^ I Support Local Community Journalism Support the independent voice of Phoenix and help keep the future of the New Times clear. In our strange year, I, and maybe you, ate most of my restaurant meals at home. I also ate them in parks when the sun allowed me. A couple of times, before a long drive back to my house, influenced by flavors and the desire to try food hot and fresh and still keep its texture before takeout, I even inhaled a pizza slice and an arepa in my car Ideal. But it was the same in 2020. This year I was drawn to home cooking, traditional dishes that provided an easy boost. For me, it was all about those old-school meals that stuck in my mind or someone else’s, with a few major exceptions. Because of this, this list can be more personal than others. For 2020, these dishes were my 10 favorites. Ropa Vieja Fe La Cubana 5821 North 67th Avenue, # 110, Glendale My first bite of Fe La Cubana’s ropa Vieja, melting beef forked out of a compact tangle of scarlet juices, teleported me back to Hudson County, New Jersey, an enclave of Cuban food in which I lived for seven years. My food had been drawn from a warm can under the Spanish of a television that was playing over this proud little Cuban cafeteria. Just a couple of tables. Plain white plates heaped with rice, beans, and meat. A couple of taxi drivers arrive at lunchtime, always a promising sign. This hot ropa vieja, sprinkled with red pepper, ran a line as fine as any violin string made from braised beef: intensely rich, yet light and enriched with just enough garlic. The old Tratto site before being relocated to the former Pane Bianco Van Buran site. Chris Malloy Cacio e Pepe Tratto1505 East Van Buren StreetCassie Shortino cooks lots of great food and lots of great pasta dishes, but none of them beat her Cacio e Pepe. At the old tratto, where I had my last meal with my family before closing in March, on the terrace with cocktails and sun, this was an item that was not on the menu. It’s a Roman classic, classically minimalist, nothing but pasta and black pepper and sheep cheese. At Tratto comes a plate of wrapped long strand noodles, noodles that are skillfully prepared and cooked for a hearty chew, both melted with that simple peppery melted cheese and dripping. Their best pasta, and I think Valley’s too. EXPAND Chef Sasha Levine’s reinterpreted Wellington beef cheek. Jackie Mercandetti Photo Beef Wellington Century Grand3626 East Indian School Road We come to an inevitable part of that list: a kitchen that has now been closed. (Note: the various bars of Barter and Shake Hospitality remain open.) Former Grand Chef of the Century, Sacha Levine, offers a portal to lush, colorful and lively, original worlds of flavors wherever she cooks. With her pedal-down riff on Beef Wellington, she brought eaters back to a cumbersome classic, yes, but also ahead. She adjusts proportions, swaps ingredients: the puff pastry shrinks in relation to the beef, which turns into beef cheek shaken with pork jus. With the help of fleshy mushrooms, the dish sucked you into a cheerful black hole of umami. EXPAND Bite you at least once into this dripping Cabeza, completely naked. Jackie Mercandetti Photo Cabeza Taco Taco Boy’s620 East Roosevelt StreetMy advice to you as you step into the Taco Boy is to breathe greedily but be unaffected by the smell of grilled steak and mesquite charcoal pouring out of the grids. Or at least to see part of your meal beyond Carne Asada. Juan Cornejo and Juan Cornejo Jr. rock other dishes too. Cabeza is the top meat in this new classic taqueria in my opinion. Dripping beef hams (“the filet mignon of the head,” says Juan Jr.) collapse into intoxicating tenderness during a five-hour stew. This fatty meat is made for the thin, pan-heated flour tortillas that Sonora’s father-son team brings up. EXPAND These noodles are more colored than most in town. Jackie Mercandetti Photo Wok-fried Chow My Sherpa Kitchen Although now closed, Sherpa Kitchen was my new favorite restaurant of 2020. Subash and Chandra Yadav had a great thing and luckily they have a new Nepalese venture kitchen. Subash’s wok-fried chow mean was iconic for a short time. A pile of udon noodles cooked to leave a good bite accented with more types and colors of hyperlocal vegetables than I could see. The spiciness of this pasta had a rare finesse: strong, but agile and fruity, balanced, energizing, but also anchored in such a way that you can enjoy the freshness of purple cabbage, red pepper, many types of carrots and more. EXPAND Meatwala delivery for very hot grill grates. Chris Malloy Chicken Malai and Hariyali Meatwala PHXI In the summer, former Blue Hound chef Dushyant Singh audibly called a pandemic and turned to a home delivery business selling Indian meat. When you order Meatwalla, you will receive a grill-ready package with chicken legs, beef kebabs and / or lamb. You can use these to add side dishes like daal and pickled red onions. The night I ordered a package, I lit my grill and got to work. Singh’s yogurt-based marinades are forgiving. I may have overcooked my chickens a bit, but every juicy bite was shaped by the taste of the animal, the special cut, Singh’s sharp but rounded flavors and its ground, roasted spices. The Chachapa in Que Chevere in downtown Mesa. Jackie Mercandetti Photo Cachapa Que Chevere142 West Main Street, Mesa The above picture shows Que Cheveres Cachapa stuffed with beef. I prefer this stellar corn pancake without the meat. If you just order it, you get a clear feeling of how much magic there is in the subtle interplay of corn, milk and cheese. The slightly sweet pancake is in the shape of an omelet, thick, folded and melted cheese. Made from milk, both cornmeal and fresh corn and flour, the pancake packs layers and layers of corn, its earthiness subdued, its sweet smells elongated and merged with those of the milk. Big bonus: there is creamy, melted Queso Mano in almost every bite. EXPAND The Kaeng Hang Lay by Alex and Yotaka Martins Lom Wong pop-up. Lom Wong Kaeng Hang Lay Lom WongIn the world of pop-up takeaways, there’s nothing like Alex and Yotaka Martin’s Lom Wong. The two center the unfiltered flavors of the regions of Thailand, often those of the north, and usually contain ingredients and / or dishes that are difficult to find elsewhere in the valley. Your kaeng hang lay is amazing. Pork belly pieces have so much aromatic zap that they almost knock your head to one side. The dish is endlessly rich in a galaxy of fragrant plants and the soulful leakage of pork fat. Martin spent hours grinding the dish’s chili paste – just one of many ingredients. Others include ginger, tamarind, and fermented garlic, all of which merge into a piercing song of a distant place. EXPAND Eat your mutton sandwich on the grass with an ice-cold glass of Sedona sunset … a very good idea. Chris Malloy Mutton Sandwich Emerson Fry Bread In the early days of the pandemic, the Emerson Fry Bread food truck abandoned its hike to regularly park at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center. And so it began to gain cult status with its new Navajo mutton sandwich made by owners Loren Emerson and Roxanne Wilson, the latter Diné. You build it on a lumpy, light brown pillow made of warm, unfolded deep-fried bread. The next thing is grilled mutton – seasoned with nada, but salt and pepper, meat straight from the leg. Onions and hatch chillies are showered on top, baked potatoes and a corn cob segment are placed along the edge. The sandwich is bare, with chewing, history, rare warmth, and deep animal flavor. Expand Kai’s Pee Posh Garden. Jackie Mercandetti Photo Dinner at the Quay Quay Restaurant5594 West Wild Horse Pass Boulevard, Chandler Before the first rumor of a shutdown surfaced, I ate at the quay. It’s hard to break this food down into parts considering how its ideas, ingredients, and flavors flowed, so I’ll treat it as a whole. It opened with blue corn from Ramona Farms, killed by frost before harvest, rescued by Chef Ryan Swanson, fried until crispy and perched in huitlacoche with pickled shallots. It went from creamy bison and bone marrow crème brulée to scallop sausages to octopus in a desert-glorifying sauce of wolfberries and chiltepines to a course that you just smelled and other places near and far and finally remembered, now what Earlier times was possible. Editor’s Note: This article has been updated from its original version. Keep Phoenix New Times Free … Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we want it to stay that way. We offer our readers free access to concise coverage of local news, food and culture. We produce stories about everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with bold reporting, stylish writing, and staff who have won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Feature Writing Award to the Casey- Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with the existence of local journalism under siege and the setbacks in advertising revenues having a bigger impact, it is now more important than ever for us to raise funds to fund our local journalism. You can help by joining our “I Support” membership program which allows us to continue to cover Phoenix without paywalls. Chris Malloy, former food editor and current food critic at Phoenix New Times, has written for various local and national outlets. He’s been scrubbing pots in a restaurant kitchen, graduating from cheese, harvesting garlic in Le Marche, and filling pasta like Cappellacci with chicken liver. He writes reviews, but also narrative stories on the edge of the food world.
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