Category: United States

I don’t often refer to myself as a “restaurant critic” or “restaurant reviewer.” My preferred gloss is “observer and essayer on the culinary condition.”   Yep, that’s a high falutin bit of ego-stroking, but it’s accurate.  One of the things I’ve observed during frequent trips to the Phoenix area–both while employed at Intel and while snowbirding over the Christmas and Festivus holidays–is that middling quality chain restaurants tend to find a home in the Valley of the Sun an year or two before figuring out they would be smash successes in Albuquerque. Another salient obseration is that some pretty highly regarded East Coast and Midwest restaurants and chefs don’t like the cold either…or maybe they’re following the exodus of snowbirds wanting to escape the miserable winter weather.  Ted’s Hot Dogs, a Buffalo refugee turned Valley mainstay since the 1980s was among the first.  Grimaldi’s, a New York City institution which can trace its lineage to America’s pizza pioneers, followed suit a few years later.   Strewn across the Valley are such Chicago transplants as Lou Malnati’s, Rosati’s Pizza and the perpetually mispronounced Portillo’s.  Every one of these restaurants has maintained a presence where they got their starts, but are also…