Lured by the Promise of Poutine

Artist Tim Shockley's "American Pig" bin for this year's Coachella Music Fest

My favorite kinds of wine bars are the ones that exist to handle exactly the kind of experience I had at 3Twenty last week. The intrepid researcher that is the Cute Gardener found this relatively new place located a block away from LABART, a gallery where we were to celebrate with our artist friend Tim Shockley later in the evening, as he would unveil his design for a recycling bin amongst other international artists for this coming weekend’s Coachella Music Festival. We needed a place that would flex to our desire for a quick drink, a few bites and an approximate sense of timing.

3Twenty has only been open since June and at 6 p.m. we were the only people there for a while. Because of these two points we were showered with some extra perks as the staff seemed happy that patrons spending real dollars had chosen their place. Even though we ordered our own bottles of wine, the nice sommelier kept bringing us last bits of various grape blends as he cleaned the wine machine as not to waste the wares; a fact that was appreciated by all. They were also kind enough to inflate our table with extra chairs as impromptu guests continued to arrive as well as a child, a fact that didn’t make them wince but had them going out of the way to find special forms of carbonated beverages that she could enjoy.

Flexible, friendly and not-too-serious, we appreciated their grace in handling our band of traveling art types.

I never put too many expectations on wine bar food, as it is not the real reason I go to them. I am usually looking for some casual glasses of vino before or after dinner or some other event but at this one, we chose to sample the menu items after being intrigued by the presence of Lamb and Goat Cheese Poutine on the menu. I am a fan of poutine, which was introduced to me by a Canadian friend last year in its proper form of gravy covered French fries with cheese curds. The beauty of the dish had been how it turned into a starchy pile of nacho-type potato and fluid bliss. But this poutine was a gourmet metamorphosis and not really true to its name. A pile of skinny stiff fries with a pile of shredded, strong lamb meat and two dollops of goat cheese was hardly a poutine but tasty enough nonetheless.

The mussels were a pleasant surprise in their ultra tender flesh accentuated by the addition of ale to the mix, rather than the typical wine.

The bacon wrapped shrimp tasted only of bacon and bacon not rendered well enough.

The chickpeas were novel and interesting in their popcorn-type application but were a bit dry with the hard rosemary spears all over them. The gruyere cracker made the trio equally dry but saved a bit by the plump, hot olives.

Although the experience was fun due to the company, I won’t be clamoring to go back there again because there always seems to be another wine bar around the corner somewhere…although I still haven’t found one with food better than Chef Matt Smith’s at 3rd Corner in the desert.

Pizza Piqued at Pizzeria Mozza

Pizzeria Mozza has been on my list of restaurants to try ever since my friend Kandee would wax poetic about its luscious pies to me while I still lived in the desert. When I finally moved to L.A. I tried the pizzeria’s sophisticated older sister Osteria Mozza first, as it was the setting for my first date with the Cute Gardener. So, I was a little prejudiced with good feeling about the place when we finally ventured into the Pizzeria Mozza in Newport Beach on a recent trip to see the OCMA Diebenkorn show and the Beall Center for Art and Technology on the UC Irvine Campus. 

I loved the bustling joint immediately with its liquor bar and mozzarella bar and a square modern space of no nonsense tables and chairs within. Despite the fact that it was chock full of Orange County stepford families and realtor-type professional looking women rather than the usual array of L.A. hipsters (both kinds of crowds not up my ordinary alley), I settled into my glass of Arnies, Brandini, Piedmont 2010 steeping in the good smells coming from the kitchen.

We have taken to a good pizza-hunting mission lately and have a system where we order a regular basic pie as well as a more complex one to test out in new places. Having already been here before, he suggested that I just choose one that particularly called out to me and he would choose a separate entrée of the non-pie variety for us to try.

I also couldn’t help but throw in an order for salt cod fritters. These soft and moist pieces of fried fish were delectable with a permeable heat in the mouth at first that turned into a sharp, red pepper flake tinged tang on the bite’s tail end. Dipped into a soothing, butter yellow aioli, they were a surprising highlight of the meal.

The pizzette with English peas, ramps, green garlic and guanciale was one of the most flavorful I have had in a while. Zesty, savory, deep and bright at the same time and the unusual combination of toppings was refreshing. It is also my favorite crust of late as it was spongy and firm, salty and buttery, and although very flat, it was able to hold up to the weight of its toppings. Quite a feat in the land of flat bread yeast.

My boyfriend enlightened me to the fact that we Americans have come to have warped perceptions on the basic Panini. It’s not, as we think, a sandwich of flattened, grill marked bread but actually just any sandwich with “small bread” included. So his tuna Panini came in a hot ciabatta bun and although he ordered a braised tuna with capers and anchovy version, we got whatever the chef apparently wanted to make that day: a glorified tuna salad. Perfectly fine with good tomatoes and bits of hard-boiled egg, it was tasty but not what we had intended.

For dessert we ordered the olive oil cake with pine nuts. What actually came was more like a fruitcake, panettone reminiscent with studs of cherries and raisins and other none-too-welcome bites. I didn’t mind. I felt the sweetness went well with the grilled pine nut garnish but would have liked what I originally thought I ordered more.

Although the pizza wins for my current “best” pizza eaten in the last year, I am a bit mystified about the two dishes that came out different for us than what we had ordered. Were the chefs out of certain ingredients and just decided to do whatever the hell they wanted? Is the Mozza brand so renowned now that those in charge feel we are so lucky to be there that we will take anything that we can get? A little presumptuous I think, for an industry where signs go up and down as fast as loyal patrons’ palate changes.  

More on the Eternal Hunt for pizza...

Ditching School Kind of Day at the Cairo Cowboy

I have known Mel since I was twelve and we would ride the streets of the Coachella Valley on my Honda Elite Scooter as I would whisk her around in the summers between junior high and high school to our volleyball practice and her gymnastic sessions. She was and remains one of my lifelong best friends.

We were always very different on the outside. As a child she was a sports girl who didn’t wear much makeup and could fly around the gymnastic bars like nobody else I knew. I was the artist freak with a different colored hair every week prone to romanticizing about France and art nouveau. As adults nothing much has changed, me with my wrap dresses, red wine palate and paint on my clothes and she with her seriously muscular limbs, penchant for long camping trips in the natural world and a lust for beer. When we first reconnected a few years ago, it was a scene of me driving to Las Vegas to pick her up at the airport and then to a hotel where our mutual friend was renewing her vows. The first thing she made me do was stop off at Whole Foods for a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon that she boldly carried through the Venetian pool guard’s station and out into our elegant cabana. Her realness has always been the thing that soothes me.

A few weeks ago, she flew in to visit me and I took the opportunity to try out a new place near my home that was just waiting for me to have a companion like her. I am a sucker for Mediterranean food and she is a vegetarian so we walked to Windward Circle in Venice on a lazy, “ditching school” kind of day in the middle of the afternoon to sample the Cairo Cowboy.

Mel bought a sixer of Coors from the liquor store and we were welcomed into the quaint and tiny place, with our libations and no corkage fees, by two jovial staff members who served us a bowl of the freshest baba ganoush and pita triangles. I never drink beer unless it’s an elixir for washing down hot and spicy Thai or Indian food or I am in Europe and it comes smelling of hearty wheat fields with a blackened hue. But it seemed appropriate to do so while she was here, taking me back to our youth and the adventures we shared.

She ordered a pita stuffed with falafel, adorned with pink pickled jicama.

I had the gyro, which was mouthwateringly tender and stuffed with refreshing tzatziki, cucumber and tomatoes.

It was the perfect waste of a weekday afternoon, the kind I reminisce about often when remembering those long ago carefree summers we shared. Good friends and good food in unexpected places are simple gems in an ordinary structured adult way of life, and are the moments to cherish forever.  

Decadent Dinner with the Deer Hunter

The Cute Gardener and I have started a tradition where we spend a day doing some serious decadent food shopping and then create a culinary buffet to share that same night. For New Year’s it was caviar and champagne tasting. Earlier this year, we took a trek to Beverly Hills for an afternoon of pillaging the fine food offerings and had a Rodeo Drive worthy buffet. Last week, it was taking a trip to the random warehouse open house shopping day at Epicure Imports in North Hollywood to find a spread compatible with a newly arrived Blu Ray disk of The Deer Hunter.

What to eat with one of my favorite movies that pulls on the heart strings and features some of my all time favorite actors like the oddly eccentric Christopher Walken, the dashing and deep Robert DeNiro and a young and innocent eyed Meryl Streep? Why, foods equally rich and poignant compatible to producing the same strong emotions as the aorta-wrenching Russian roulette scenes and dramatic crescendos. 

A dipping plate handcraft from wood by him was poured with three kinds of olive oil and a pool of balsamic vinegar for the soft and fresh baguette. 

Small finger pots were filled with dried apricots, green olives, dried figs and plump, green grapes. 

A cheese plate was laid with an ashy covered Bonne Bouche cheese that creamily swam between the borders of its pungent rind; a hard, cantaloupe colored mimolette (that I had tried for the first time ever in Napa last summer on the Lub Farm); and a soft Epoisses Berthaut cheese in a wrinkled, tangy skin. 

The meat plate contained tart and acidic Coppa rolls; a tub of duck liver pate infused with chicken fat and port wine; and a beautiful slabs of meaty pork pate crusted with extra spicy peppercorns. 

A veggie plate of vegetables from the Cute Gardener’s garden was added to accentuate the meal filled with crisp snap beans, green peas and sumptuously smoky sautéed fava beans with just a hint of warming cumin. 

My favorite dish of the evening was the fava beans, but that is because aside from his luscious pasta dishes, my boyfriend has a green thumb gift of growing the yummiest veggies and cooking them up just right.

The spread lasted almost as long as the film even though the last few bites were peppered with my tears, being the sap that I am. I have seen The Deer Hunter more than any other movie in my life and still can’t get through it unscathed by the need for a soiled hankie.

Bistro 45's Wasp-Worthy Prix-Fixe

I love Pasadena for its charming architecture and old buildings that still have character in an age where many L.A. cities have either lost their charm under levels of seed and decay as in the downtown Theater District or are trading in their antiquated mementos of endearment for the new, technological and flashy. I also love the feel of history that is embedded throughout its streets, home of the annual Rose Bowl parade, and the way whole generations of families will walk down the streets and dine together in a very Wasp-ian fashion reminiscent of old school burgeoning orange grove and ranch land Southern California before it became the melting pot that I do still indeed love today, but for different reasons.

Last night we ate at Bistro 45 in Pasadena for the Pasadena Restaurant Week prix-fixe dinner, an excuse to visit the charming area. The Cute Gardener had already been there and hardly goes back to places twice so I figured we had a leg up on knowing the food would be good. I was surprised at how much I actually ended up liking the dinner, considering I have been to so many restaurants of late and my bar has risen considerably. It’s not often that I enjoy a whole meal in its entirety; feeling like each dish carries the overall quality consistency of the entire meal into on cohesive impression of goodness. I also like places that can’t be pigeonholed by its inhabitants as being a joint serving any particular demographic solely a.k.a. seniors, hipsters, etc. but draws a crowd of diverse diners across age, social, and other classifications. Bistro 45 fit all of these characteristics for me.

The portions here were perfect throughout the meal, and yes, it’s because it was a prix-fixe price portion but nevertheless I was happy about that. The roasted beet salad contained honey yogurt, frisee leaves, candied oats (a nice touch from the overdone walnuts or pecans), cocoa and winter greens. The beets were perfectly cooked and flavorful and the lettuce was dressed separately from the beets (nice touch!) in buttery oil and a salt tang.

The filet of fatty, pan-roasted Atlantic salmon was cooked exquisitely and melted in the mouth. It was served with roasted organic eggplant that carried a surprising caramelization of oil and cumin that was musky, smoky, masculine and scrumptious. The spiced pearl pasta made a nice bed for the fish and roasted cherry tomatoes were hot and plump-ly popped in the mouth.

The Pitman Family Farms Duck Cassoulet arrived with tender duck meat falling off the bone, three kinds of beans with varying textures, yummy peppery lamp sausage bits, shards of crispy bacon, dried tomatoes and fried bread all topped by a heavenly and rich mustard cream that when swirled in, blended all the otherwise biting flavors.

A chocolate “soup” in individual pots was served for dessert. Like a soufflé, it had a light and bready top but the innards were a luscious thick hot and porous pudding of decadent chocolate. I could have done entirely without the extra chocolate sauce or the generic vanilla ice cream.

I liked the fact that as the room got fuller, the waiters turned down the lights a couple notches every twenty or so minutes. The darkness went as nicely with our dishes as our bottle of Copain Pinot Noir Tous Ensemble.

Teasing the Taste Buds at Epicure Imports

What would make two food geeks drive through scathing Los Angeles freeway traffic on a bustling Friday afternoon? A chance to buy exotic, hard-to-find gourmet foods in a warehouse setting for less then grocery store prices, that’s what.

The very quirky little nondescript Epicure Imports warehouse sits in a North Hollywood neighborhood brick to brick with candle manufacturing companies and other industrial spaces. A few times a year it throws its doors open to the general public for a warehouse sale. You basically grab a shopping cart from their bizarre collection of mix and match carts from various grocery brand stores like Ralphs, Albertsons, and VONS in the Southern California area and then you go to town walking down the aisles in two separate spaces – one for dry foods that can be stored at room temperature and one for cold foods that need refrigeration.

The Cute Gardener and I were on the hunt for palette pleasing items for our personal pantries as well as the makings of a deluxe Saturday night supper to share. We came away with an illustrious bounty that included the following items:

FOR HIM
Organic Olive Oil
Coppa

Rice Sushi in a 15-pound bag

Avocado Oil

Almond Oil

Soft baguette

Bonne Bouche cheese

Valrhona chocolate

Mimolette cheese

Olives

Epoisses Berthaut cheese

FOR ME
Organic Olive oil

Raspberry whole grain dijon mustard

Vanilla Chestnut spread

Harissa chili sauce in a tube

Peppercorn crusted duck pate

Duck liver mousse with port

Dark chocolate

Dried figs

Even though the warehouse boasted six cashiers for the occasion, we still had to stand in line for a half hour with our fellow foodie freaks. It was a pleasant experience though because everyone was so happy to be there shopping for their favorite things and finding unique culinary surprises that the line became a big chat parade about various things food related. A gay couple was hilarious in that they kept leaving their line to get more things and one half of the male duo was enthusiastically touting Bouchon’s fried chicken dinners. A woman in front of us was waxing poetic about her balsamic vinegar while enjoying the milk chocolate truffles that a kind sales person was passing around to all of us for enduring the wait.

Nice little chunk of foodie heaven and one of those little gems in life just waiting to be uncovered.

Reggae Kale Burrito Sunday with the Girls

One of my favorite teenage memories was of being at my friend Beth’s house on Sunday mornings. Beth lived in the sometimes-bastardized town of Desert Hot Springs where I grew up in latchkey oblivion from age six to twelve. After I left I thought I would never go back but ended up loving the time I could spend at her house in high school. She lived next to Cabot’s Indian Pueblo museum, which at the time was not regulated as it is today. Outside of her bedroom window was a huge Indian totem head that I would imagine protected me while I slept. Her house and the museum were on a stranded plot of sandy sprawl and wild land ridden with tumbleweed, creosote, sage bush and sand. On Saturday nights we would dress up and stay up late in the desert doing avant-garde photo shoots on the skeletons of abandoned couches and washing machine drums. We would wake up on Sunday mornings, the pillows flaked up with the night before’s geisha white pancake makeup, to the smell of her herbologist mother making fresh poppy seed muffins in the kitchen. Her mother’s boyfriend then, who slept in his van and was a breatharian, would come in lured by the smell and we would crank up the KCRW reggae marathon for the morning. With the French doors thrown open we would eat and sing along with the tunes of a mellow mood and the whistling desert wind breathing through the rooms and hallways. The sound of low-key reggae was forever memorialized in my mind as the soundtrack to good food filled Sunday mornings.

Last weekend for my birthday, seven girls who form the core of my friendship soul swarmed into my beachside home for the weekend. I treated them to a special kale burrito scramble on Sunday morning to show them the gratitude I feel that they are all in my life; these women who know me better than anyone and who love me unconditionally. One of them switched on her IPod while I cooked and the sounds of Bob Marley swooned through my home as I was reminded of Beth’s house and the love that is shared unconditionally between real girl friends.

A simple pan of garlic sautéed provided a beautiful bath for the chopped up tomato and kale. Once simmered down, the whipped up eggs and Parisian spices were tossed in to scramble along with the juicy vegetables. Served buffet style along with “Natty Dread” and the pounding Venice Beach rain, we ate the lovely mixture atop Ezekiel wheat sprout tortillas with black beans and cheddar cheese. In our world, it was a version of a cleansing Sunday sermon morn.

Rainy Day Romance at Le Vallauris

They must have been in their late 60s and it was clear they had been together for a long time when they sat down at the table next to us. We were at Le Vallauris, my favorite French restaurant in the desert, where the Cute Gardener was treating me to a romantic birthday feast.

In the darkened, masculine bar on plush seats with the most attentive and classy, old school waiters we shared a bottle of Chateau Mouton with a perfect pink label. It had been raining all afternoon and the usual tree filled courtyard was not available so we sat nearly thigh to thigh with others in the more-than-normally-intimate lounge.

We ordered the most luxurious appetizers of escargot and foie gras while the couple next to us popped their own bottle of wine.

“This is the second favorite preparation of this dish I’ve had,” my guy described as he ate the foie gras that will soon be forbidden, handing me his spoon across the table so that I could enjoy a bite. It was sincerely the most silky and unctuous piece of heaven on a spoon.

As I fished through the remaining pools of my escargot butter with hunks of porous French rolls having already slurped up the snails, I snuck another peek sideways at the two senior lovers.

She was clearly the conservative one, her brown/grey bob coiffed while his white/gray head was unruly and wild. He giggled like a schoolboy when the charming waiters brought them their bread. As he looked across the table, he said, “They just don’t have service like this anymore anywhere but here,” cut short by his sudden declaration to her from out of the blue, “I will never forget the first time I saw you.”

I had a feeling I was more like him than her. I looked across my own table and smiled at my guy noticing the way his luscious lips closed up around his meticulously placed and apportioned bites. I remembered the first time I had seen him too, in a place not so unlike this, and how his eyes had glanced up at me back then between bites, over the top rim of his eye glasses.

We moved on to entrees as the couple next to us received their own dinners: venison for him and sweetbreads piccata for me. The man was getting a little loopy and saying loud things to the lady like I do sometimes and it made me laugh. His woman was reaching across the table to hold his hand and mentioned that he should save some room for the morning when they would try another restaurant in town. It happened to be the same place we were going to dine for breakfast as well.

“Maybe we should invite them to go with us,” my boyfriend said while we shared my tangy sweetbreads and the strange little homemade potato puffs that accompanied them. 

As the interesting dessert of rice pudding arrived topped off with plump and ripe berries the couple next to us were sharing a sprightly salad of avocado and crab. I shared a nice smile with the gentlemen as we were brought out our check.

Our debonair waiter who could easily have been around in the same job for the last twenty years bid us good bye and hinted that we were all obviously going to be blessed with kisses later, garlic be damned. 

(My love affair with Le Vallauris has been a long one.)

Guanciale Garden Pasta - Cute Gardener Style

If the old adage is true and the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach, then my boyfriend has wound his way through mine with his never ending variations on the simple bowl of pasta.

When we first met I was pretty amazed by the assortment of pastas he kept on hand in the cupboards and the fridge. The thing that makes his pasta sing is the fact that he uses whatever ingredients are fresh from his garden combined with genius little touches that are not distinctly Italian or of any particular food genre, but more about what’s available, creative, and tasty. You know what you’re getting in a traditional pasta joint whether it be the blander versions of red and white checkered tablecloth spaghetti and meatball fare or more refined, gourmet ragus and exotic meat bologneses in the better osterias; but at the Cute Gardener’s house each time I eat pasta, it’s like receiving a new and unusual little gem of a meal in a bowl.

Last week, he introduced me to perciatelli, a fat version of spaghetti with holes in the middle to expedite the cooking.

It started with two questions. What kind of red wine would you drink with peas, he asked innocently enough on a sunny afternoon. Something burgundy and fruity, I answered. And what about bacon, he asked next, making my mouth water in anticipation for what I was hoping to be a dinner of some form of carbonara. Something bloody, I replied. A sangiovese/cabernet sauvignon blend provided the answer.

Then the excitement begun, as in watching the parade of ingredients that would make up my dinner being carefully combined and cooked in a pan. First, a big chunk of guanciele, an exquisite pork cheek accentuated by a seasoning rub, was sliced and sautéed to render down all the fat into a wonderful base of flavor.

Next up were the diced white onions and items fresh from his garden including plump fava beans and fresh green peas.

A raw egg thrown into the pot at the last minute was stirred in to create some depth and texture before a dusting of pecorino.

The final touch of crumbled cooked bacon added the exact amounts of saltiness needed to finish off the dish.

Unlike the occasions when we eat pasta out together at restaurants, I seem to always finish my bowls at his house. He has a fine touch with pasta that makes the dish feel light and healthier than when dining out. Or maybe that’s just what I am going to tell myself so that I can keep enjoying the dishes, along with a step up in my samba practice sessions. I don’t see why not; my favorite interview with the iconic bombshell Sophia Loren read years ago was all about her daily habit of a bowl of pasta when asked about how she keeps up her beauty. When eating Roman….

Spicy Literary Lady Empanada Lunch

Three pieces of literature greatly affected my love of both words and food at an early age. One of them was seminal food writer and daring feminist-before–her-time MFK Fisher’s book Consider the Oyster. A tome devoted to the sensual sea fare in all its illustrious forms fueled me with inspiration in the culinary linguist field. The second one was Fannie Flagg’s tale Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, where drama and female lore was trotted out amongst the historical recipes of the South. And lastly, in my early twenties, I sweated profusely along with the words of Laura Esquivel as Like Water For Chocolate sealed my lust for the spicy and passionate people and foods of Mexico.

One of my closest friends Leslie, who I lunch with any chance I can get in her sunny little kitchen at her upcycled clothes and goods company Tea With Iris’ headquarters, is inspired  by Chilean-American author Isabel Allende.

Oftentimes we spend the lunch hour with her homemade empanadas, which make me automatically happy when I smell their familiar aroma coming fresh from the oven. I typically sit at the kitchen table as we catch up on our lives while she deftly pulls together her quirky and delightful creations right under my nose.

Her inspiration for making these empanadas came after reading Allende’s book, Ines of My Soul. Leslie says, “In the story Ines travels from Spain to Peru to become a well-respected conquistadora. There are parts in the novel where she cooks these amazing empanadas from practically nothing. She uses whatever resources and spices she can find to feed her army or the starving people on the ship she sailed to South America with. I'm totally in love with the story.”

Here is an excerpt from when she was traveling aboard the ship to South America:

"I made empanadas with lentils, garbanzos, fish, chicken, sausage, cheese, octopus, and shark, and with them earned the gratitude of the crew and the passengers."

This last time we shared her empanadas alongside some caramelized, grilled plantain slices.

Leslie was kind enough to share her recipe with me, adapted slightly from another book “Recipes from an Ecological Kitchen.”

Leslie’s Empanadas

Oven: 30-35 minutes

Ingredients:

DOUGH-
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup water
1 teaspoon dried leaf oregano (sometimes I just cut and chop it up fresh from the garden and use much more)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup flaxseed meal (or amaranth or quinoa flour)

FILLING

Here is where you can get creative

Mexican rice
beans
diced up greens such as spinach, kale, chard
diced up zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, etc.
mustard or pesto
cheese (optional- kids tend to like it more with a little cheese)

1. Lightly brush cookie sheet with oil
2. Mix flour and flaxseed meal (or amaranth or quinoa flour) together in bowl.
3. In a 2-quart saucepan, heat the oils, water, oregano and salt until bubbles just begin to appear.
4. Slowly stir in flour. Transfer to a bowl, cover with a towel and refrigerate 30 to 45 minutes.
5. Sprinkle a smooth surface and rolling pin with flour.
6. Roll out dough into 1/8 inch thickness.
7. Press a bowl with 5-inch diameter into the dough to make circles.
8. Spread a thin layer of mustard or pesto
9. Spoon mixture of filling onto lower half of circle then fold upper half over and press the edges together with a small fork.
10. Bake 30-35 minutes in preheated oven at 375 degrees.

The filled empanadas can also be frozen, baked or unbaked.
Eat with a couple of days since there are no preservatives.

All Hype for El Jefe?

I really wanted to like El Jefe when the Cute Gardener took me there on the hunt for a pile of nachos and a kick off to my birthday margarita this past weekend in the desert. We had been hankering for a visit after hearing the hype about the new bar, located in the newly refurbished Saguaro Hotel with Iron Chef Jose Garces at the helm. I was excited about the idea of a funky watering hole where you could buy Mexican street food specialties like goat and tongue tacos until the wee hours of the night; a novelty in the desert where convenient food choices narrow down as the evenings grow old. 

We went at an odd time for sure, around four in the afternoon between other plans. I love a good plate of nachos so was looking for something special. We ordered the skirt steak version, which came with tangy chile de arbol but the steak was really just shredded short ribs and the sparse portions of it plain unimpressive. A pile of thin and flimsy chips arrived  topped with lots of hardened cheese but little of the other promised good parts made up the dish.

The drinks in a bar offering hundreds of tequila choices were also quite dim, not flavorful at all and almost watered down. 

Then we ordered shrimp and chorizo tacos, which came in a portion of three small ones. The shrimp was undercooked, the chorizo bland, and the overall textures all blended together in a soft pile of mush.

There were two wait staff personnel “on” the floor while we were there and they admittedly didn’t even know each other’s names, nor did they make haste to clean up after a drunken women flung her glass off one of the communal bar tables, which shattered everywhere and sat for at least ten minutes.

I guess the bottom line is I was looking for dancing on the bar top, down and dirty charred meats and clinking glasses rimmed with salt in a place that is really only a glistening mirage in an otherwise desert oasis.