Shit is bleak, dear reader.

But there are always bright spots, and I will cling to them with the tenacity of Ellen Ripley as she’s sucked out an airlock with a xenomorph queen and a P-5000 power loader dangling from her ankle. My will to live defies both the laws of physics and common sense.

Lately, Kid Sister is one of the places that's giving me life.

I’ve snuck into this funky little wine bar slash bistro a couple of times, and it’s one of the most delightful surprises of 2024, which is why I find it baffling that we haven’t collectively decided it is a Very Big Deal. Yeah, there was a quick little flurry of press back in May when it opened its doors, but since then? Awfully quiet. (It didn’t even nab so much as an honorable mention in Phoenix Mag’s Best New Restaurants of 2024, which... c’mon, guys!) Especially frustrating since this is precisely the kind of energy we need — a somewhat unconventional way to make the money work while wrapping a quirky and irreverent façade around some really thoughtful, pinpoint work. It would be easy to glance at the hip crowd, the modern Scandinavian interior, the Jean-Luc Godard film projected on the wall and assume that Kid Sister is the usual lightweight scenester fodder, but that would be a tremendous mistake.

There’s serious talent here. Restaurant Progress, for all its flaws when it launched (y’all may recall my deeply unpopular take on that place), has ironically become a breeding ground for some of Phoenix’s more interesting young guns, in this case Zac Adcox, who runs Kid Sister’s beverage program, and Isaac Mendoza, who slings the grub.

I won’t front as a wine snob. (No disrespect. I loves me a good snob.) But this is the kind of list that makes me wish I were. Adcox’s wine card plays like a Coen Brothers film — a lineup of idiosyncratic characters that in addition to being uniquely delicious are all so very interesting. I don’t just want to drink these wines. I want to sit around and have a conversation with them. Add some crisp Euro-style aperitivi and digestivi and this is one of the rare places where if I have my way, I really need a designated driver.

But the food is where my hardcore geek comes out, and I’ve yet to try a Mendoza dish that I didn’t enjoy.

Broccoli might be the namesake of the broccoli toast, but its soul is a curried puree of honeynut squash that gently smolders between grilled veg and bread. Trumpet mushrooms are a meaty sort (sans actual meat), carefully scored and scorched, set on a sunchoke puree with a nice, oily salsa verde and crumbly pecan seca that makes the dish.

For more delicate seafood, I’m digging on the crab salad — very straightforward, light and creamy, with the pleasantly piquant pop of chopped peppadews and a bit of nutty Manchego snow all piled on a whisper crisp cracker. Even more straightforward but no less delicious is a simple slab of steelhead trout, deftly seared and plated with summer squash, fresh herbs and a luscious, allium-rich soubise.

Restaurant “paella” always makes me pissy, mostly because it’s never paella. It’s always some vaguely paella-adjacent seafood and sausage rice thing that might be tasty, but it's a letdown compared to the socarrat-crusted joy you’ve built up in your head. And yet, the solution is so simple: DON’T CALL IT EFFING PAELLA. Kid Sister’s deliciously un-crusty take on the genre is topped with littleneck clams, dollops of confit garlic aioli and a hefty dose of fiery house XO. It’s listed on the menu as “Bomba Rice,” and I love it. See? Problem solved.

Kid Sister exemplifies a curious phenomenon, where Phoenix's homegrown talent seems to be shifting to taphouses, brewpubs and wine bars, both those with permanent kitchens and those hosting residences and pop-ups. Is it the economics of letting the booze financially support the food? Is it a lack of startup capital creating a glut of young itinerant chefs who need a place to work? Is it simply that Phoenix diners are more interested in drinking and noshing than sitting down to a full-fledged dinner?

I’m not sure, and beyond my academic interest (which is, admittedly, a little obsessive), I don’t much care, so long as it breeds more places like this. Kid Sister’s owners, Casey and Courtney Lewandrowski and Dej Lambert, have described it as a “neo-bistro,” and I like that. It is, in many ways, a throwback concept with a fresh veneer, and if the way to reinvigorate a struggling dining scene is to rediscover and lean on classic formats, however pared back, I’m here for it.

At a time when so many new openings are dull, soulless retreads or ham-handed attempts at scenester excess, it’s so nice to sit down to a meal at a sharp and charming little neighborhood joint that just clicks.

Almost gives one hope.

It’s been a very long time since Something to Doux tickled your inbox, and I suppose I should probably explain.

For a while now, I’ve kicked around the idea of resurrecting ye olde newsletter as a salty side project, just to have an occasional outlet for the more irreverent meanderings that I couldn’t submit to an editor with a straight face. Too much of my twitchy angst is going into ill-advised rantypants social media posts, and nobody wants that.

TL;DR: I need to get my mojo back. This unfettered, profanity-infested little newsletter heals me. So I think I’ll take it up again for a while.

As usual, no commitments, no promises. But we’ll see where it goes.

It isn’t cold. Phoenix doesn’t get cold. Phoenix doesn’t know the meaning of cold. (Hush. No. Stop kidding yourselves.) But I will concede that it is now cold-er, so anybody who inexplicably needs an excuse to go for hot pot now has it.

Judging by the deluge of new openings, most of you need no excuse.

I am about to enter year sixteen of wishing for a basic, textbook Japanese shabu shabu joint in Phoenix, BUT, I am going to set that grudge aside, bend like a reed in the wind and remain thankful for the preponderance of hot pot we have.

Especially One Pot.

I don’t want to oversell it, and I’m a little down on the whole concept of prefab hot pot as it is, but within the subgenre, this is a plucky little joint that I’ve enjoyed quite a bit lately.

Hat tip to David Rodgers for putting it on my radar. Alternately One Pot or One Pot Fusion, depending on which internet listing you happen to catch, it’s a tiny 20-ish-seater on the southern edge of the Mesa Asian District, right next to Pho Thuan Thanh. There’s a markerboard specials menu with a handful of Thai and Lao dishes that I need to explore a little further. I had a mighty nice moo nam tok this week — a bright and punchy herbed meat salad built on slices of juicy pork jowl, seared and dressed to order. But the printed menu is focused exclusively on four varieties of hot pot, with your choice of protein and noodle.