are good taste kryptonite
or something.
Ohhhh... *snif*... boo hoo, I have a dozen orbs of magical, succulent, delicately complex fruit of the gods and I don’t know what to do wi—
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GIVE THEM TO ME, MOTHERF*@&ER!!! **I** will take these pears that are so twisted and reviled as to be such a burden to you.
And
yet, in all of my 45+ years on this earth, despite all of my hinting
and all of my public declarations of love for the noble pear, despite
all of my offers to act as a rescue shelter for my favorite fruit, do
you know how many times somebody has given me a box of pears?
Zero.
So
you know what? Screw all y'all. This year? I got my own damn Harry
& David pears. And they were cool and creamy and sweet and they
exploded with enough ambrosial liquid to fill my kitchen sink, which is
where I had to eat them because their juiciness could not be contained.
So there.
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This
is like the encore that I pretend I’m not going to do, but every single
person at the show knows I’m going to do it, so yeah, here they are.
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Nanaya Japanese Kitchen
I
hate to double up on wagyu + bread + cabbage, and no dissociative
events at Nanaya, but I’ll tell you what... this was a pretty flipping
good sandwich.
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Two Hands
Dude,
it’s just good. Like a primo corn dog with stegosaurus-like crispy
potato ridges. Spicy sausage and extra dirty sauce is my jam. I know
it’s a franchised chain, and... don’t care.
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Bacanora
Okay,
you want to know just how good Bacanora is? These leftover beans were
microwaved after sitting in my fridge for four days and I almost put them in my top ten. Damn.
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Valentine
It
traded the lead with the elote pasta right down to the wire, but one of
‘em had to go. Still, Donny’s newfangled shrimp toast with yogurt and
salsa verde is just awesome.
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Smoked Kielbasa Dill Pickle Soup
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All Pierogi Kitchen
Eastern
European soups, man. I suppose if I had to deal with those winters I’d
get really good at making soup too, but criminy... this was rich and
buttery with big chunks of smoky sausage and I just loved it.
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Đồng Quê
One
of my favorite Vietnamese dishes, and the best iteration thereof that
I’ve had in a long time — clean and bright and incisive. This restaurant
merits further research.
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Chula Seafood — Uptown
I’m
kind of a sucker for spicy coconut soups, and if you fill them with
tender, barely cooked lumps of sweet seafood, I mean, yeah, I’m going to
swoon. Just be careful to avoid heartbreak — Wednesdays only.
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Pa'La Downtown
Gorgeous
warm beets in a bright ponzu are mighty good to start, but it was that
intense whiff of tarragon(!) that put it over the top.
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Lom Wong
If
you can make me love tilapia, you’re doing something right. I’ll give
Lom Wong another nod here with an explosive whole fried fish, drowning
in a crazy intense spicy sweet and sour sauce.
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Speaking of encores, it’s time for the only year-end list that really matters.
Ladies
and gentlemen, I present to you the top ten band names taken from
actual phrases uttered in the course of discussion food and restaurants
in 2021:
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Number Ten:
Bizarro El Charro
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Number Eight:
Three Pounds of Pita
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Number Six:
Weird Bagel Cult
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Number Five:
Crunky & Panky
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Number Four:
The Uni Decision
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Number Three:
San Francisco Dim Sum Jam
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And Number One:
Kinky Latte
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“Thank you, Phoenix! We are Kinky Latte! Good night!”
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I
have to say, I’m more than a little flattered that after taking a year
off, some of you still seem to care. I definitely don’t have the
bandwidth these days to write these like I was before, but consider it a
resolution to make sure that The Deliciousness of 2022 isn’t the next
time one of these graces (read: darkens) your inbox. I just can't
shake the feeling that even if I didn't miss the work (and
I do), the food media landscape out there is bleak. And the Food
Nerd Army's gotta soldier on.
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In
any case, I'll do my best, but I made myself a promise that I need
to keep. I’ll write these when I feel like it, and I won’t when I
don’t.
See y’all when I see you.
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