Grimaldi’s Pizzeria – Scottsdale, Arizona
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…