Food Events
Links Books Restaurants Events Tours Movies TV Shows Ads	Foodies on the  Road at  Best of Phoenix     Ah, the Ahi tuna---at least three of the high end restaurants featured at Phoenix’s West of Western Culinary Festival last month were offering this tasty treat, served up on elegant black plastic plates. Foodie’s favorite was served atop a beet infusion, but which restaurant was it...?  Well-heeled gourmandes—paying about $22 per head per day-- white jacketed chefs and servers, sound system techies, and us, the non profit foodies, wafted to and fro on the grassy knoll near the Arizona Center. The Festival was organized by Scott Andrews of Cakewalk Projects, along with David M. Johnson, wine seller, to showcase Phoenix’ considerable culinary talent, much of it on display at the area’s resorts. How is Phoenix cusine defined? Pacific Rim/Desert Salsa/ Native American?   It was hard to keep track of who served what and from where—and even harder hoofing over to the wide angled wine tasting area and back to get something to go with the superlative buffalo offered by Sheraton’s Wild Horse Pass restaurant Kai.  ( Kai specializes in native American locally-grown ingredients and tastes.) Foodie’s picked their spread as the “most vegetatively attractive array,” ( baby pineapples on stalks, tiny purple cauliflowers...) The gorgeous rock shrimp pyramid from Elements, the restaurant at Sanctuary Resort, won Foodie’s “most exquisitely presented” taste prize, and the gals at the Elements Booth were voted “most exquisite presenters” by a guy we know, but that’s so non PC...Latitude 30 offered Pac rim dishes with attitude, the Arizona Biltmore had a spectacular spread from Phoenix to Scotsdale, and Mary Elaine’s, we think, was our dessert HQ. There were more—Scottsdale’s Fiamma, and the Stetson Drive people of Seasaw, Cowboy Ciao, and Kazimierz. Many more.  Over at the “other” food area, The FOOD Museum met and greeted ticket holders, along with Tucson’s Native Seeds Search, the local Slow Food people, Northern Arizona University’s Center for Sustainable Environments, the TOCA folks (Tohono O’odham Community Action, )  The Fishhugger, the Navajo Lifeway people,  the Sunizona Heirloom Tomato family business from Willcox, and the Salsa King.  In the center, caterers and personal chefs Ro and Pete of Spontane in Phoenix, served up ”spontaneous comfort food.”  If you don’t know the work of these admirable organizations/businesses and people, take the time to look at their websites, when available.   Chris Bianco, pizza perfectionist from the Bronx, winner of a James Beard Foundation Award, who has made Phoenix the home of America’s best pizza, according to many, stopped by The FOOD Museum to chat about food heritage, pizza, and good ingredients. Belatedly,  silly us, we realized this was the Chris Bianco, his product recently dubbed best pizza in the U.S. by Ed Levine, author of “Pizza: A Slice of Heaven.” Bianco’s is on East Adams Street at Heritage Square in Phoenix.   Alas, Foodie was so well fed over the two days, so utterly satisfied, that she could not imagine going out and eating a pizza. She adores pizza but is fussy as hell—likes a yeasty, thinnish, lightly tomatoed, wood fired, holey, some of the holes a tad blackened, pizza---like the pizzas she ate as a student in Florence, Italy, eons ago. This is exactly the pizza that Chris Bianco makes! Mistake!    Sima and Marcellino Verzino of Marcellino Ristorante in front of their multi-flavored freshly made pasta.