New and moved restaurants in 2015
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A story collection featuring some of the new and improved food joints in Tucson.
- Andi Berlin | This Is Tucson
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Chef Deborah Tenino's popular Latin tapas bar Contigo will reopen in the space formerly occupied by Poppy Kitchen at The Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa.
Tenino is opening the restaurant with business partner Nicholas Kreutz of Young's Market Company. An estimated opening date will be announced later in January.
Resort officials have been looking for a new tenant to fill the 3,000-square-foot space since August, when Poppy Kitchen closed its doors. The spacious dining room, which also housed Janos Wilder's J Bar, is significantly larger than the original Contigo and features a large patio looking out onto the city of Tucson.
The original Contigo at 1745 E. River Road offered wine, cocktails and small bites with an eye toward Latin America, serving rare dishes from countries like Cuba and Brazil. The restaurant closed in May 2015.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Retired military dietitian James Williams is taking his Southern recipes to the campus area next week through a partnership with an already-existing restaurant.
His southside chicken and waffles spot J and K Heritage Museum Cafe has closed its doors, so Williams is moving up the road to operate inside the ATL Wings Your Way at 1628 E. Sixth St. Williams will serve chicken and waffles for breakfast and lunch, along with other Southern barbecue favorites like pulled pork.
His last venture, J and K, was a short-lived partnership with Mr. K's BBQ founder Charles Kendrick. The South Park Avenue restaurant which also houses the Afro-American Heritage Museum currently has several for-lease signs posted in front of the building. A few concepts have gone through space in the last couple years, including the Olé Rico Mexican Steakhouse and a Caribbean restaurant in 2013.
The new J's Chicken and Waffles will operate from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. inside the ATL wings, a franchise operation that serves Southern dishes like fried catfish and tilapia, plus several varieties of chicken wings. Before Williams came in, the space previously served hot wings and Mediterranean food.
A new concept called Batch Doughnuts & Whiskey opened downtown on Jan. 1, bringing together small-batch whiskies, doughnuts and high-quality drip coffee.
Restaurateur Kade Mislinski along with partner Ronnie Spece took over an intimate room at 118 E. Congress St. from Frank Lietzau, the founder of Unplugged Wine Bar, which served its final customers on New Year’s Eve.
The 650-square-foot bar area previously served as an office space for MEB Management Services.
The unlikely pairing of doughnuts with craft whiskey to wash them down has become increasingly trendy on the national food scene, with bars and themed parties popping up in cities like Denver; Austin, Texas; and Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley’s penchant for jelly doughnuts and a few stiff drinks has been cited as one inspiration.
“The evil and awesome combination of two of humanity’s greatest creations” is how organizers of some of those themed events around the country have described the concept.
Unplugged Wine Bar had been in business since September 2013, offering red, white and sparkling wines from around the world and a selection of European craft beers.
“Frank and the downtown Tucson community are wishing Batch great luck and prosperity in the new year,” reads a post on Unplugged’s website.
- By Kristen Cook Arizona Daily Star
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The Flores family — which owns El Charro Cafe — has long had a stake in downtown.
Soon, it’ll be serving it.
Charro Steak is set to open in the space that formerly housed the short-lived, Native American-inspired Barrio Cuisine, 188 E. Broadway in the historic Julian Drew Building. It’s not quite a mile away from the legendary El Charro Cafe, established in 1922 and considered the nation’s oldest Mexican restaurant in continuous operation by the same family.
Ray Flores Jr. said his mother and chef, Carlotta Flores, as well as the rest of the family is looking forward to being closer to the action.
“We’re excited to be across from the AC Marriott and everything that’s going on around downtown,” Flores said, referring to the AC Hotel Tucson, 151 E. Broadway, that’s under construction. “We’ve been keeping the lights on downtown for 100 years, and we’re a little off the beaten path. Getting closer to Broadway and Congress is great.”
Ross Rulney, who owns the Julian Drew building, said a number of experienced operators were interested in the space, but the Flores family won him over with their vision.
“I was intrigued by the Charro Steak concept when Ray pitched it to me because I feel there is unmet demand for this type of restaurant downtown,” Rulney said in an email interview. “I have known the Flores family for quite some time and have always been impressed with their dedication and professionalism, but the deal was sealed when Carlotta and Ray invited me to a special tasting to sample items from the Charro Steak menu. Not only were they delicious, the presentation was beautiful.”
Out-of-town diners at El Charro often ask for steak, but “we don’t have a great steak-cooking kitchen,” Flores said.
Plus, it’s not really the kind of place where menu items are easily shaken up.
“It’s very hard to change El Charro,” Flores said with a laugh. “We’ve always said El Charro belongs to the people more than us because heaven forbid we change something.”
Charro Steak gives his family the chance to do a “center-of-the-plate” restaurant that’s approachable and features locally sourced foods. Flores likes to call it ranch-to-table. The menu is inspired by El Charro but has its own spin on American steakhouse fare.
“It’ll be a reasonably-priced steakhouse option downtown that’ll have a great amount of Sonoran influence and Tucson-style cooking,” he said.
Lunch options will be around $10 with most dinner entrees in the $19-22 range. Expect to see dishes like mesquite grilled Arizona grass-fed and grass-finished New York strip along with ancho rubbed prime rib tortas and osso bucco estilo Sonorense. Sides will include traditional Mexican staples like coctel de elote (corn) and nopalitos y hongos, (prickly pear pads and mushrooms).
“You can’t go to Fleming’s and get nopalitos,” Flores said.
Charro Steak will seat about 130 diners inside, and the family is making some changes to the restaurant but not many.
“We don’t want to mess with the space too much — it’s got a cool downtown, vintage feel,” Flores said.
The decor will pay tribute to the charro horsemen of Mexico and have an herb wall.
Flores said he can’t nail down a specific opening day when people can try his mother’s twist on osso bucco (Rulney says it’s delicious), but is expecting it to be mid-February.
Charro Steak will be the sixth Tucson restaurant for the Flores family, which also has a catering business, a Sahuarita restaurant, outposts in the Phoenix area and a place in Las Vegas.
- Andi Berlin | This Is Tucson
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We got a sneak peak at the posh pizza and wine bar Humble Pie before it opens tomorrow. (Earlier this week, the Scottsdale-based chain held a soft opening for media and friends.) So if you're looking to hit up La Encantada for some Black Friday deals and need a bite, here's what to expect:
THE CONCEPT
Approachable menu of sandwiches, salads and personal pizzas from the wood-fired oven. Single dining room with fresh but minimalist decor and a full bar. Lots of happy hour specials and deals. Altogether, the restaurant feels like a casual alternative to North Italia across the street.
THE MENU
If I had to pin this place on a map, I'd probably move toward California rather than Naples.
Starters are basic but sophisticated: meatballs, cheesy bread, caprese, etc. Our fried calamari came with a zesty basil dipping sauce and a lemon wedge wrapped in cheese cloth and tied up like a gift.
Pizza pies are divided on the menu between white — buffalo chicken, roasted mushroom with pancetta — and red — margherita, meat lovers, etc. They've also got some funky ones like the Egg Pizza and the B.L.T. with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise piled on top.
We split a chicken caesar and one of the fancier pizzas, the Schreiner’s Sicilian Sausage with housemade mozzarella and wrinkly little fronds of dark roasted fennel, which brightened everything up a bit. The pock-marked puffy crust was truly exceptional, with just enough chewiness to back up that fluff.
DON'T MISS!
All of this is pretense to the main attraction, the sublimely soft chocolate chip pizza cookie with vanilla ice cream on top! I'm a sucker for these things so I really am in no position to judge them accurately. But man, it's a pizza cookie at La Encantada!
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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After a short revamp, the midtown lunch spot Goodness Fresh Food and Juice Bar has opened a second location at the former Nox Kitchen + Cocktails on East Skyline Drive. During the daytime, the restaurant is offering the same menu as its original location at 2502 N. Campbell Ave. After 5 p.m. it turns into a full-service restaurant with craft cocktails and healthful gourmet faire.
Co-owner Brandon Katz, who also owned Nox, said that the new concept was inspired by farm-to-table restaurants like Andrew Weil's True Food Kitchen. The evening service Goodness Fresh Kitchen will have an emphasis on fresh fish, grass-fed beef and Mediterranean cooking methods.
"We took our same morals and the base of Goodness Fresh Food and turned it into a restaurant where entrees are around $15," Katz said. "Everything's fresh. We don't use any granulated sugar, it's a full scratch kitchen."
The initial dinner menu lists some interesting cocktails like a spiked rum horchata and a white sangria with a drinking shrub made from nopales cactus. Menu items range from familiar Goodness salads to entrees like wild albacore tuna with butternut squash puree and ginger fennel. Several items seem to draw from Katz's other restaurant Obon Sushi + Bar + Ramen, which he runs with business partner Andre Joffroy under the name Brand Restaurant Concepts.
Katz said that the two decided to close Nox Kitchen because it lacked that niche that makes Goodness and Obon stand out.
"We just saw that (Nox) was a successful business in the sense that it didn't lose money," he said. But, "we're more outside-of-the-box thinkers than doing the American comfort food."
The two have signed a lease for a new location near East Tanque Verde Road and East Camino Principal, which they plan to turn into either a Goodness or an Obon. Katz said that they're also considering opening up an Obon in Chandler.
Through Sunday, Goodness on Skyline is offering all customers 15 percent off their bill. Starting hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. There will also be a happy hour with select deals on drinks and appetizers from 4 to 6 p.m. every day. The restaurant is located at 6370 N. Campbell Ave.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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The university-area bar Trident Grill will open its second location in the former home of Jackson Tavern at 2900 N. Swan Road. Co-owner/operator Danny Gallego says they're hoping to be open by Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 7.
The 3,700-square-foot space which once housed the Red Sky Cafe was most recently under the helm of Tucson restauranteur Brian Metzger, who left in May of this year. Gallego says they plan to keep much of the New England feel from Jackson Tavern, but they plan to move the bar and open up the patio with sliding garage doors.
Trident is already an "east coast kinda bar," he said. "We're gonna keep the wood and tavern feel over there. We're just going to make it more vibrant."
The restaurant, Trident Grill II, will have the same menu as the original location at 2033 E. Speedway, and will have two dozen taps. It will also have 10 to 15 televisions around the restaurant.
The restaurant is next door to Vero Amore Neapolitan Pizza.
- By Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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If you have been to Casa Video lately and found construction tarps where the Criterion section used to be, here’s the deal: A beer and wine bar is coming to the back room of the rental store at 2905 E. Speedway.
When it opens in late November/December, Casa Film Bar will have about 20 taps and 300 bottles of local and craft beer, said manager Kyle Schwab. Customers will be able to purchase bottles to go or drink them inside the bar space for a fee. Bar staff will also pour growlers and refillable aluminum cans known as crowlers.
Other tap options will include wine as well as local cold-brew and nitro coffee. (As for hot coffee, they’re still working out whether it will be single cup pour-over or French press.) Customers will be able to bring the coffee and craft sodas into the rest of the store but not the alcohol.
The bar, owned by Schwab's mother and uncle, will be staffed by a separate team of bartenders, which Casa is hiring now.
Schwab says the bar area will be open to the rest of the store, and that customers can also enter from the outside through doors on the patio. (To get to the second floor with the foreign movies, you’ll have to go through the bar.)
The bar will have one large movie screen and four 55” TVs which will play different movies throughout the week, depending on the chosen theme.
“We’re gonna try to keep it loud enough so people can hear (the movie), but so that people can have a conversation at the same time,” Schwab said.
The owners thought up the bar idea in part as a way to increase sales, which have been down in the age of Netflix and Internet streaming. The beer idea isn’t entirely new: Casa Video began selling cans and growlers of craft beer for takeout last August.
“We’re just trying to find other avenues to make money, and we have an interest in beer,” Schwab said. “And the beer sales have done pretty well with us, so we think that beer would be a good thing to get into.”
When it opens, Casa Film Bar will have the same hours as the store: 10 a.m. to 1 a.m seven days a week.
- Cathalena E. Burch
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Oro Valley has a taste of Sicily in the strip plaza on North Oracle Road next to the Fairfield Inn and Suites and a quick jaunt from the town’s residential center.
Giovanni’s Gelato Café at 10110 N. Oracle Road has been open two months, with a menu of 49 gelato flavors made from ingredients largely imported from Italy, said owner Giovanni Rizza, whose wife Agnes is the gelato chef.
“Everything. The recipes. The ingredients. The coffee. Everything for the gelato comes from Italy except the milk and sugar,” he said.
Rizza is a native of Sicily who has been in the United States since 1967. He moved here as a 24-year-old fleeing poor economic conditions and settled in Chicago, where he sold and developed real estate.
He and his wife moved to Tucson eight years ago and toyed with the idea of opening a gelato shop. But they couldn’t find the ideal location and after a couple of years, they returned to Chicago. They have been back here a year.
Rizza said he bought the commercial plaza in August 2014 and decided to open the gelato shop in a vacant space at one end; the restaurant Blaze — A Flavor Inferno anchors the other end of the plaza.
The shop’s renovation took a year, which also included trips to Italy where he purchased equipment and gelato ingredients.
In addition to gelato, Giovanni’s Gelato Café also sells Italian coffees and pastries including cannoli and tiramisu. Gelato starts at $3.75 for a small and tops out at $5.55 for an eight-ounce serving. You also can get it by the pint and quart.
Giovanni’s is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
- Caitlin Schmidt and Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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The Town of Oro Valley officially became the owner of an operating restaurant last week, but before it even opened, The Overlook has been the center of political conflict.
In December, the town council voted 4-3 in favor of purchasing the El Conquistador Country Club for $1 million, a deal that included a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for the since-completed renovations to turn the club into a community center.
The town bought the property from Tucson-based HSL Properties, which acquired the Hilton resort with the intent of splitting off those entities and selling them to the town for $1 million paid over three years. The market value of the property had initially been appraised at $3.25 million.
After the purchase agreement was signed in late April, an Oro Valley citizen’s group initiated the recall of the four members who voted to approve the purchase: Mayor Satish Hiremath and council members Lou Waters, Mary Snider and Joe Hornat. All four will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot, defending their seats against five challengers.
The incumbents have been vocal throughout their campaigns in defending the purchase, repeatedly saying that citizens have been asking for a community center and gathering place since the mid-'90s.
However, challengers Steve Didio, Ryan Hartung and Shirl Lamonna have all argued that by the town owning the The Overlook, it’s directly competing with privately-owned businesses in Oro Valley.
"I don't believe that by the town owning a restaurant that we will put other restaurants out of business," Hiremath said. "If that was the case then we wouldn't have as many restaurants locally as we do now, would we?"
The town is operating the facilities with Troon, an international management company that handles golf destinations such as the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa.
In addition to the Overlook, Troon is also handling golf and tennis operations, said Misti Nowak, communications administrator for the town.
The restaurant, formerly called La Vista, was previously part of the Hilton El Conquistador country club, 10555 N. La Cañada Drive. In the process of turning it into a community center, the town performed significant renovations to the restaurant space, replacing carpets with dark wood floors, installing new booths and reconstructing ramps to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The 5,282 square-foot restaurant features high ceilings and a loft-like view overlooking the golf course and surrounding Santa Catalina Mountains. About half of the space is taken up by the bar, which has five flatscreen TVs which broadcasted sports games during a restaurant preview earlier this week.
The team brought on Executive Chef Robert Kaslly, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate who most recently managed the culinary program at the active adult living community Restaurants at SaddleBrooke. His menu features classic American dishes with a gourmet touch, like warm steak salad and pepper jack chicken with calabacitas squash blend.
The most expensive item on the menu is the Traverse city filet mignon with Boursin cheese croquette for $25. But most items are sandwiches and salads between $9 and $12 apiece. The restaurant closes at 6 p.m. most nights, with dinner service Thursdays through Saturdays until 8 p.m.
Overlook also runs happy hour specials from 3 to 6 p.m., a Thursday build-your-own pasta night for $13 and Sunday brunch. The restaurant is open to the public.
Tom Meade, who runs the food and beverage program at the restaurant, says The Overlook stands out from other local businesses and offers something new.
"We have the best views in town," he said. " ... The restaurant is part of the community center, so you can literally come in and take a swim and hit the locker room and come upstairs and enjoy braised beef tacos for lunch."
Meade adds that large size of the restaurant makes it a perfect choice for large parties and banquets.
During the restaurant preview earlier this week, Hiremath praised the council for its work in opening the restaurant. "Today is only just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "Wait to see what we have next."
- Cathalena E. Burch
- Updated
John and Amanda Guerrero traded in their Tucson teaching jobs last summer for a kitchen in Oro Valley, opening a restaurant with a menu that twists and turns classic comfort food on its ear.
In August, the couple bought Cattleman’s Cafe 2 at 10110 N. Oracle Road from owner Mike McGee, who owns the original Cattleman’s Cafe at the Marana Stockyards. They renamed it Blaze — A Flavor Inferno in September.
“This has always been my passion,” said John Guerrero, who taught math for seven years in the Vail School District and a year with Tucson Unified School District. His wife taught math for five years in Vail and a year in Marana before leaving the profession in May.
Initially the couple, working with sons Gabe and Alex, intended to run a food truck selling Guerrero’s creation, Whatchos — a takeoff of nachos using a base of french fries that he tops with whatever, from feta cheese to meatloaf and chorizo. They bought an RV and retrofitted it with a kitchen but needed a commercial kitchen to pull it off.
That’s how their paths crossed with McGee. Guerrero said McGee was overwhelmed running both of his restaurants and offered to sell them the Oro Valley eatery he had opened in summer 2013.
Blaze’s menu is loosely based on Cattleman’s Cafe, with some innovative re-imagining. Take the french toast burger, which at $11.99 is the most expensive item on the lunch menu: It starts with a third-pound of grilled hamburger topped with peanut butter during the grilling so that it gets toasty and gooey. Add American cheese, two strips of applewood bacon and top with a fried egg. The monstrosity is sandwiched between two slices of cinnamon-raisin or regular French toast.
“I had thought about putting syrup on it,” Guerrero said, but “the flavors that went into that. ... This thing is amazing. I call that the power brunch — you’re getting both breakfast and lunch all in one shot and you won’t need to eat again until 7 p.m.”
Prices run about $9 for burgers and $9 for breakfast. Dinner items average $10 with the most expensive items — the top sirloin or New York steak dinners — at $15.95.
Blaze is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays through Tuesdays and from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. It doesn’t serve alcohol, but Guerrero said diners can bring their own wine, beer or spirits. Details: blazeov.com or call 395-1297.
- Andi Berlin | This Is Tucson
- Updated
You may have seen the colorful sign go up downtown: the state of Sonora with green wings and a white shrimp. It's the emblem for Sonora Wings & Seafood, a new lunch joint owned by Cananea-native Antonio Montoya.
The restaurant opened quietly Tuesday in the former Kearbey’s spot at 100 N. Stone Ave., Suite 102. Its menu is small but eclectic with everything from boneless wings to campechana seafood cocktails and shrimp tacos sourced from San Carlos. Montoya also does a special chiltepin wing sauce with the spicy round Sonoran peppers. His wings are juicy plump with a nice crisp skin.
Montoya is no stranger to the neighborhood. Before he decided to branch out and open his own shop, he ran the nearby Sonoran taco place Bernardo's Mexican Food with his father-in-law Bernardo Acosta.
"I love working downtown," he said. "Downtown is one little family. I love this place."
Sonora Wings and Seafood is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Montoya says it'll expand its hours to weekends and Friday nights when the shop gets its liquor license. The restaurant will also run specials this weekend for its grand opening during Second Saturdays.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
After completely overhauling the 2,400-square-foot space that was once home to Gio Taco, Brandon Katz is opening Obon Sushi + Bar + Ramen on Thursday afternoon.
Katz and his business partner Andre Joffroy completely overhauled the space at 350 E. Congress St. to the tune of $280,000, Katz said,
“If you had ever been in Gio Taco before, you won’t recognize it,” he said of the work, which has been ongoing since last April.
Gio Taco, owned by Metzger Family Restaurants, closed in early March after it was locked out by landlord Jim Campbell for failing to meet its lease obligations. Campbell said at the time the owners had fallen behind in the monthly rent and the two sides could not come to an agreement on how to resolve the issue.
Obon becomes downtown’s only sushi restaurant after On A Roll closed in early July. It had been serving sushi at 63 E. Congress St. for seven years.
Obon also is the only restaurant in the downtown entertainment district to serve ramen, although the menu is limited to three ramen offerings.
This is the 26th restaurant that Katz has helped open in a career that included Ra Sushi based out of Scottsdale. He and Joffroy own Sol Hospitality, whose restaurants include Goodness, 2502 N. Campbell Ave., and Nox Kitchen + Cocktails, 6370 N. Campbell Ave.
Obon will open at 4 p.m. Thursday. Hours this weekend will be from 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday and Sunday and until 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Regular hours — 11 a.m. to midnight weekdays and 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturdays — begin Monday.
- Chuck Constantino Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Johnny Gibson’s Downtown Market will open its doors for the first time at 7 a.m. Monday in what co-owner Paul Cisek calls a “soft opening.”
Most of the market’s services, such as the deli and much of the prepared food, will be ready by Monday.
However, the meat department will not be open until July 25, he said.
The grand opening is slated for early September, he said.
Among other services, Cisek and his partners plan to offer a bicycle delivery service for elderly customers and a bicycle shuttle for customers who live nearby.
When it opens, the market will be the first of its kind in the downtown area in 42 years.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
After more than a year in the making, Guadalajara Mexican Grill is now open at 4901 E. Broadway.
The restaurant in the former home of a T.G.I Fridays will have tableside salsa as well as many of the staple items from the former Guadalajara Fiesta Grill on North Kolb Road. Many of the crew members from Fiesta Grill, which was destroyed in a fire last July, will be back at the Broadway location, says Owner Seth Holzman.
Holzman expects to reopen the Fiesta Grill in November or December of this year.
Guadalajara Mexican Grill's hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and 10 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays. You can contact the restaurant by calling 296-1199 or through its website, guadgrill.com.
Stay tuned for more information ...
Main Gate Square has a new barbecue restaurant — a first for the University of Arizona-area entertainment district that has everything from burgers to baklava.
Ramiro Scavo, chef-owner of urban farm bistro Pasco Kitchen & Lounge in University Boulevard’s Geronimo Plaza, opened Red’s Smokehouse and Tap Room in early January in the former home of Which Wich Superior Sandwiches on University, just west of North Park Avenue.
“It’s a completely new concept that we’re thrilled about,” said JaneMcCollum, general manager of the non-profit Marshall Foundation that owns the commercial property on University and is Scavo’s landlord for both restaurants.
Scavo renovated the 2,800-square-foot space at 943 E. University Blvd. that had been vacant since Which Wich closed in March 2013.
Red’s offers smoked meats such as brisket, beef and pork shoulder, and beef and pork ribs as well as dry aged steaks, house-made sausages and cold-smoked fish and cheeses.
Scavo said the name Red’s pays homage to the University of Arizona as well as an Arizona rancher named Red. It also refers to the color of the smoke ring formed on meats that are smoked in real wood, he added.
“When you smoke with fire wood like pecan or oak, you get that red ring,” he said.
Scavo extended the patio to wrap around the side and front of the building, and also created roll-up windows that will be part of the bar. The restaurant offers casual table service as well as takeout counter service.
“If you want a place to hang out, we have that for you. If you want a sit-down, we’ll have that,” he said, adding that the restaurant also will cater to tailgaters. “If you want to hang out and watch games and do beer tastings, we have that, as well.”
Scavo, a former partner in Zona 78 and the Oro Valley farm-to-table restaurant Harvest, opened Pasco Kitchen & Lounge 4½ years ago at 820 E. University Blvd. This summer he plans to spruce up that restaurant, including rebuilding the bar and putting in a new floor.
“We love it down here. It was a great decision to come down here,” he said of the boulevard, which is an entertainment hub for UA students and the surrounding neighborhoods. “We love the area; we are committed.”
McCollum said the Marshall Foundation had inquiries from 20 businesses interested in renting the Which Wich space and had narrowed it down to five serious offers, all of which were turned down because they brought nothing new to the district.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Longhorn Steakhouse opened its second Tucson restaurant earlier Monday.
The 6,100-square-foot restaurant that specializes in steaks and chops is at 4421 N. Oracle Road, across the street from Tucson Mall. It's open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
LongHorn, part of the Florida-based Darden Restaurants chain, opened its first Tucson restaurant in early 2014 at 5725 E. Broadway.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Eegee's opened its 24th Tucson location Tuesday — a bit quicker than what the restaurant chain's top boss predicted last month.
Back in May, Eegee's President Robert Jensen predicted a late June opening for the new store in the east side Saguaro Vista shopping plaza on East Speedway and North Pantano Road.
The new location resembles the redesigned south side Eegees at West Ajo Way and South 12th Avenue, which Jensen said will be the company's template moving forward. All redesigns or new builds will follow the model, including having a drive-through window. Eegees expects to open two restaurants each in 2016 and '17.
Eegees, 7660 E. Speedway, is open from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily; the drive-through closes at 11 p.m. daily.
“You got that extra batch of calcium chloride ready?” yells the tall mustachioed man in the tailored vest. Despite the sweat and the frantic look on his face, Jacob Hise is looking positively dapper on this Thursday night.
It’s June 11 and his posh new downtown bar, HighWire Lounge, is about to open to the public. And he has to make sure he’s got the right solutions. The concept, which he started with fellow Tucsonan Nick Wayne Eggman, specializes in “molecular mixology,” a big-city trend that’s finally getting its day in the Old Pueblo. The movement draws from scientific technique to redefine flavors and textures, sometimes in off-the-wall ways.
The bar’s signature drink is the ElBulli Bubbles Prickly Pear Margarita, named after the famous Spanish restaurant that pioneered the molecular gastronomy craze in the 2000s. Jacob “spherifies” tequila into little droplets the size and texture of caviar, which burst in your mouth and fill it with liquor. He immerses these bubbles in a prickly pear foam from a pressurized canister, and then rims the little shot glass with salt.
Another cocktail on the menu made me feel like a kid in a candy store. The Contortionist starts like a fruity vodka martini with Smirnoff Vanilla Vodka, white cranberry and pineapple juices. But then they throw in Pop Rocks. And after that, locally-made Fluff It Up organic cotton candy. When the puff goes in, it dissolves immediately, turning the drink milky purple.
Wow, is it sweet. Almost like throwing a Kool-Aid packet into a jug of V8 Splash. But at the end, when you get to the Pop Rocks that settled on the bottom? Bang! Your mouth is crackling and crazy like a chemistry experiment gone wrong. But be careful, it may get you in trouble!
On Thursday nights when he was an engineering undergrad at the University of Arizona in the early 1990s, John Aldecoa and a few buddies would close their textbooks and ask the all-important question:
“Wanna hit Wildcat House?”
“We would dig around the car for change to come up with the $3 cover. I would come in with a fistful of change. We never worried about having money for drinks. We always had friends that would buy,” he recalled recently, standing in the middle of the cavernous place where he made all those college-day memories. “That was like a ritual for us every Thursday night.”
Aldecoa is hoping to help create new memories for generations of UA students and Tucson families with his Brother John’s Beer, Bourbon & BBQ inside the former Wildcat House, 1801 N. Stone Ave. (*Editor's note: The space held its grand opening New Year's Eve.)
Aldecoa is teaming up with his brother David’s New York City restaurant consulting group and David’s partner, Sascha Kreideweis, to completely renovate the 10,000-square-foot building that was home to the popular UA hangout for nearly 40 years. The Wildcat House, opened in 1977 by California-based The Graduate Restaurants Inc., closed in spring 2012.
Aldecoa said the partners, who also include his UA graduate school colleague, marketing director Ines Newby, will pump around $1 million into the project, which will include building a 2,400-square-foot Bavarian-style patio beer garden and dining area with a fireplace; creating a bourbon lounge that will offer bourbon flights, food pairings and weekly tastings; sectioning off 2,400 square feet for a private dining area with a separate bar and entrance for corporate events; and creating a stage area for live entertainment.
“It’s a big project. I don’t think anybody understands the scope of what we’re doing,” David Aldecoa said, examining the floor plans that call for expanding the kitchen and creating a dry storage space. The original kitchen had no place to store dry goods and when the brothers first took over the building in early May — they signed a 20-year lease with the new owners, who bought the building late last year — they found a box of tortilla chips on a shelf in the kitchen.
John Aldecoa said the bar was pretty much left as it was on its final night in business under former owner William Everett, complete with fries in a basket in the deep fry, drink glasses on the bar and records on the turntable in the concrete DJ booth.
The building’s owners are putting in a new roof and air conditioning; the building had been equipped only with swamp coolers. The brothers also are putting in a new parking lot. Everett cited the parking lot repair, which he estimated in 2012 to be a $500,000 project, as the reason he closed.
Inside the building, workers already have dismantled the custom-cut pine lumber, which was stacked to one side and will be repurposed throughout the redesign. The cedar planks lining the walls will be preserved and incorporated into the design.
“We want to keep the integrity of the cedar because that’s perfect for a barbecue joint,” noted David Aldecoa.
Seventies-era disco balls that once hung in the main room will be placed in the restrooms, and old patron photographs left behind by the previous owners will be incorporated into a “Throwback Thursday” themed wall. (If you think you might be in one or two of those pictures, visit facebook.com/brotherjohnsbbq and let them know. They want to share Wildcat House stories as well as the photos.)
The Aldecoas hope to largely preserve most of the heavy terra cotta wall decorations with handcrafted sculptures of everything from Wilma and Wilbur Wildcat to a trio of bobcats in UA basketball jerseys and former owner Everett as a bobcat.
Brother John’s reunites the brothers 17 years after they last worked together. The pair ran a successful pizzeria, DJ’s Pizza Pub & Grill, from 1993 to ’98. When they closed it, David Aldecoa, 45, went on to carve a successful 25-year career in the hospitality industry that included ownership of a restaurant in Massachusetts and working in Las Vegas and New York City.
John Aldecoa, 47, returned to the UA to earn his master’s in business administration. He has spent time in various management roles and is now a national technical manager with Ascension Information Services, responsible for more than 150 employees across the country. He will be the managing partner and face of the venture, David Aldecoa said.
So why barbecue in their Mexican-restaurant-saturated hometown?
“It’s an underserved market,” Newby, 31, said, ticking off a handful of independent Tucson barbecue restaurants.
The menu was curated by executive chef Nate Eckhaus, a 15-year kitchen veteran who has cooked all over the country including in Michelin star restaurants in France, Monaco and Portugal. He also successfully managed and coordinated five food and beverage outlets as executive chef at New York’s Jumeirah Essex House Hotel (now JW Marriott Essex House New York on Central Park South) and South Gate Restaurant, according to the biography provided by Newby.
Brother John’s menu will offer slow pit-smoked meats including Texas-style salt-and-pepper-rubbed brisket, “Bam Bam”-style short ribs, baby-back and St. Louis-style ribs and house-smoked pork belly. The flavors will fuse traditional Southern-style barbecue with quintessential Southwestern and Latin flair with the incorporation of locally sourced chiles.
Burgers and Southern fried chicken, along with a host of comfort-food sides and salads, round out the menu.
The restaurant will serve lunch and dinner, as well as offer two daily happy hours — one after work hours and another late at night.
David Aldecoa said the restaurant will use local and sustainable ingredients as much as possible and will work with Southern Arizona farmers and ranchers.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Oro Valley's popular farm-to-table restaurant Harvest has opened a second location in the former Skybox Restaurant and Bar at 5605 E. River Road.
Harvest owners Reza and Lisa Shapouri purchased the restaurant and are partnering with Chef Michael Veres, formerly of Cibaria Cucina Italiana and the upscale Italian venue Daniels.
"We'll do with Harvest exactly what we do here," Reza said. "A seasonal local inspired menu, buying a lot of local products, and a scratch kitchen, everything made from scratch."
Skybox has been empty since April, when it closed for reconcepting. The restaurant was in business for six years in the River Center, now anchored by the Whole Foods Market.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Tucson's growing legion of craft beer lovers and homebrewers now have a new place to hang their hats. The bar and beer garden Tucson Hop Shop brings 20 rotating taps to the Metal Arts Village on East Fort Lowell Road and North Dodge Boulevard.
The project is led by local homebrewers David and Jessie Zugerman, who want to create a community space for brewers pick up supplies and take classes to learn the craft. They plan to sell grains, hops and yeast, as well as one-gallon "all-grain" homebrewing kits for about $50.
"(Brewing beer) is one of the oldest artforms, one of the oldest professions," David said. "There's so much creativity and ingenuity that’s coming into it every day."
The Hop Shop at 3230 N. Dodge Blvd also sells take-home bottles of Arizona and national beers, as well as harder-to-find Belgian and German beers. There won't be a kitchen, but the two are working with food trucks to provide bar eats.
The former owner of The Hog Pit Smokehouse is teaming up with the operator of one of the city’s most popular food trucks on a new venture that marries barbecue and Mexican cuisines.
Les Baxter will incorporate about 75 percent of his Hog Pit menu — barbecue brisket, ribs, pulled pork and smoked sausage — and Paul Kukich will include his signature BurgerRito — a burger in a burrito prepared six ways including as a chimichanga — and other Mexican food favorites on the menu of The Les-Paul Lounge. The restaurant and bar is moving into the lobby of the eight-story Broadway Tower at 4400 E. Broadway.
The pair hope to open the restaurant by July 1, Baxter said. The lounge area, separated from the dining room by a small walkway, is under construction and no opening date has been announced.
Baxter and Kukich have been working on the Les-Paul Lounge since late last year and had initially hoped to be open in January. But the project was put on hold when the building was sold last December and the partners had to wait until the new owners took over, Baxter said.
Baxter on Sunday closed the Hog Pit, 6910 E. Tanque Verde Road, which he had run for 19 months. The building had a chronic leaky roof that needed expensive repairs before the monsoon season kicks in this month, he said. Baxter noted that Tuesday’s rains, heavy at times, seeped through the roof “and there were puddles and buckets all over the place.”
“This was a sign; we did the right thing,” he said. “When it comes down to what’s best for the safety of the customers and the staff it was a no-brainer. We weren’t going to put that much money into a building we didn’t own.”
The Les-Paul Lounge — taken from both men’s first names with no relation to the famous Les Paul Gibson guitar — will seat as many as 50 diners and an equal number in the bar. Baxter said Tucson solo musicians, duos and trios will perform live sets in the bar as they had at the Hog Pit.
This is Kukich’s first brick-and-mortar venture, although he spent years managing restaurants before launching BurgerRito 2½ years ago.
He called the combined menus a culinary marriage and one-stop dining.
“It’s going to be a very unique, monster menu,” he said, noting that it will incorporate about two-thirds of each of the partners’ menus. “Probably the only thing we don’t have is Chinese food and pizza.”
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Get ready for fireworks! Tucson's latest brewhouse 1912 Brewing Co. plans to open on Independence Day. The westside spot founded by local homebrewers Allan and Alicia Conger will start with four house taps: an Irish blonde, Irish red rye, India Pale Ale and "something else that stands out."
The 1,000-square foot taproom will also serve local wines, and feature a guest tap with breweries from across the state. There are also plans to make cider and mead.
The Congers have been working on the 3,600-square-foot space near West Grant Road and the I-10 freeway since December, installing a copper bartop and bringing in a 3.5 barrel brewing system from Portland Kettle Works.
The couple is working on bringing in food trucks like Mr. Cookman's soul food to provide bar eats. They'll open their doors noon to 10 p.m. on July 4.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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A new locally owned shop is filling the hole left in the Tucson bagel scene when The Bagelry on Campbell closed. Located in a former Mapgies pizza place up north at 7315 N. Oracle Road, The Bagel Joint promises to be a godsend for lovers of East Coast deli.
Boston-native Michael Rudner bakes the bagels fresh every day using a detailed method that involves letting the dough sit overnight, then boiling in vats of filtered water and brown sugar before putting the bagels in a massive oven with rotating stone shelves. He uses fresh yeasts and high-gluten flour, to give the bagels that perfect chewiness. There is no freezer in the building.
"I love bagels, but I love them done right," he says. The service industry veteran has a long history with the breakfast staple. When Rudner was a child, his second cousin owned a bagel shop in Boston, and he remembers delivering the bagels with his grandfather. Growing up, his house wasn't complete without a bagel in the kitchen.
"It's a Sunday morning thing," he says.
He sells his bagels in "Boston dozens," which are packs of 14: 12 plus one, plus one. His startup menu is minimal, with a few bagel sandwiches and various types of Shamrock Farms cream cheese. Although, he hopes to roll out specials including an Elvis bagel with peanut butter and bananas, as well as a Big Papi bagel with Italian sausage, provolone and sautéed onions.
The bagel and lox, ordered on a recent visit, was almost exactly that: no capers, no red onions, just brilliant strips of fatty salmon nestled between some tomatoes, cream cheese and the best bagel I've had in recent memory. The dough is not too dense nor too airy, chewy on the inside with a crispy brown shell.
The little shop is open 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
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Downtown’s newest ice cream shop is now open at 245 E. Congress St., across the street from its parent Hub Restaurant and Ice Creamery, 266 E. Congress St. It will serve a menu of housemade ice creams served in cones, floats, shakes and sundaes.
The dessert restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Wednesdays, said Sandy Ford, operations manager for both Hubs and the sister business, Playground Bar and Lounge at 278 E. Congress.
Ford said the factory’s signature flavors including salted caramel, bourbon almond brittle and birthday party will be served at both the restaurant and ice cream shop. Other flavors, all made in house, include coffee and donuts, Pop Tarts, Mexican wedding cookie and oatmeal cookie dough.
The factory also specializes in housemade Choco Tacos, with ice cream nestled in a waffle cone shaped like a taco then dipped in chocolate and topped with chopped nuts. Yummo.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
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Commoner & Co., the second venture of the trio behind the popular midtown restaurant Prep & Pastry, officially opens Thursday.
The restaurant at 6960 E. Sunrise Drive will open for happy hour at 2 p.m. Thursday and begin its dinner service at 5. It will host happy hour from 2 to 6 p.m. daily and serve dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and from 5 to 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Event Manager Katie Sanzo said they are discussing ideas for weekend brunch and possibly lunch service down the road, but for now Commoner & Co. will serve only dinner.
Commoner & Co., settling into the former home of The Abbey, returns owners Nathan Ares, Brian Morris and William Meinke back to the space where all used to work. The trio came up with the idea of Prep & Pastry while working with The Abbey's former owner Metzger Family Restaurants.
The Abbey, opened in 2010, closed last October after a financially tumultuous year that included owner Brian Metzger filing bankruptcy for the business.
Commoner & Co.'s executive chef is Virginia "Ginny" Wooters, the former executive chef for The Abbey and several Metzger Family Restaurants. She left Metzger's Poppy Kitchen at La Paloma in March.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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The popular west-side pizza and wings joint Bianchi's Italian opened its second location in Marana today, in the former home of the 7,000-square-foot The Steak Out restaurant.
The restaurant will serve lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and 11 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays.
Owner Vincent Bianchi says the new spot at 3640 W. Tangerine Road will feature the same menu as the original, with fast-casual service and a significantly larger bar. The new location will also feature the same lunch and dinner specials, featuring plates like beef lasagna, linguini with clam sauce and eggplant parmesan for $11 and under.
The space features a patio area and a private dining room for 60 people, which will be used for catering events and parties.
The Bianchi family restaurant, which has been at 1110 N. Silverbell Road since the early '80s, serves a diverse menu with pastas, sub sandwiches, calzones and gluten-free pizza. Vincent, who took over the business from his parents Randy and Nancy in 2002, works in the kitchen preparing all of the sauces each day.
The new location also delivers to nearby neighborhoods around Dove Mountain, Rancho Vistoso and La Cañada. As yet, they don't have the permits to deliver alcohol like they do at the west-side location.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Explosive news from the Tucson Mall: A local outpost of the chain Pepper Palace has opened in the food court's Arizona Avenue. The store carries hundreds of varieties of hard-to-find hot sauces from the across the U.S. and beyond.
The store's biggest draw is their Flashbang hot sauce, made with Carolina Reaper, Scorpion, Ghost Pepper, and Habanero peppers. At over two million Scoville units, the sauce is about as hot as standard grade pepper spray.
To get a taste, you have to be over 18 and sign a disclaimer. (If you like to watch people being tortured, check out the store's Facebook page for weekly Flashbang tasting videos.) One ounce of the stuff goes for $21.95 ... But this isn't too bad, considering you can flavor a whole pot of chili with 1/8 of a teaspoon.
The shop, which opened about a month ago, is the company's second Arizona outpost after Scottsdale Fashion Square.
Check out this Associated Press story that ran in our paper March 14, which credits Flashbang hot sauce for saving a man's life ...
Man gets year’s supply of ‘lifesaving’ hot sauce
ORLAND PARK — A man is enjoying more than a year’s supply of free hot sauce, which he credits with triggering a seizure that may have helped save his life.
Randy Schmitz, 30, said that after sampling Flashbang hot sauce on a toothpick last August at the Pepper Palace in Myrtle Beach, S.C., he fell to the ground in convulsions, prompting emergency medical treatment — and, ultimately, an MRI scan of his brain that detected a cancerous tumor in its early stages.
Elvira’s Restaurant in Tubac made a splash on Congress Street April 16 with its saucy moles and large tequila selection.
After a year of renovations, the upscale Mexican restaurant opened its second location 256 E. Congress St. in a space that once held Saint House Island Bistro and Rum Bar.
Elvira’s owner, Rubén Monroy Jr., plans to keep all of the classic Elvira’s dishes, but will revamp about 30 percent of the menu. He’s also tinkering around with new mole flavors like pine nut, almond and dried fruit.
“We’re gonna play a little bit,” he said. But “you end up giving people what they want.”
Monroy wants to give the new place an urban chic vibe for young couples. The inside has been redone with an eye toward respecting the wood floors and historic nature of the building. He has built out a new bar and installed those signature glass teardrops that brighten up ceilings in the Tubac location.
At least three nights a week, the restaurant will feature live music in a variety of styles including jazz, Cuban and acoustic pop.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Sushi Yukari, a popular north-side spot for some of the best sushi in town, is changing its name to Sushi Zona.
Tokyo-native Taichi Abe recently purchased the restaurant, and plans to revamp the menu and bring in fish from all over the world. Japanese hot dishes like sukiyaki and tempura will still have a place, alongside a variety of ramen, udon and soba noodles.
Abe is taking over as sushi chef, and plans to have his website done by next week. The intimate space is nestled in the River Center near the Whole Foods Market on East River and North Craycroft roads. It will keep the same hours to start.
Kwang C. An is opening an Asian restaurant and sports bar near the University of Arizona this summer.
An, best known as Mr. An from his TV commercials and years running restaurants in Tucson, hopes to open An-U in Sam Hughes Place, 446 N. Campbell Ave., by early August. It will take over the space that was most recently home to Social House Kitchen & Pub — nicknamed So-Ho — which closed at the end of March.
An, who owns his namesake Mr. An’s Teppan Steak, Sushi & Seafood, 6091 N. Oracle Road, said he is renovating the space and hopes to be finished by late July.
The restaurant will serve Asian cuisine and include a sports bar.
An, who also owns Great Wall of China restaurant on South Craycroft Road, said a grand opening will be in early August, before students return to the UA for the fall semester.
An has operated Asian restaurants in Tucson for more than 30 years. Last year, he sold his restaurant An del Sol at Casino del Sol Resort, which replaced it with Ume Asian Cuisine and Sushi.
An said he is opening an Asian restaurant in Michigan’s Little River Casino next March.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Two new restaurants are turning a sleepy corner of downtown into a destination for healthy eaters.
Urban Fresh, a recently-shuttered vegan cafe at 73 E. Pennington St., reopened Monday under new ownership. Husband and wife team Dana and Chauncey Padilla are bringing back the cafe's signature wraps, salads and fresh juices, but adding a few touches of their own.
The two could face stiff competition: Right next door, the food truck Veg in a Box is opening its first brick-and-mortar spot. A farmers market favorite, Veg in a Box specializes in comfort foods like beet fennel burgers and mock tuna sandwiches made from nori and hearts of palm. (For more Veg in a Box info, stay tuned ... )
The Padillas don't seem to be worried though. If anything, the two businesses will help each other by drawing people in, Chauncey said. While Veg in a Box does a lot of grilling and cooking, Urban Fresh caters to the raw foodie crowd.
The artful salads in Urban Fresh's grab-and-go case feature rare ingredients like local pea shoots, hearts of palm and daikon radish. On a recent visit, my made-to-order Veggie Cobb was packed with fresh cucumber and corn, with a sunny green goddess dressing on the side.
The Padillas, who aren't professional chefs, were receiving their training that day directly from previous owner Kathy Iannacone. Dana had filled the patio with herbs and succulents, and Chauncey brought an English aesthetic by putting on a BBC rock station and offering Wilkinson's of Norwich iced tea. Chauncey gained an appreciation for specialty teas after he spent several years stationed in Royal Air Force Lakenheath, United Kingdom.
"We just want to help people eat a little bit healthier," he said.
- Arizona Daily Star
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The Fourth Avenue crepe restaurant Cafe Marcel opened Tuesday in a new space on North Oracle near West Grant Road.
The building, formerly home to the Checkerboard Cafe, has twice as much seating and a much larger kitchen than their previous space, says Michelle Frazier who owns the business with her husband Joe.
As they grow into their new digs, the two will begin to expand the menu with new cheeses and vegetables like asparagus. Rather than cooking the crepes on a small cast-iron crepe stone, they'll have an entire grill to work with.
Cafe Marcel will continue to serve an eclectic menu of sweet, savory and breakfast crepes, as well espressos and coffee drinks. A favorite is their Swedish lingonberry crepe with roasted chicken, a holdover from the Fourth Avenue space's Cafe Zope days.
Michelle's culinary background is actually French Canadian. Her family is from the Montreal-area, and she remembers the sweet crepes her mother made her while growing up in Vermont.
The restaurant's new hours are 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays. It is closed on Mondays. Check the Facebook page or website at cafemarcel.biz for more info.
-Andi Berlin
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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A veteran Tucson chef has opened a South American sandwich shop in the former home of Cafe Marcel.
Irene Echeandia's Latin Up Sandwich Shop features sandwiches from her namesake downtown restaurant Irene's, which closed in the mid-2000s. Echeandia, who is originally from New Jersey, learned to cook from her multicultural family. Her father, who was a truck driver from Brazil, met her mother in Lima, Peru before they moved to the United States.
The order-at-the-counter cafe serves an eclectic menu of salads and sandwiches like the chimichurri steak, or turkey cooked in cilantro sauce with apples and black bean spread. (Also be a quinoa burger.) At the Viva la Local food festival, La Plancha was grilling up a hearty sweet potato and chicharron pork sandwich that exploded with piquant salsa criolla, a Peruvian red onion relish.
At their food festival debut, the family team was also pouring lovely cups of sweet chicha morada that had been spiced with cinnamon. For those who don't know the Peruvian specialty, chicha morada is a refreshing fruit drink brewed with Andean purple corn. A great choice as the summer heats up ...
And just in case you were wondering, there will be huancaína! The rich Peruvian cheese sauce will make its way onto the menu as both a papa huancaína salad, and a sandwich with roast beef and shoestring potatoes inside. At the festival, the silken spread was used as a dipping sauce for a fried Brazilian coxinha croquette.
Echeandia is importing aji peppers from Peru, which will go into a punchy aji mayo. Other ingredients will come from local farmers markets. The bread is from the nearby Small Planet Bakery.
Sandwiches will be affordable at $7.95, with a pickle and your choice of chips, including plantain. Other dinner items will also make their way on as weekly specials. Starting hours will be 11 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to midnight or 1 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
Former tenants Cafe Marcel opened today in their new spot at 2281 N. Oracle Road. Check back at tucson.com/dining for more information on the new location ...
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
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The owners of Sushi Cortaro in Marana have opened a second restaurant in central Tucson.
East Buffet at 75 W. River Road, off North Stone Avenue, has a buffet with nearly 100 items, mostly from the Chinese side of the menu, including soups, appetizers, vegetables, seafood, habachi, a full fruit bar and ice cream among the dessert offerings. The restaurant also serves sushi rolls and a few other Japanese items.
The restaurant is in the space that was home to another Chinese buffet restaurant.
East Buffet and the four-year-old Sushi Cortaro, 8225 N. Courtney Page Way off Interstate 10 and Cortaro Road, are owned by Derek Cheng. His chef at East Buffet comes from New York, where he cooked at that city's East Buffet (no relation, says Cheng's wife Tracy Lin).
East Buffet is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. It's $8.49 for lunch, $10.99 for dinner. Details: 888-1065 or eastbuffetaz.com
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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The popular vegetarian-focused Guilin Chinese restaurant has reopened on Broadway.
Owner Kinsun Wong began serving the same menu of Cantonese and Mandarin dishes last Saturday. Prices will remain relatively the same, although the restaurant's ever-popular $4.95 lunch special is being hiked up to, gasp, $4.99. The new hours will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays, and 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Saturdays.
The new spot is in the former home of Bella D'Auria Restaurant and Bar at 4445 E. Broadway, and is about the same size as their original space, Wong says.
The restaurant had to relocate after their former spot at 3250 E. Speedway, was set to be demolished.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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A newly-opened restaurant is bringing an impressive selection of craft beers to a corner of Fourth Avenue previously dominated by college frat bars.
Ermanos Craft Beer and Wine Bar, which opened April 1 at 220 N. Fourth Ave., boasts a changing tap list with 34 beers from Tucson and other U.S. cities. Also available: Wine by the glass, carafe, bottle and flight. The eclectic list is filled with lesser known varietals like Trincadeira and Monastrell. You can also purchase beer to-go from the bottle shop at the front of the restaurant.
Brothers Mark and Eric Erman have done extensive renovations on the building, exposing the brick walls and lining the bar with earthy panels of repurposed wood. The two brought in Chef David Valencia Jr., formerly of Agustín Kitchen, to craft a small but detailed menu of gourmet sandwiches and bar bites.
Check back next week for more info on the menu, plus a video!
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
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Tucson's only cannabis-inspired sandwich shop, Cheba Hut, reopened Saturday in its former location at 1820 E. Sixth St.
The campus-area restaurant's new hours are 10 a.m. through midnight every day. After April 20, the spot will extend their hours, serving their signature toasted subs until 3 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
Formerly run by franchisees Steve and Colleen Bigelow, Cheba Hut closed up shop in December. New owners the Lenz family, headed up by father and son Dorian and D.J. Lenz, also own four other Cheba Hut locations in Flagstaff, Mesa, Tempe and Glendale.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
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Eat Fresh Mexican Food Raspados opened a new Mexican restaurant in the Tucson Mall Food Court last week.
It's the business's second mall outpost. It has a raspados stand on the second floor of the mall.
The restaurant offers a full menu of Mexcan entrees including burritos, tacos and sandwiches. It's open during mall hours.
A Colorado-based restaurateur is coming to Tucson this fall and bringing with it starting wages nearly $2 higher than most Tucson fast-casual restaurants pay.
Illegal Pete’s Mexican restaurant, moving this fall into a historic two-story house at 876 E. University Blvd., will pay employees a starting wage of $10.50 an hour plus tips. Kitchen workers will start at $11 a hour, said owner Pete Turner. The restaurant also offers medical and dental insurance — employees pay half the cost of the premiums — paid vacation, and a food and drink allowance.
At the 20-year-old company’s seven restaurants in Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado, wages with tips included average $14 an hour for most employees, Turner said.
Illegal Pete’s also is in the process of a $1 million “wage benchmarking project” that will bump employee wages higher.
“It’s a significant commitment, but we think that you’re going to get better people, more committed people,” said Turner, who opened his first restaurant straight out of college when he was 23. “We do believe it’s good business in the long run, or even the short run. It’s ultimately … the right thing to do. This sort of middle class has gone away, and not that we’re trying to replace that but we’re trying to provide a door up to that.”
Most Tucson fast-casual restaurant workers make an average of $9 to $9.50 an hour, said Juan Padres, an economic development specialist with the Tucson City Economic Initiatives Office.
And most of those employees are lucky to work 30 hours a week in those jobs, he said.
“Most of the labor force has other jobs, other than management,” Padres said.
Turner’s model, though, might not work for most restaurants, which operate on razor-thin profit margins that average 2 to 4 percent, said Arizona Restaurant Association spokeswoman Chianne Hewer.
“Everyone would love to pay their employees more, but the fact is we are a labor-intensive industry. It takes at least five people to run a restaurant that might not even have a full menu,” said Hewer, the association’s public affairs and communications manager. “It comes down to the business and the revenue and expenses at the end of the day.”
Illegal Pete’s serves a full menu of San Francisco-inspired Mission-style Mexican cuisine that also borrows Southern California influences. It has often been compared to another Denver-born Mexican burrito chain, Chipotle, but Turner said Illegal Pete’s has a broader menu and a full service bar, with live music. The restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and be open daily until 2:30 a.m.
The company has hired Tucson’s Rob Paulus Architects Ltd. to renovate the Landmark building, a 1910 house in the shadow of the University of Arizona. The building has been home to a clothing store since the early 1960s, first under the name Franklin’s, then as Landmark.
Turner said workers have stripped some of the interior plaster to reveal the building’s original bones.
“We uncovered some really neat parts of the architecture, and it’s gorgeous,” he said. “We are really trying to maintain (the historic integrity) and open the building because it’s so pretty. It’s just beautiful, man.”
Plans include tearing down interior walls to open up the space, creating a bar downstairs and another one upstairs, and building a deck over the front patio. A second deck is planned in the back and restrooms will be added to both floors. Part of the kitchen will be located in the basement, Turner said.
Illegal Pete’s made national news late last year as it was opening its seventh restaurant, in Fort Collins, Colorado, a city with a sizable Latino population. Critics said the name disparaged Mexican immigrants; Turner maintained that the name was meant to be “mysterious” and playful, and said it pays homage to his late father, also named Pete.
Turner said the controversy took him by surprise since no one had questioned the name in the 19 previous years that he had operated the restaurants.
“It was totally unexpected, and it became way bigger than I could ever imagine it happening, to the point that the New York Times was there for our opening,” he said. “It was a really difficult four weeks out of my life.”
Residents of Fort Collins urged Turner to change the name, but “I did some soul-searching and really know that (the name) was not about” anti-immigration, he said.
“And I just can’t do it. It’s who I know myself as and many, many people know about us around the state (of Colorado). … We are great community partners, great employers. We provide great opportunities,” he said. “Words change in meaning. That word in particular is not a bad word. And who knows if it changes. Hopefully there will be some (immigration) reform in the next five years and things will change back.”
Turner said, though, that he anticipates some sort of protest when he opens in Tucson — his first venture outside of Colorado. He is shooting to open in late August, to coincide with the start of the 2015-16 UA school year.
Lea Marquez Peterson, president and CEO of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber, said she has never heard of Illegal Pete’s, but the name doesn’t concern her. She said she is more excited by the higher wages the restaurant is promising.
“I believe that it is good news for Tucson if Pete has a financial model that supports paying a higher wage,” she said in an email interview.
- Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Costa Vida, a Mexican fast-casual chain based out of Utah, is slated to open in the former Choice Greens on North Campbell Avenue later this year.
The restaurant's concept is similar to the fast-food Mexican chain Chipotle, where customers build their own meals from ingredients in front of them. They also choose their tortillas, made from scratch on a comal in the restaurant. Customers choose entree items like burritos, tacos, enchiladas and salads, then move onto meats, beans and other extras.
"Everything that we serve is Mexican-inspired fresh food," says franchise marketing manager Trent Morrison.
Founder Kenny Prestwich opened the first restaurant after a trip to the beach in Mexico, where he was inspired by flavors of the cuisine, Morrison said.
The majority of Costa Vida's 60-plus stores are franchised. It has three locations in the Phoenix-area; Tucsonan Weston Stewart will operate the restaurant at 4205 N. Campbell Ave. next to Trader Joe's.
The space had been occupied by Choice Greens, which was forced out by its landlord in December after being told the plaza's ownership had changed hands.
You can find more information about Costa Vida on its website costavida.net
One of Tucson’s newest sushi restaurants has taken a more literal approach to rolling out its daily menu items.
QQ Revolving Sushi Bar, which opened in late January in the Hub at Tucson student housing complex, boasts a custom-built conveyor belt that snakes its way through the dining area’s built-in booths, single seats and sushi prep station.
Chefs place rolls on different colored plates and send them down the line so that customers may pick and choose their meals.
The color of the plate on which the sushi sits designates the cost. The white plates, which hold simple dishes such as California rolls and light appetizers, are the cheapest at $1.75. Black plates, home to more complex creations and specialty rolls, are $5.25. Yellow, green and blue plates range from $2.25 to $4.25.
At the end of the meal, the number and color of the plates stacked on the table determine the bill.
“It keeps the price for the customer down,” said QQ owner Ricky Lu. “People tend to think that sushi is an expensive night out. I want to open it up. I want people in Tucson to enjoy casually going out for sushi like they enjoy going out for hamburgers and sandwiches.”
While the conveyor belt concept is popular in other parts of the United States and commonplace in other countries such as Japan and Australia, only a handful of revolving sushi restaurants exist in Arizona.
Lu, 34, hopes to change that. He’s a first generation Chinese-American who started his career in the food service industry working for Chinese restaurants in New York City, before finding his passion in sushi.
He co-owned and operated the traditional sushi restaurant Tenzan 89 in Manhattan for five years, before coming to Tucson in 2014 to be closer to his sister.
When Lu leased the 3,000-square-foot space in Hub on North Tyndall Avenue near the University of Arizona, the thought was to cater primarily to students.
Lu estimates at least 60 percent of his customers come from the student housing complexes that surround his establishment.
The plan is to now expand into other parts of town.
Lu and his partners have already signed a lease to take over the former home of the China Star restaurant on the southeast corner of East Grant and North Swan roads.
The Grant Road space is 6,000 square feet, in a shopping complex anchored by Trader Joe’s and PetSmart. Lu said the location is optimal because it already has a built-in kitchen.
Like the QQ on Tyndall Avenue, the new QQ will offer a full menu, in addition to rotating, conveyor belt options.
Lu said he hopes to have the second location open by the end of April.
He is already in talks for a third location on East Broadway.
“I want to make QQ Sushi a common sight throughout Tucson,” he said.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Oro Valley has a new pizzeria, an outpost of the Laguna Beach, California, chain Zpizza that features a DIY tap room.
Super cool, right? Here's how it works: Customers get a wristband that activates the tap and then tracks how much they drink.
You can give it a test run Tuesday when the restaurant, at 11165 N. La Cañada Drive, off West Naranja Drive, offers $1 pizza slices throughout the day. There's a little catch: Only one $1 slice per customer.
Zpizza, which has been open two weeks, specializes in vegan and vegetarian pizzas and pastas. Vegan cheese and sausage is on the menu, as is gluten-free crust options. But you can also get a traditional pepperoni and other meats with full-dairy mozzarella.
Prices run from $8.11 for a small cheese pizza to $20 for an extra large pie. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Days after it marked its one-year anniversary in St. Philip’s Plaza, Bodega Kitchen & Wine closed on Feb. 23.
A week later, Amalour Lounge took its place in the 95-seat restaurant that was once home to another short-lived restaurant, Liv Cafe and Bistro.
Amalour, owned by the Selby family, opened Monday, serving a new American menu that crosses several continents, said General Manager Katie Jo Willis. There’s Italian influences in the five varieties of bruschetta on the small plates menu, a dry-rubbed all-American New York steak — which at $32 is the most expensive item on the menu — skewers and a trio of fritters. Small plates run $6 to $12.
Willis said Amalour sources as much as it can locally, including working with its St. Philip’s neighbors: it offers Flying Leap Vineyards wine, uses Alfonso’s Olive Oils and Vinegars in its dishes and shops weekly the St. Philip’s farmers market.
“We are sourcing as much as we can local, fresh,” she said.
Amalour also has Dragoon and Barrio beers on tap, as well as a couple other Arizona breweries.
The restaurant, 4340 N. Campbell Ave., is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and until 9 p.m. Sundays. A grand opening is planned for March 20
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
A big hole in Tucson’s culinary landscape is now filled with the recent entry of Ricuras de Venezuela Arepas & More into the area’s burgeoning food truck scene.
On New Year’s Eve, Marlene and Steve Baquet became the first to exclusively serve Venezuelan food when they put the truck into action. They parked behind Hotel Congress and stayed there into the wee hours, having to turn customers away well after their anticipated 3 a.m. closing time, Marlene said.
“Believe me we had to say ‘OK bye.’ We had so many people keep coming,” said Marlene, who moved to Tucson 20 years ago with her mother from their native Venezuela to be close to her sister.
Ricuras de Venezuela is now a permanent weekend fixture downtown. From 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, they serve fresh-made arepas ($6 to $7) stuffed with carne mechada — shredded beef — chicken and mashed vegetables, and savory empanadas stuffed with ground and shredded beef from their spot behind Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St.
The menu also includes K’chapas ($4) — think pancakes — filled with sweet corn and melty cheese, and the traditional banana leaf-wrapped Venezuelan tamales — called hallacas ($7).
The family operates the truck from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays in front of their ABC Insurance office at 890 W. Grant Road, where the Baquets sell insurance and operate a tax preparation business. Marlene Baquet prepares the food at a south-side commissary in the mornings and has a staff operate the truck.
In the six weeks since rolling out, the family business has taken off in ways that Marlene Baquet said was almost inconceivable when they started. The carne machada has become their most popular seller.
“When we started we were going through 15 pounds a week; now we are at 70 pounds,” she said.
Steve Baquet said the couple searched nearly a year before finding the food truck in Sinaloa, Mexico. The idea for a food truck was inspired by Marlene’s mother, who died last May.
“My mom wanted to have a food truck. She said we needed to sell arepas, a flat bread. But I was taking care of my business and other stuff. So I was like, ‘OK , we’ll do it. We’ll do it’,” she said, noting that she uses her mother’s recipes. After her mother died, “I felt like I owed it to her.”
The Baquets have a lock on the Venezuelan food market in Tucson. There are no other restaurants here devoted to the cuisine.
- Gerald M. Gay
- Updated
A New Mexico fast food staple is slated to open its first location in Tucson in mid-March, taking over the take over the Arby’s at 2810 E. Speedway. A second location is expected to open this May at Valencia Road near the I-19.
Blake’s has 77 locations throughout New Mexico and El Paso, and this will be its first Arizona location.
In 2006, National Geographic recognized the chain for having the best green chile cheeseburger in the world.
- Cathalena E. Burch
- Updated
With a name like Pie Bird Bakery and Cafe you had best have pie on the menu.
Don’t worry, says owner Maren Christensen, she and partner Will Moyer have it covered. Pies, pastries and brownies share top billing with fresh salads, sandwiches and an extensive beverage menu — all scratch made — at the soon-to-open restaurant in the Transamerica Building, 177 N. Church Ave.
The pair have taken up residence in the space that was home to Arizona Bagel and Deli Company. The building’s owners have renovated it and opened up the adjacent conference room as a dining room to seat 75 to 100, said Christensen, the pitcher for the 2001 Sahuaro High School state championship softball team.
Christensen, who took a breather from graduate school at the University of Arizona to stay home with her young kids, has no restaurant experience. But she ran a successful catering business from home, delivering to downtown businesses in the Transamerica Building as well as Raytheon Missile Systems, she said. Her partner was trained in culinary school, she said, and has restaurant experience with an emphasis on desserts.
Christensen, a Tucson native who went on to play softball for Colorado State University, said she decided to take the plunge and open Pie Bird Bakery mainly because of the location. She will have the potential of a built-in clientele among the 480 tenants as well as the downtown courthouse audience of attorneys, jurors and court officials.
Pie Bird Bakery & Cafe is expected to open Feb. 2. Hours will be from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Home Plate Marana, an offshoot of the popular east side Home Plate Sports Pub, is now open in the former Monkey Business Eatertainment on North Silverbell Road.
The opening is a week or so ahead of the original early June opening date envisioned by owner Rick James when he began renovating the 12,000-square-foot building in January. James has owned Home Plate at 4880 E. 22nd St. for 10 of its 50 years.
Home Plate takes up 4,500 square feet of the building, at 8579 N. Silverbell Road. The remaining space will be leased out to other businesses.
The kitchen opens daily at 11 a.m. and the bar is open until 2 a.m.
The restaurant also will feature batting cages, which are still under construction.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen opened its first Tucson location at 3455 E. Broadway at El Con Shopping Center.
The restaurant prides itself on producing 90 percent of its menu by scratch in a kitchen manned by three times the number of cooks working in most restaurant kitchens, according to a news release.
Cheddar's made inroads into Arizona last March with a restaurant in Chandler. The chain was launched in Texas in 1979 and now has more than 150 locations in 29 states.
Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen's menu includes steaks, seafood, salads, pastas, burgers and chicken dishes.
The Tucson restaurant occupies 8,000 square feet and seats up to 200 diners.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
You used to be able to get pizza slices at 58 W. Congress St., formerly home of Enoteca.
Now you can get traditional Mexican street tacos, the kinds you are likely to find being served from carts in Nogales or Juarez.
The fast-casual Mexican restaurant Street Taco & Beer Company opens at 11 a.m. Monday — months behind owners Dago Martinez and Amjaad Jhan's anticipated late September launch.
"There were a lot of little hiccups along the way getting permits," said Jhan.
The menu includes carnitas, carne asada and barbacoa tacos, as well as burritos, tortas and other Mexican standards. Tacos start at $2 for the vegetarian and go as high as $3 for fish and pork al pastor.
The restaurant also serves beers — more than 100 varieties in bottles and eight on tap, four of them locally produced craft beers.
Street Taco & Beer company is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
- Carthalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The pair behind the successful Union Public House in St. Philip's Plaza have turned their attention to Mexico City for their second restaurant.
Steve Stratigouleas and Grant Krueger opened Reforma Cocina & Cantina in mid-December in the space once occupied by Vivace Restaurant. Reforma serves richly orchestrated dishes including a sopes appetizer that employs braised beef cheek and a bone marrow salsa ($15) and a Pescado de Pepian Verde that substitutes a daily white fish for the often used pork ($21).
"We live so close to the border and the Mexican restaurants — we have some great ones, but they are all Sonoran," said Stratigouleas, who described the differences in terms of depth of flavors that includes fresh ground corn tortillas. Stratigouleas said they use as much as 100 pounds of corn each day to make 3,000 tortillas.
Stratigouleas said he and Krueger gutted the space at 4310 N. Campbell Ave., installed a new kitchen and expanded by about 1,000 square feet to 7,000 square feet. Reforma can seat 221.
Reforma is open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Union Public House, 4340 N. Campbell Ave., has been open since late 2011.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
What’s stranger than eating pizza in a former funeral home?
Sipping a cocktail in the morgue.
That’s where you’ll find the newest addition to Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink — the 61-seat Tough Luck Club, a cocktail lounge carved out of the basement of the old Reilly Funeral Home at 101 E. Pennington St.
Tough Luck Club opened on New Year’s Eve in the basement, which runs the length of the three-story building, and was used as the funeral home’s morgue.
Reilly beverage manager Niklas Morris said the name is inspired by Manhattan’s famed Turf Club, where in the heyday of metropolitan cocktailing — the 1860s to 1910 — neighborhood celebrities would back the Turf, and when the talk turned to politics mixed with booze, fights would break out.
“No bar is so fancy that it doesn’t have a bit of an edge,” Morris explained. “And we’re also in a former morgue, so (there is) a good chance that if you are here now or previously you are probably having some tough luck.”
The club’s general manager, Courtney Fenton, said Tough Luck serves craft cocktails just as the pizzeria upstairs. It will offer just one beer — Coors in a can.
The club is open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, with plans to extend the hours in the next couple weeks, Fenton said.
Patrons enter the club through Reilly’s beer garden in the back of the restaurant.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Pizza briefly inhabited the restaurant space at 7131 E. Broadway, but later this month, bacon will take up residence.
The Oink Café will replace The Heist Pizza Parlour, which closed in early October after about a year in business.
Oink will serve a scratch-made breakfast and lunch menu of the usual suspects: Eggs over easy, chorizo, omelets, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes.
And then there's the not-so-usual casting of bacon as diva: they serve it by the slice and the flight. That's beer-lovers parlance for a variety pack.
And speaking of variety — cue that waxing-on-about-shrimp scene from "Forest Gump" — applewood smoked bacon, honey bacon, honey cured bacon, jalapeno bacon, peppered bacon, sugar-cured bacon, hickory bacon, apple cider bacon and chef's choice bacon. The flight includes eight slices of bacon, one of each flavor.
"It's all about bacon," said Donnie Baxla, whose family opened their flaghship The Oink Cafe in Phoenix three years ago. The family has operated Peter Piper Pizza franchises in Tucson since 1986.
Baxla, who runs the Phoenix cafe, said his sisters Heather Clauser and Joan Roeber and sister-in-law Noel Baxla will run the Tucson cafe. He said it should be open by the end of January.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Chipotle Mexican Grill, the popular, national burrito chain, and Baggins, the popular Tucson sandwich chain, are moving into one of Marana's busiest retail corridors.
Both restaurants are expected to open in the next couple months across the street from one another on West Arizona Pavilions Drive off Interstate 10 and West Cortaro Road.
• Chipotle will take over the retail space that was most recently home to Payless Shoe Source at 5940 N. Business Park Drive. Construction has been ongoing since early December and the restaurant is expected to open sometime in the next couple months, company officials said.
• Construction just got started on the 2,300-square-foot-space where Baggins will serve its menu of gourmet sandwiches and salads beginning sometime in early February, said Baggins Vice President Sunny Bravin. This will be Baggins' ninth Tucson location.
Bravin said the timing is right to move into Marana, which has seen remarkable growth in mostly chain restaurants in the I-10/Cortaro Road corridor in the past several years. Among the restaurants already operating there is Chili's, Native Grill & Wings, Texas Roadhouse, Cracker Barrel and a handful of fast-food outposts including In-N-Out Burger and Panda Express.
Dunkin' Donuts opened a store at 8090 N. Cortaro Road across the driveway from Panda Express in late summer. In early November, Village Inn, known for its breakfast specialities and homespun comfort food, opened at 5955 W. Arizona Pavilions Drive.
"That area is booming over there," said Bravin. "I think that's just been an underdeveloped area for our clients. We have a lot of customers (from Marana) who come to our Oro Valley and Oracle Road stores."
Chef Deborah Tenino's popular Latin tapas bar Contigo will reopen in the space formerly occupied by Poppy Kitchen at The Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa.
Tenino is opening the restaurant with business partner Nicholas Kreutz of Young's Market Company. An estimated opening date will be announced later in January.
Resort officials have been looking for a new tenant to fill the 3,000-square-foot space since August, when Poppy Kitchen closed its doors. The spacious dining room, which also housed Janos Wilder's J Bar, is significantly larger than the original Contigo and features a large patio looking out onto the city of Tucson.
The original Contigo at 1745 E. River Road offered wine, cocktails and small bites with an eye toward Latin America, serving rare dishes from countries like Cuba and Brazil. The restaurant closed in May 2015.
Retired military dietitian James Williams is taking his Southern recipes to the campus area next week through a partnership with an already-existing restaurant.
His southside chicken and waffles spot J and K Heritage Museum Cafe has closed its doors, so Williams is moving up the road to operate inside the ATL Wings Your Way at 1628 E. Sixth St. Williams will serve chicken and waffles for breakfast and lunch, along with other Southern barbecue favorites like pulled pork.
His last venture, J and K, was a short-lived partnership with Mr. K's BBQ founder Charles Kendrick. The South Park Avenue restaurant which also houses the Afro-American Heritage Museum currently has several for-lease signs posted in front of the building. A few concepts have gone through space in the last couple years, including the Olé Rico Mexican Steakhouse and a Caribbean restaurant in 2013.
The new J's Chicken and Waffles will operate from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. inside the ATL wings, a franchise operation that serves Southern dishes like fried catfish and tilapia, plus several varieties of chicken wings. Before Williams came in, the space previously served hot wings and Mediterranean food.
A new concept called Batch Doughnuts & Whiskey opened downtown on Jan. 1, bringing together small-batch whiskies, doughnuts and high-quality drip coffee.
Restaurateur Kade Mislinski along with partner Ronnie Spece took over an intimate room at 118 E. Congress St. from Frank Lietzau, the founder of Unplugged Wine Bar, which served its final customers on New Year’s Eve.
The 650-square-foot bar area previously served as an office space for MEB Management Services.
The unlikely pairing of doughnuts with craft whiskey to wash them down has become increasingly trendy on the national food scene, with bars and themed parties popping up in cities like Denver; Austin, Texas; and Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley’s penchant for jelly doughnuts and a few stiff drinks has been cited as one inspiration.
“The evil and awesome combination of two of humanity’s greatest creations” is how organizers of some of those themed events around the country have described the concept.
Unplugged Wine Bar had been in business since September 2013, offering red, white and sparkling wines from around the world and a selection of European craft beers.
“Frank and the downtown Tucson community are wishing Batch great luck and prosperity in the new year,” reads a post on Unplugged’s website.
- By Kristen Cook Arizona Daily Star
The Flores family — which owns El Charro Cafe — has long had a stake in downtown.
Soon, it’ll be serving it.
Charro Steak is set to open in the space that formerly housed the short-lived, Native American-inspired Barrio Cuisine, 188 E. Broadway in the historic Julian Drew Building. It’s not quite a mile away from the legendary El Charro Cafe, established in 1922 and considered the nation’s oldest Mexican restaurant in continuous operation by the same family.
Ray Flores Jr. said his mother and chef, Carlotta Flores, as well as the rest of the family is looking forward to being closer to the action.
“We’re excited to be across from the AC Marriott and everything that’s going on around downtown,” Flores said, referring to the AC Hotel Tucson, 151 E. Broadway, that’s under construction. “We’ve been keeping the lights on downtown for 100 years, and we’re a little off the beaten path. Getting closer to Broadway and Congress is great.”
Ross Rulney, who owns the Julian Drew building, said a number of experienced operators were interested in the space, but the Flores family won him over with their vision.
“I was intrigued by the Charro Steak concept when Ray pitched it to me because I feel there is unmet demand for this type of restaurant downtown,” Rulney said in an email interview. “I have known the Flores family for quite some time and have always been impressed with their dedication and professionalism, but the deal was sealed when Carlotta and Ray invited me to a special tasting to sample items from the Charro Steak menu. Not only were they delicious, the presentation was beautiful.”
Out-of-town diners at El Charro often ask for steak, but “we don’t have a great steak-cooking kitchen,” Flores said.
Plus, it’s not really the kind of place where menu items are easily shaken up.
“It’s very hard to change El Charro,” Flores said with a laugh. “We’ve always said El Charro belongs to the people more than us because heaven forbid we change something.”
Charro Steak gives his family the chance to do a “center-of-the-plate” restaurant that’s approachable and features locally sourced foods. Flores likes to call it ranch-to-table. The menu is inspired by El Charro but has its own spin on American steakhouse fare.
“It’ll be a reasonably-priced steakhouse option downtown that’ll have a great amount of Sonoran influence and Tucson-style cooking,” he said.
Lunch options will be around $10 with most dinner entrees in the $19-22 range. Expect to see dishes like mesquite grilled Arizona grass-fed and grass-finished New York strip along with ancho rubbed prime rib tortas and osso bucco estilo Sonorense. Sides will include traditional Mexican staples like coctel de elote (corn) and nopalitos y hongos, (prickly pear pads and mushrooms).
“You can’t go to Fleming’s and get nopalitos,” Flores said.
Charro Steak will seat about 130 diners inside, and the family is making some changes to the restaurant but not many.
“We don’t want to mess with the space too much — it’s got a cool downtown, vintage feel,” Flores said.
The decor will pay tribute to the charro horsemen of Mexico and have an herb wall.
Flores said he can’t nail down a specific opening day when people can try his mother’s twist on osso bucco (Rulney says it’s delicious), but is expecting it to be mid-February.
Charro Steak will be the sixth Tucson restaurant for the Flores family, which also has a catering business, a Sahuarita restaurant, outposts in the Phoenix area and a place in Las Vegas.
We got a sneak peak at the posh pizza and wine bar Humble Pie before it opens tomorrow. (Earlier this week, the Scottsdale-based chain held a soft opening for media and friends.) So if you're looking to hit up La Encantada for some Black Friday deals and need a bite, here's what to expect:
THE CONCEPT
Approachable menu of sandwiches, salads and personal pizzas from the wood-fired oven. Single dining room with fresh but minimalist decor and a full bar. Lots of happy hour specials and deals. Altogether, the restaurant feels like a casual alternative to North Italia across the street.
THE MENU
If I had to pin this place on a map, I'd probably move toward California rather than Naples.
Starters are basic but sophisticated: meatballs, cheesy bread, caprese, etc. Our fried calamari came with a zesty basil dipping sauce and a lemon wedge wrapped in cheese cloth and tied up like a gift.
Pizza pies are divided on the menu between white — buffalo chicken, roasted mushroom with pancetta — and red — margherita, meat lovers, etc. They've also got some funky ones like the Egg Pizza and the B.L.T. with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise piled on top.
We split a chicken caesar and one of the fancier pizzas, the Schreiner’s Sicilian Sausage with housemade mozzarella and wrinkly little fronds of dark roasted fennel, which brightened everything up a bit. The pock-marked puffy crust was truly exceptional, with just enough chewiness to back up that fluff.
DON'T MISS!
All of this is pretense to the main attraction, the sublimely soft chocolate chip pizza cookie with vanilla ice cream on top! I'm a sucker for these things so I really am in no position to judge them accurately. But man, it's a pizza cookie at La Encantada!
After a short revamp, the midtown lunch spot Goodness Fresh Food and Juice Bar has opened a second location at the former Nox Kitchen + Cocktails on East Skyline Drive. During the daytime, the restaurant is offering the same menu as its original location at 2502 N. Campbell Ave. After 5 p.m. it turns into a full-service restaurant with craft cocktails and healthful gourmet faire.
Co-owner Brandon Katz, who also owned Nox, said that the new concept was inspired by farm-to-table restaurants like Andrew Weil's True Food Kitchen. The evening service Goodness Fresh Kitchen will have an emphasis on fresh fish, grass-fed beef and Mediterranean cooking methods.
"We took our same morals and the base of Goodness Fresh Food and turned it into a restaurant where entrees are around $15," Katz said. "Everything's fresh. We don't use any granulated sugar, it's a full scratch kitchen."
The initial dinner menu lists some interesting cocktails like a spiked rum horchata and a white sangria with a drinking shrub made from nopales cactus. Menu items range from familiar Goodness salads to entrees like wild albacore tuna with butternut squash puree and ginger fennel. Several items seem to draw from Katz's other restaurant Obon Sushi + Bar + Ramen, which he runs with business partner Andre Joffroy under the name Brand Restaurant Concepts.
Katz said that the two decided to close Nox Kitchen because it lacked that niche that makes Goodness and Obon stand out.
"We just saw that (Nox) was a successful business in the sense that it didn't lose money," he said. But, "we're more outside-of-the-box thinkers than doing the American comfort food."
The two have signed a lease for a new location near East Tanque Verde Road and East Camino Principal, which they plan to turn into either a Goodness or an Obon. Katz said that they're also considering opening up an Obon in Chandler.
Through Sunday, Goodness on Skyline is offering all customers 15 percent off their bill. Starting hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. There will also be a happy hour with select deals on drinks and appetizers from 4 to 6 p.m. every day. The restaurant is located at 6370 N. Campbell Ave.
The university-area bar Trident Grill will open its second location in the former home of Jackson Tavern at 2900 N. Swan Road. Co-owner/operator Danny Gallego says they're hoping to be open by Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 7.
The 3,700-square-foot space which once housed the Red Sky Cafe was most recently under the helm of Tucson restauranteur Brian Metzger, who left in May of this year. Gallego says they plan to keep much of the New England feel from Jackson Tavern, but they plan to move the bar and open up the patio with sliding garage doors.
Trident is already an "east coast kinda bar," he said. "We're gonna keep the wood and tavern feel over there. We're just going to make it more vibrant."
The restaurant, Trident Grill II, will have the same menu as the original location at 2033 E. Speedway, and will have two dozen taps. It will also have 10 to 15 televisions around the restaurant.
The restaurant is next door to Vero Amore Neapolitan Pizza.
- By Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
If you have been to Casa Video lately and found construction tarps where the Criterion section used to be, here’s the deal: A beer and wine bar is coming to the back room of the rental store at 2905 E. Speedway.
When it opens in late November/December, Casa Film Bar will have about 20 taps and 300 bottles of local and craft beer, said manager Kyle Schwab. Customers will be able to purchase bottles to go or drink them inside the bar space for a fee. Bar staff will also pour growlers and refillable aluminum cans known as crowlers.
Other tap options will include wine as well as local cold-brew and nitro coffee. (As for hot coffee, they’re still working out whether it will be single cup pour-over or French press.) Customers will be able to bring the coffee and craft sodas into the rest of the store but not the alcohol.
The bar, owned by Schwab's mother and uncle, will be staffed by a separate team of bartenders, which Casa is hiring now.
Schwab says the bar area will be open to the rest of the store, and that customers can also enter from the outside through doors on the patio. (To get to the second floor with the foreign movies, you’ll have to go through the bar.)
The bar will have one large movie screen and four 55” TVs which will play different movies throughout the week, depending on the chosen theme.
“We’re gonna try to keep it loud enough so people can hear (the movie), but so that people can have a conversation at the same time,” Schwab said.
The owners thought up the bar idea in part as a way to increase sales, which have been down in the age of Netflix and Internet streaming. The beer idea isn’t entirely new: Casa Video began selling cans and growlers of craft beer for takeout last August.
“We’re just trying to find other avenues to make money, and we have an interest in beer,” Schwab said. “And the beer sales have done pretty well with us, so we think that beer would be a good thing to get into.”
When it opens, Casa Film Bar will have the same hours as the store: 10 a.m. to 1 a.m seven days a week.
Oro Valley has a taste of Sicily in the strip plaza on North Oracle Road next to the Fairfield Inn and Suites and a quick jaunt from the town’s residential center.
Giovanni’s Gelato Café at 10110 N. Oracle Road has been open two months, with a menu of 49 gelato flavors made from ingredients largely imported from Italy, said owner Giovanni Rizza, whose wife Agnes is the gelato chef.
“Everything. The recipes. The ingredients. The coffee. Everything for the gelato comes from Italy except the milk and sugar,” he said.
Rizza is a native of Sicily who has been in the United States since 1967. He moved here as a 24-year-old fleeing poor economic conditions and settled in Chicago, where he sold and developed real estate.
He and his wife moved to Tucson eight years ago and toyed with the idea of opening a gelato shop. But they couldn’t find the ideal location and after a couple of years, they returned to Chicago. They have been back here a year.
Rizza said he bought the commercial plaza in August 2014 and decided to open the gelato shop in a vacant space at one end; the restaurant Blaze — A Flavor Inferno anchors the other end of the plaza.
The shop’s renovation took a year, which also included trips to Italy where he purchased equipment and gelato ingredients.
In addition to gelato, Giovanni’s Gelato Café also sells Italian coffees and pastries including cannoli and tiramisu. Gelato starts at $3.75 for a small and tops out at $5.55 for an eight-ounce serving. You also can get it by the pint and quart.
Giovanni’s is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
- Caitlin Schmidt and Andi Berlin Arizona Daily Star
The Town of Oro Valley officially became the owner of an operating restaurant last week, but before it even opened, The Overlook has been the center of political conflict.
In December, the town council voted 4-3 in favor of purchasing the El Conquistador Country Club for $1 million, a deal that included a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for the since-completed renovations to turn the club into a community center.
The town bought the property from Tucson-based HSL Properties, which acquired the Hilton resort with the intent of splitting off those entities and selling them to the town for $1 million paid over three years. The market value of the property had initially been appraised at $3.25 million.
After the purchase agreement was signed in late April, an Oro Valley citizen’s group initiated the recall of the four members who voted to approve the purchase: Mayor Satish Hiremath and council members Lou Waters, Mary Snider and Joe Hornat. All four will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot, defending their seats against five challengers.
The incumbents have been vocal throughout their campaigns in defending the purchase, repeatedly saying that citizens have been asking for a community center and gathering place since the mid-'90s.
However, challengers Steve Didio, Ryan Hartung and Shirl Lamonna have all argued that by the town owning the The Overlook, it’s directly competing with privately-owned businesses in Oro Valley.
"I don't believe that by the town owning a restaurant that we will put other restaurants out of business," Hiremath said. "If that was the case then we wouldn't have as many restaurants locally as we do now, would we?"
The town is operating the facilities with Troon, an international management company that handles golf destinations such as the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa.
In addition to the Overlook, Troon is also handling golf and tennis operations, said Misti Nowak, communications administrator for the town.
The restaurant, formerly called La Vista, was previously part of the Hilton El Conquistador country club, 10555 N. La Cañada Drive. In the process of turning it into a community center, the town performed significant renovations to the restaurant space, replacing carpets with dark wood floors, installing new booths and reconstructing ramps to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The 5,282 square-foot restaurant features high ceilings and a loft-like view overlooking the golf course and surrounding Santa Catalina Mountains. About half of the space is taken up by the bar, which has five flatscreen TVs which broadcasted sports games during a restaurant preview earlier this week.
The team brought on Executive Chef Robert Kaslly, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate who most recently managed the culinary program at the active adult living community Restaurants at SaddleBrooke. His menu features classic American dishes with a gourmet touch, like warm steak salad and pepper jack chicken with calabacitas squash blend.
The most expensive item on the menu is the Traverse city filet mignon with Boursin cheese croquette for $25. But most items are sandwiches and salads between $9 and $12 apiece. The restaurant closes at 6 p.m. most nights, with dinner service Thursdays through Saturdays until 8 p.m.
Overlook also runs happy hour specials from 3 to 6 p.m., a Thursday build-your-own pasta night for $13 and Sunday brunch. The restaurant is open to the public.
Tom Meade, who runs the food and beverage program at the restaurant, says The Overlook stands out from other local businesses and offers something new.
"We have the best views in town," he said. " ... The restaurant is part of the community center, so you can literally come in and take a swim and hit the locker room and come upstairs and enjoy braised beef tacos for lunch."
Meade adds that large size of the restaurant makes it a perfect choice for large parties and banquets.
During the restaurant preview earlier this week, Hiremath praised the council for its work in opening the restaurant. "Today is only just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "Wait to see what we have next."
John and Amanda Guerrero traded in their Tucson teaching jobs last summer for a kitchen in Oro Valley, opening a restaurant with a menu that twists and turns classic comfort food on its ear.
In August, the couple bought Cattleman’s Cafe 2 at 10110 N. Oracle Road from owner Mike McGee, who owns the original Cattleman’s Cafe at the Marana Stockyards. They renamed it Blaze — A Flavor Inferno in September.
“This has always been my passion,” said John Guerrero, who taught math for seven years in the Vail School District and a year with Tucson Unified School District. His wife taught math for five years in Vail and a year in Marana before leaving the profession in May.
Initially the couple, working with sons Gabe and Alex, intended to run a food truck selling Guerrero’s creation, Whatchos — a takeoff of nachos using a base of french fries that he tops with whatever, from feta cheese to meatloaf and chorizo. They bought an RV and retrofitted it with a kitchen but needed a commercial kitchen to pull it off.
That’s how their paths crossed with McGee. Guerrero said McGee was overwhelmed running both of his restaurants and offered to sell them the Oro Valley eatery he had opened in summer 2013.
Blaze’s menu is loosely based on Cattleman’s Cafe, with some innovative re-imagining. Take the french toast burger, which at $11.99 is the most expensive item on the lunch menu: It starts with a third-pound of grilled hamburger topped with peanut butter during the grilling so that it gets toasty and gooey. Add American cheese, two strips of applewood bacon and top with a fried egg. The monstrosity is sandwiched between two slices of cinnamon-raisin or regular French toast.
“I had thought about putting syrup on it,” Guerrero said, but “the flavors that went into that. ... This thing is amazing. I call that the power brunch — you’re getting both breakfast and lunch all in one shot and you won’t need to eat again until 7 p.m.”
Prices run about $9 for burgers and $9 for breakfast. Dinner items average $10 with the most expensive items — the top sirloin or New York steak dinners — at $15.95.
Blaze is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays through Tuesdays and from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. It doesn’t serve alcohol, but Guerrero said diners can bring their own wine, beer or spirits. Details: blazeov.com or call 395-1297.
You may have seen the colorful sign go up downtown: the state of Sonora with green wings and a white shrimp. It's the emblem for Sonora Wings & Seafood, a new lunch joint owned by Cananea-native Antonio Montoya.
The restaurant opened quietly Tuesday in the former Kearbey’s spot at 100 N. Stone Ave., Suite 102. Its menu is small but eclectic with everything from boneless wings to campechana seafood cocktails and shrimp tacos sourced from San Carlos. Montoya also does a special chiltepin wing sauce with the spicy round Sonoran peppers. His wings are juicy plump with a nice crisp skin.
Montoya is no stranger to the neighborhood. Before he decided to branch out and open his own shop, he ran the nearby Sonoran taco place Bernardo's Mexican Food with his father-in-law Bernardo Acosta.
"I love working downtown," he said. "Downtown is one little family. I love this place."
Sonora Wings and Seafood is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Montoya says it'll expand its hours to weekends and Friday nights when the shop gets its liquor license. The restaurant will also run specials this weekend for its grand opening during Second Saturdays.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
After completely overhauling the 2,400-square-foot space that was once home to Gio Taco, Brandon Katz is opening Obon Sushi + Bar + Ramen on Thursday afternoon.
Katz and his business partner Andre Joffroy completely overhauled the space at 350 E. Congress St. to the tune of $280,000, Katz said,
“If you had ever been in Gio Taco before, you won’t recognize it,” he said of the work, which has been ongoing since last April.
Gio Taco, owned by Metzger Family Restaurants, closed in early March after it was locked out by landlord Jim Campbell for failing to meet its lease obligations. Campbell said at the time the owners had fallen behind in the monthly rent and the two sides could not come to an agreement on how to resolve the issue.
Obon becomes downtown’s only sushi restaurant after On A Roll closed in early July. It had been serving sushi at 63 E. Congress St. for seven years.
Obon also is the only restaurant in the downtown entertainment district to serve ramen, although the menu is limited to three ramen offerings.
This is the 26th restaurant that Katz has helped open in a career that included Ra Sushi based out of Scottsdale. He and Joffroy own Sol Hospitality, whose restaurants include Goodness, 2502 N. Campbell Ave., and Nox Kitchen + Cocktails, 6370 N. Campbell Ave.
Obon will open at 4 p.m. Thursday. Hours this weekend will be from 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday and Sunday and until 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Regular hours — 11 a.m. to midnight weekdays and 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturdays — begin Monday.
- Chuck Constantino Arizona Daily Star
Johnny Gibson’s Downtown Market will open its doors for the first time at 7 a.m. Monday in what co-owner Paul Cisek calls a “soft opening.”
Most of the market’s services, such as the deli and much of the prepared food, will be ready by Monday.
However, the meat department will not be open until July 25, he said.
The grand opening is slated for early September, he said.
Among other services, Cisek and his partners plan to offer a bicycle delivery service for elderly customers and a bicycle shuttle for customers who live nearby.
When it opens, the market will be the first of its kind in the downtown area in 42 years.
After more than a year in the making, Guadalajara Mexican Grill is now open at 4901 E. Broadway.
The restaurant in the former home of a T.G.I Fridays will have tableside salsa as well as many of the staple items from the former Guadalajara Fiesta Grill on North Kolb Road. Many of the crew members from Fiesta Grill, which was destroyed in a fire last July, will be back at the Broadway location, says Owner Seth Holzman.
Holzman expects to reopen the Fiesta Grill in November or December of this year.
Guadalajara Mexican Grill's hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and 10 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays. You can contact the restaurant by calling 296-1199 or through its website, guadgrill.com.
Stay tuned for more information ...
Main Gate Square has a new barbecue restaurant — a first for the University of Arizona-area entertainment district that has everything from burgers to baklava.
Ramiro Scavo, chef-owner of urban farm bistro Pasco Kitchen & Lounge in University Boulevard’s Geronimo Plaza, opened Red’s Smokehouse and Tap Room in early January in the former home of Which Wich Superior Sandwiches on University, just west of North Park Avenue.
“It’s a completely new concept that we’re thrilled about,” said JaneMcCollum, general manager of the non-profit Marshall Foundation that owns the commercial property on University and is Scavo’s landlord for both restaurants.
Scavo renovated the 2,800-square-foot space at 943 E. University Blvd. that had been vacant since Which Wich closed in March 2013.
Red’s offers smoked meats such as brisket, beef and pork shoulder, and beef and pork ribs as well as dry aged steaks, house-made sausages and cold-smoked fish and cheeses.
Scavo said the name Red’s pays homage to the University of Arizona as well as an Arizona rancher named Red. It also refers to the color of the smoke ring formed on meats that are smoked in real wood, he added.
“When you smoke with fire wood like pecan or oak, you get that red ring,” he said.
Scavo extended the patio to wrap around the side and front of the building, and also created roll-up windows that will be part of the bar. The restaurant offers casual table service as well as takeout counter service.
“If you want a place to hang out, we have that for you. If you want a sit-down, we’ll have that,” he said, adding that the restaurant also will cater to tailgaters. “If you want to hang out and watch games and do beer tastings, we have that, as well.”
Scavo, a former partner in Zona 78 and the Oro Valley farm-to-table restaurant Harvest, opened Pasco Kitchen & Lounge 4½ years ago at 820 E. University Blvd. This summer he plans to spruce up that restaurant, including rebuilding the bar and putting in a new floor.
“We love it down here. It was a great decision to come down here,” he said of the boulevard, which is an entertainment hub for UA students and the surrounding neighborhoods. “We love the area; we are committed.”
McCollum said the Marshall Foundation had inquiries from 20 businesses interested in renting the Which Wich space and had narrowed it down to five serious offers, all of which were turned down because they brought nothing new to the district.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Longhorn Steakhouse opened its second Tucson restaurant earlier Monday.
The 6,100-square-foot restaurant that specializes in steaks and chops is at 4421 N. Oracle Road, across the street from Tucson Mall. It's open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
LongHorn, part of the Florida-based Darden Restaurants chain, opened its first Tucson restaurant in early 2014 at 5725 E. Broadway.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Eegee's opened its 24th Tucson location Tuesday — a bit quicker than what the restaurant chain's top boss predicted last month.
Back in May, Eegee's President Robert Jensen predicted a late June opening for the new store in the east side Saguaro Vista shopping plaza on East Speedway and North Pantano Road.
The new location resembles the redesigned south side Eegees at West Ajo Way and South 12th Avenue, which Jensen said will be the company's template moving forward. All redesigns or new builds will follow the model, including having a drive-through window. Eegees expects to open two restaurants each in 2016 and '17.
Eegees, 7660 E. Speedway, is open from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily; the drive-through closes at 11 p.m. daily.
“You got that extra batch of calcium chloride ready?” yells the tall mustachioed man in the tailored vest. Despite the sweat and the frantic look on his face, Jacob Hise is looking positively dapper on this Thursday night.
It’s June 11 and his posh new downtown bar, HighWire Lounge, is about to open to the public. And he has to make sure he’s got the right solutions. The concept, which he started with fellow Tucsonan Nick Wayne Eggman, specializes in “molecular mixology,” a big-city trend that’s finally getting its day in the Old Pueblo. The movement draws from scientific technique to redefine flavors and textures, sometimes in off-the-wall ways.
The bar’s signature drink is the ElBulli Bubbles Prickly Pear Margarita, named after the famous Spanish restaurant that pioneered the molecular gastronomy craze in the 2000s. Jacob “spherifies” tequila into little droplets the size and texture of caviar, which burst in your mouth and fill it with liquor. He immerses these bubbles in a prickly pear foam from a pressurized canister, and then rims the little shot glass with salt.
Another cocktail on the menu made me feel like a kid in a candy store. The Contortionist starts like a fruity vodka martini with Smirnoff Vanilla Vodka, white cranberry and pineapple juices. But then they throw in Pop Rocks. And after that, locally-made Fluff It Up organic cotton candy. When the puff goes in, it dissolves immediately, turning the drink milky purple.
Wow, is it sweet. Almost like throwing a Kool-Aid packet into a jug of V8 Splash. But at the end, when you get to the Pop Rocks that settled on the bottom? Bang! Your mouth is crackling and crazy like a chemistry experiment gone wrong. But be careful, it may get you in trouble!
On Thursday nights when he was an engineering undergrad at the University of Arizona in the early 1990s, John Aldecoa and a few buddies would close their textbooks and ask the all-important question:
“Wanna hit Wildcat House?”
“We would dig around the car for change to come up with the $3 cover. I would come in with a fistful of change. We never worried about having money for drinks. We always had friends that would buy,” he recalled recently, standing in the middle of the cavernous place where he made all those college-day memories. “That was like a ritual for us every Thursday night.”
Aldecoa is hoping to help create new memories for generations of UA students and Tucson families with his Brother John’s Beer, Bourbon & BBQ inside the former Wildcat House, 1801 N. Stone Ave. (*Editor's note: The space held its grand opening New Year's Eve.)
Aldecoa is teaming up with his brother David’s New York City restaurant consulting group and David’s partner, Sascha Kreideweis, to completely renovate the 10,000-square-foot building that was home to the popular UA hangout for nearly 40 years. The Wildcat House, opened in 1977 by California-based The Graduate Restaurants Inc., closed in spring 2012.
Aldecoa said the partners, who also include his UA graduate school colleague, marketing director Ines Newby, will pump around $1 million into the project, which will include building a 2,400-square-foot Bavarian-style patio beer garden and dining area with a fireplace; creating a bourbon lounge that will offer bourbon flights, food pairings and weekly tastings; sectioning off 2,400 square feet for a private dining area with a separate bar and entrance for corporate events; and creating a stage area for live entertainment.
“It’s a big project. I don’t think anybody understands the scope of what we’re doing,” David Aldecoa said, examining the floor plans that call for expanding the kitchen and creating a dry storage space. The original kitchen had no place to store dry goods and when the brothers first took over the building in early May — they signed a 20-year lease with the new owners, who bought the building late last year — they found a box of tortilla chips on a shelf in the kitchen.
John Aldecoa said the bar was pretty much left as it was on its final night in business under former owner William Everett, complete with fries in a basket in the deep fry, drink glasses on the bar and records on the turntable in the concrete DJ booth.
The building’s owners are putting in a new roof and air conditioning; the building had been equipped only with swamp coolers. The brothers also are putting in a new parking lot. Everett cited the parking lot repair, which he estimated in 2012 to be a $500,000 project, as the reason he closed.
Inside the building, workers already have dismantled the custom-cut pine lumber, which was stacked to one side and will be repurposed throughout the redesign. The cedar planks lining the walls will be preserved and incorporated into the design.
“We want to keep the integrity of the cedar because that’s perfect for a barbecue joint,” noted David Aldecoa.
Seventies-era disco balls that once hung in the main room will be placed in the restrooms, and old patron photographs left behind by the previous owners will be incorporated into a “Throwback Thursday” themed wall. (If you think you might be in one or two of those pictures, visit facebook.com/brotherjohnsbbq and let them know. They want to share Wildcat House stories as well as the photos.)
The Aldecoas hope to largely preserve most of the heavy terra cotta wall decorations with handcrafted sculptures of everything from Wilma and Wilbur Wildcat to a trio of bobcats in UA basketball jerseys and former owner Everett as a bobcat.
Brother John’s reunites the brothers 17 years after they last worked together. The pair ran a successful pizzeria, DJ’s Pizza Pub & Grill, from 1993 to ’98. When they closed it, David Aldecoa, 45, went on to carve a successful 25-year career in the hospitality industry that included ownership of a restaurant in Massachusetts and working in Las Vegas and New York City.
John Aldecoa, 47, returned to the UA to earn his master’s in business administration. He has spent time in various management roles and is now a national technical manager with Ascension Information Services, responsible for more than 150 employees across the country. He will be the managing partner and face of the venture, David Aldecoa said.
So why barbecue in their Mexican-restaurant-saturated hometown?
“It’s an underserved market,” Newby, 31, said, ticking off a handful of independent Tucson barbecue restaurants.
The menu was curated by executive chef Nate Eckhaus, a 15-year kitchen veteran who has cooked all over the country including in Michelin star restaurants in France, Monaco and Portugal. He also successfully managed and coordinated five food and beverage outlets as executive chef at New York’s Jumeirah Essex House Hotel (now JW Marriott Essex House New York on Central Park South) and South Gate Restaurant, according to the biography provided by Newby.
Brother John’s menu will offer slow pit-smoked meats including Texas-style salt-and-pepper-rubbed brisket, “Bam Bam”-style short ribs, baby-back and St. Louis-style ribs and house-smoked pork belly. The flavors will fuse traditional Southern-style barbecue with quintessential Southwestern and Latin flair with the incorporation of locally sourced chiles.
Burgers and Southern fried chicken, along with a host of comfort-food sides and salads, round out the menu.
The restaurant will serve lunch and dinner, as well as offer two daily happy hours — one after work hours and another late at night.
David Aldecoa said the restaurant will use local and sustainable ingredients as much as possible and will work with Southern Arizona farmers and ranchers.
Oro Valley's popular farm-to-table restaurant Harvest has opened a second location in the former Skybox Restaurant and Bar at 5605 E. River Road.
Harvest owners Reza and Lisa Shapouri purchased the restaurant and are partnering with Chef Michael Veres, formerly of Cibaria Cucina Italiana and the upscale Italian venue Daniels.
"We'll do with Harvest exactly what we do here," Reza said. "A seasonal local inspired menu, buying a lot of local products, and a scratch kitchen, everything made from scratch."
Skybox has been empty since April, when it closed for reconcepting. The restaurant was in business for six years in the River Center, now anchored by the Whole Foods Market.
Tucson's growing legion of craft beer lovers and homebrewers now have a new place to hang their hats. The bar and beer garden Tucson Hop Shop brings 20 rotating taps to the Metal Arts Village on East Fort Lowell Road and North Dodge Boulevard.
The project is led by local homebrewers David and Jessie Zugerman, who want to create a community space for brewers pick up supplies and take classes to learn the craft. They plan to sell grains, hops and yeast, as well as one-gallon "all-grain" homebrewing kits for about $50.
"(Brewing beer) is one of the oldest artforms, one of the oldest professions," David said. "There's so much creativity and ingenuity that’s coming into it every day."
The Hop Shop at 3230 N. Dodge Blvd also sells take-home bottles of Arizona and national beers, as well as harder-to-find Belgian and German beers. There won't be a kitchen, but the two are working with food trucks to provide bar eats.
The former owner of The Hog Pit Smokehouse is teaming up with the operator of one of the city’s most popular food trucks on a new venture that marries barbecue and Mexican cuisines.
Les Baxter will incorporate about 75 percent of his Hog Pit menu — barbecue brisket, ribs, pulled pork and smoked sausage — and Paul Kukich will include his signature BurgerRito — a burger in a burrito prepared six ways including as a chimichanga — and other Mexican food favorites on the menu of The Les-Paul Lounge. The restaurant and bar is moving into the lobby of the eight-story Broadway Tower at 4400 E. Broadway.
The pair hope to open the restaurant by July 1, Baxter said. The lounge area, separated from the dining room by a small walkway, is under construction and no opening date has been announced.
Baxter and Kukich have been working on the Les-Paul Lounge since late last year and had initially hoped to be open in January. But the project was put on hold when the building was sold last December and the partners had to wait until the new owners took over, Baxter said.
Baxter on Sunday closed the Hog Pit, 6910 E. Tanque Verde Road, which he had run for 19 months. The building had a chronic leaky roof that needed expensive repairs before the monsoon season kicks in this month, he said. Baxter noted that Tuesday’s rains, heavy at times, seeped through the roof “and there were puddles and buckets all over the place.”
“This was a sign; we did the right thing,” he said. “When it comes down to what’s best for the safety of the customers and the staff it was a no-brainer. We weren’t going to put that much money into a building we didn’t own.”
The Les-Paul Lounge — taken from both men’s first names with no relation to the famous Les Paul Gibson guitar — will seat as many as 50 diners and an equal number in the bar. Baxter said Tucson solo musicians, duos and trios will perform live sets in the bar as they had at the Hog Pit.
This is Kukich’s first brick-and-mortar venture, although he spent years managing restaurants before launching BurgerRito 2½ years ago.
He called the combined menus a culinary marriage and one-stop dining.
“It’s going to be a very unique, monster menu,” he said, noting that it will incorporate about two-thirds of each of the partners’ menus. “Probably the only thing we don’t have is Chinese food and pizza.”
Get ready for fireworks! Tucson's latest brewhouse 1912 Brewing Co. plans to open on Independence Day. The westside spot founded by local homebrewers Allan and Alicia Conger will start with four house taps: an Irish blonde, Irish red rye, India Pale Ale and "something else that stands out."
The 1,000-square foot taproom will also serve local wines, and feature a guest tap with breweries from across the state. There are also plans to make cider and mead.
The Congers have been working on the 3,600-square-foot space near West Grant Road and the I-10 freeway since December, installing a copper bartop and bringing in a 3.5 barrel brewing system from Portland Kettle Works.
The couple is working on bringing in food trucks like Mr. Cookman's soul food to provide bar eats. They'll open their doors noon to 10 p.m. on July 4.
A new locally owned shop is filling the hole left in the Tucson bagel scene when The Bagelry on Campbell closed. Located in a former Mapgies pizza place up north at 7315 N. Oracle Road, The Bagel Joint promises to be a godsend for lovers of East Coast deli.
Boston-native Michael Rudner bakes the bagels fresh every day using a detailed method that involves letting the dough sit overnight, then boiling in vats of filtered water and brown sugar before putting the bagels in a massive oven with rotating stone shelves. He uses fresh yeasts and high-gluten flour, to give the bagels that perfect chewiness. There is no freezer in the building.
"I love bagels, but I love them done right," he says. The service industry veteran has a long history with the breakfast staple. When Rudner was a child, his second cousin owned a bagel shop in Boston, and he remembers delivering the bagels with his grandfather. Growing up, his house wasn't complete without a bagel in the kitchen.
"It's a Sunday morning thing," he says.
He sells his bagels in "Boston dozens," which are packs of 14: 12 plus one, plus one. His startup menu is minimal, with a few bagel sandwiches and various types of Shamrock Farms cream cheese. Although, he hopes to roll out specials including an Elvis bagel with peanut butter and bananas, as well as a Big Papi bagel with Italian sausage, provolone and sautéed onions.
The bagel and lox, ordered on a recent visit, was almost exactly that: no capers, no red onions, just brilliant strips of fatty salmon nestled between some tomatoes, cream cheese and the best bagel I've had in recent memory. The dough is not too dense nor too airy, chewy on the inside with a crispy brown shell.
The little shop is open 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Downtown’s newest ice cream shop is now open at 245 E. Congress St., across the street from its parent Hub Restaurant and Ice Creamery, 266 E. Congress St. It will serve a menu of housemade ice creams served in cones, floats, shakes and sundaes.
The dessert restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Wednesdays, said Sandy Ford, operations manager for both Hubs and the sister business, Playground Bar and Lounge at 278 E. Congress.
Ford said the factory’s signature flavors including salted caramel, bourbon almond brittle and birthday party will be served at both the restaurant and ice cream shop. Other flavors, all made in house, include coffee and donuts, Pop Tarts, Mexican wedding cookie and oatmeal cookie dough.
The factory also specializes in housemade Choco Tacos, with ice cream nestled in a waffle cone shaped like a taco then dipped in chocolate and topped with chopped nuts. Yummo.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Commoner & Co., the second venture of the trio behind the popular midtown restaurant Prep & Pastry, officially opens Thursday.
The restaurant at 6960 E. Sunrise Drive will open for happy hour at 2 p.m. Thursday and begin its dinner service at 5. It will host happy hour from 2 to 6 p.m. daily and serve dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and from 5 to 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Event Manager Katie Sanzo said they are discussing ideas for weekend brunch and possibly lunch service down the road, but for now Commoner & Co. will serve only dinner.
Commoner & Co., settling into the former home of The Abbey, returns owners Nathan Ares, Brian Morris and William Meinke back to the space where all used to work. The trio came up with the idea of Prep & Pastry while working with The Abbey's former owner Metzger Family Restaurants.
The Abbey, opened in 2010, closed last October after a financially tumultuous year that included owner Brian Metzger filing bankruptcy for the business.
Commoner & Co.'s executive chef is Virginia "Ginny" Wooters, the former executive chef for The Abbey and several Metzger Family Restaurants. She left Metzger's Poppy Kitchen at La Paloma in March.
The popular west-side pizza and wings joint Bianchi's Italian opened its second location in Marana today, in the former home of the 7,000-square-foot The Steak Out restaurant.
The restaurant will serve lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and 11 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays.
Owner Vincent Bianchi says the new spot at 3640 W. Tangerine Road will feature the same menu as the original, with fast-casual service and a significantly larger bar. The new location will also feature the same lunch and dinner specials, featuring plates like beef lasagna, linguini with clam sauce and eggplant parmesan for $11 and under.
The space features a patio area and a private dining room for 60 people, which will be used for catering events and parties.
The Bianchi family restaurant, which has been at 1110 N. Silverbell Road since the early '80s, serves a diverse menu with pastas, sub sandwiches, calzones and gluten-free pizza. Vincent, who took over the business from his parents Randy and Nancy in 2002, works in the kitchen preparing all of the sauces each day.
The new location also delivers to nearby neighborhoods around Dove Mountain, Rancho Vistoso and La Cañada. As yet, they don't have the permits to deliver alcohol like they do at the west-side location.
Explosive news from the Tucson Mall: A local outpost of the chain Pepper Palace has opened in the food court's Arizona Avenue. The store carries hundreds of varieties of hard-to-find hot sauces from the across the U.S. and beyond.
The store's biggest draw is their Flashbang hot sauce, made with Carolina Reaper, Scorpion, Ghost Pepper, and Habanero peppers. At over two million Scoville units, the sauce is about as hot as standard grade pepper spray.
To get a taste, you have to be over 18 and sign a disclaimer. (If you like to watch people being tortured, check out the store's Facebook page for weekly Flashbang tasting videos.) One ounce of the stuff goes for $21.95 ... But this isn't too bad, considering you can flavor a whole pot of chili with 1/8 of a teaspoon.
The shop, which opened about a month ago, is the company's second Arizona outpost after Scottsdale Fashion Square.
Check out this Associated Press story that ran in our paper March 14, which credits Flashbang hot sauce for saving a man's life ...
Man gets year’s supply of ‘lifesaving’ hot sauce
ORLAND PARK — A man is enjoying more than a year’s supply of free hot sauce, which he credits with triggering a seizure that may have helped save his life.
Randy Schmitz, 30, said that after sampling Flashbang hot sauce on a toothpick last August at the Pepper Palace in Myrtle Beach, S.C., he fell to the ground in convulsions, prompting emergency medical treatment — and, ultimately, an MRI scan of his brain that detected a cancerous tumor in its early stages.
Elvira’s Restaurant in Tubac made a splash on Congress Street April 16 with its saucy moles and large tequila selection.
After a year of renovations, the upscale Mexican restaurant opened its second location 256 E. Congress St. in a space that once held Saint House Island Bistro and Rum Bar.
Elvira’s owner, Rubén Monroy Jr., plans to keep all of the classic Elvira’s dishes, but will revamp about 30 percent of the menu. He’s also tinkering around with new mole flavors like pine nut, almond and dried fruit.
“We’re gonna play a little bit,” he said. But “you end up giving people what they want.”
Monroy wants to give the new place an urban chic vibe for young couples. The inside has been redone with an eye toward respecting the wood floors and historic nature of the building. He has built out a new bar and installed those signature glass teardrops that brighten up ceilings in the Tubac location.
At least three nights a week, the restaurant will feature live music in a variety of styles including jazz, Cuban and acoustic pop.
Sushi Yukari, a popular north-side spot for some of the best sushi in town, is changing its name to Sushi Zona.
Tokyo-native Taichi Abe recently purchased the restaurant, and plans to revamp the menu and bring in fish from all over the world. Japanese hot dishes like sukiyaki and tempura will still have a place, alongside a variety of ramen, udon and soba noodles.
Abe is taking over as sushi chef, and plans to have his website done by next week. The intimate space is nestled in the River Center near the Whole Foods Market on East River and North Craycroft roads. It will keep the same hours to start.
Kwang C. An is opening an Asian restaurant and sports bar near the University of Arizona this summer.
An, best known as Mr. An from his TV commercials and years running restaurants in Tucson, hopes to open An-U in Sam Hughes Place, 446 N. Campbell Ave., by early August. It will take over the space that was most recently home to Social House Kitchen & Pub — nicknamed So-Ho — which closed at the end of March.
An, who owns his namesake Mr. An’s Teppan Steak, Sushi & Seafood, 6091 N. Oracle Road, said he is renovating the space and hopes to be finished by late July.
The restaurant will serve Asian cuisine and include a sports bar.
An, who also owns Great Wall of China restaurant on South Craycroft Road, said a grand opening will be in early August, before students return to the UA for the fall semester.
An has operated Asian restaurants in Tucson for more than 30 years. Last year, he sold his restaurant An del Sol at Casino del Sol Resort, which replaced it with Ume Asian Cuisine and Sushi.
An said he is opening an Asian restaurant in Michigan’s Little River Casino next March.
Two new restaurants are turning a sleepy corner of downtown into a destination for healthy eaters.
Urban Fresh, a recently-shuttered vegan cafe at 73 E. Pennington St., reopened Monday under new ownership. Husband and wife team Dana and Chauncey Padilla are bringing back the cafe's signature wraps, salads and fresh juices, but adding a few touches of their own.
The two could face stiff competition: Right next door, the food truck Veg in a Box is opening its first brick-and-mortar spot. A farmers market favorite, Veg in a Box specializes in comfort foods like beet fennel burgers and mock tuna sandwiches made from nori and hearts of palm. (For more Veg in a Box info, stay tuned ... )
The Padillas don't seem to be worried though. If anything, the two businesses will help each other by drawing people in, Chauncey said. While Veg in a Box does a lot of grilling and cooking, Urban Fresh caters to the raw foodie crowd.
The artful salads in Urban Fresh's grab-and-go case feature rare ingredients like local pea shoots, hearts of palm and daikon radish. On a recent visit, my made-to-order Veggie Cobb was packed with fresh cucumber and corn, with a sunny green goddess dressing on the side.
The Padillas, who aren't professional chefs, were receiving their training that day directly from previous owner Kathy Iannacone. Dana had filled the patio with herbs and succulents, and Chauncey brought an English aesthetic by putting on a BBC rock station and offering Wilkinson's of Norwich iced tea. Chauncey gained an appreciation for specialty teas after he spent several years stationed in Royal Air Force Lakenheath, United Kingdom.
"We just want to help people eat a little bit healthier," he said.
The Fourth Avenue crepe restaurant Cafe Marcel opened Tuesday in a new space on North Oracle near West Grant Road.
The building, formerly home to the Checkerboard Cafe, has twice as much seating and a much larger kitchen than their previous space, says Michelle Frazier who owns the business with her husband Joe.
As they grow into their new digs, the two will begin to expand the menu with new cheeses and vegetables like asparagus. Rather than cooking the crepes on a small cast-iron crepe stone, they'll have an entire grill to work with.
Cafe Marcel will continue to serve an eclectic menu of sweet, savory and breakfast crepes, as well espressos and coffee drinks. A favorite is their Swedish lingonberry crepe with roasted chicken, a holdover from the Fourth Avenue space's Cafe Zope days.
Michelle's culinary background is actually French Canadian. Her family is from the Montreal-area, and she remembers the sweet crepes her mother made her while growing up in Vermont.
The restaurant's new hours are 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays. It is closed on Mondays. Check the Facebook page or website at cafemarcel.biz for more info.
-Andi Berlin
A veteran Tucson chef has opened a South American sandwich shop in the former home of Cafe Marcel.
Irene Echeandia's Latin Up Sandwich Shop features sandwiches from her namesake downtown restaurant Irene's, which closed in the mid-2000s. Echeandia, who is originally from New Jersey, learned to cook from her multicultural family. Her father, who was a truck driver from Brazil, met her mother in Lima, Peru before they moved to the United States.
The order-at-the-counter cafe serves an eclectic menu of salads and sandwiches like the chimichurri steak, or turkey cooked in cilantro sauce with apples and black bean spread. (Also be a quinoa burger.) At the Viva la Local food festival, La Plancha was grilling up a hearty sweet potato and chicharron pork sandwich that exploded with piquant salsa criolla, a Peruvian red onion relish.
At their food festival debut, the family team was also pouring lovely cups of sweet chicha morada that had been spiced with cinnamon. For those who don't know the Peruvian specialty, chicha morada is a refreshing fruit drink brewed with Andean purple corn. A great choice as the summer heats up ...
And just in case you were wondering, there will be huancaína! The rich Peruvian cheese sauce will make its way onto the menu as both a papa huancaína salad, and a sandwich with roast beef and shoestring potatoes inside. At the festival, the silken spread was used as a dipping sauce for a fried Brazilian coxinha croquette.
Echeandia is importing aji peppers from Peru, which will go into a punchy aji mayo. Other ingredients will come from local farmers markets. The bread is from the nearby Small Planet Bakery.
Sandwiches will be affordable at $7.95, with a pickle and your choice of chips, including plantain. Other dinner items will also make their way on as weekly specials. Starting hours will be 11 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to midnight or 1 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
Former tenants Cafe Marcel opened today in their new spot at 2281 N. Oracle Road. Check back at tucson.com/dining for more information on the new location ...
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
The owners of Sushi Cortaro in Marana have opened a second restaurant in central Tucson.
East Buffet at 75 W. River Road, off North Stone Avenue, has a buffet with nearly 100 items, mostly from the Chinese side of the menu, including soups, appetizers, vegetables, seafood, habachi, a full fruit bar and ice cream among the dessert offerings. The restaurant also serves sushi rolls and a few other Japanese items.
The restaurant is in the space that was home to another Chinese buffet restaurant.
East Buffet and the four-year-old Sushi Cortaro, 8225 N. Courtney Page Way off Interstate 10 and Cortaro Road, are owned by Derek Cheng. His chef at East Buffet comes from New York, where he cooked at that city's East Buffet (no relation, says Cheng's wife Tracy Lin).
East Buffet is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. It's $8.49 for lunch, $10.99 for dinner. Details: 888-1065 or eastbuffetaz.com
The popular vegetarian-focused Guilin Chinese restaurant has reopened on Broadway.
Owner Kinsun Wong began serving the same menu of Cantonese and Mandarin dishes last Saturday. Prices will remain relatively the same, although the restaurant's ever-popular $4.95 lunch special is being hiked up to, gasp, $4.99. The new hours will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays, and 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Saturdays.
The new spot is in the former home of Bella D'Auria Restaurant and Bar at 4445 E. Broadway, and is about the same size as their original space, Wong says.
The restaurant had to relocate after their former spot at 3250 E. Speedway, was set to be demolished.
A newly-opened restaurant is bringing an impressive selection of craft beers to a corner of Fourth Avenue previously dominated by college frat bars.
Ermanos Craft Beer and Wine Bar, which opened April 1 at 220 N. Fourth Ave., boasts a changing tap list with 34 beers from Tucson and other U.S. cities. Also available: Wine by the glass, carafe, bottle and flight. The eclectic list is filled with lesser known varietals like Trincadeira and Monastrell. You can also purchase beer to-go from the bottle shop at the front of the restaurant.
Brothers Mark and Eric Erman have done extensive renovations on the building, exposing the brick walls and lining the bar with earthy panels of repurposed wood. The two brought in Chef David Valencia Jr., formerly of Agustín Kitchen, to craft a small but detailed menu of gourmet sandwiches and bar bites.
Check back next week for more info on the menu, plus a video!
Tucson's only cannabis-inspired sandwich shop, Cheba Hut, reopened Saturday in its former location at 1820 E. Sixth St.
The campus-area restaurant's new hours are 10 a.m. through midnight every day. After April 20, the spot will extend their hours, serving their signature toasted subs until 3 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
Formerly run by franchisees Steve and Colleen Bigelow, Cheba Hut closed up shop in December. New owners the Lenz family, headed up by father and son Dorian and D.J. Lenz, also own four other Cheba Hut locations in Flagstaff, Mesa, Tempe and Glendale.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Eat Fresh Mexican Food Raspados opened a new Mexican restaurant in the Tucson Mall Food Court last week.
It's the business's second mall outpost. It has a raspados stand on the second floor of the mall.
The restaurant offers a full menu of Mexcan entrees including burritos, tacos and sandwiches. It's open during mall hours.
A Colorado-based restaurateur is coming to Tucson this fall and bringing with it starting wages nearly $2 higher than most Tucson fast-casual restaurants pay.
Illegal Pete’s Mexican restaurant, moving this fall into a historic two-story house at 876 E. University Blvd., will pay employees a starting wage of $10.50 an hour plus tips. Kitchen workers will start at $11 a hour, said owner Pete Turner. The restaurant also offers medical and dental insurance — employees pay half the cost of the premiums — paid vacation, and a food and drink allowance.
At the 20-year-old company’s seven restaurants in Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado, wages with tips included average $14 an hour for most employees, Turner said.
Illegal Pete’s also is in the process of a $1 million “wage benchmarking project” that will bump employee wages higher.
“It’s a significant commitment, but we think that you’re going to get better people, more committed people,” said Turner, who opened his first restaurant straight out of college when he was 23. “We do believe it’s good business in the long run, or even the short run. It’s ultimately … the right thing to do. This sort of middle class has gone away, and not that we’re trying to replace that but we’re trying to provide a door up to that.”
Most Tucson fast-casual restaurant workers make an average of $9 to $9.50 an hour, said Juan Padres, an economic development specialist with the Tucson City Economic Initiatives Office.
And most of those employees are lucky to work 30 hours a week in those jobs, he said.
“Most of the labor force has other jobs, other than management,” Padres said.
Turner’s model, though, might not work for most restaurants, which operate on razor-thin profit margins that average 2 to 4 percent, said Arizona Restaurant Association spokeswoman Chianne Hewer.
“Everyone would love to pay their employees more, but the fact is we are a labor-intensive industry. It takes at least five people to run a restaurant that might not even have a full menu,” said Hewer, the association’s public affairs and communications manager. “It comes down to the business and the revenue and expenses at the end of the day.”
Illegal Pete’s serves a full menu of San Francisco-inspired Mission-style Mexican cuisine that also borrows Southern California influences. It has often been compared to another Denver-born Mexican burrito chain, Chipotle, but Turner said Illegal Pete’s has a broader menu and a full service bar, with live music. The restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and be open daily until 2:30 a.m.
The company has hired Tucson’s Rob Paulus Architects Ltd. to renovate the Landmark building, a 1910 house in the shadow of the University of Arizona. The building has been home to a clothing store since the early 1960s, first under the name Franklin’s, then as Landmark.
Turner said workers have stripped some of the interior plaster to reveal the building’s original bones.
“We uncovered some really neat parts of the architecture, and it’s gorgeous,” he said. “We are really trying to maintain (the historic integrity) and open the building because it’s so pretty. It’s just beautiful, man.”
Plans include tearing down interior walls to open up the space, creating a bar downstairs and another one upstairs, and building a deck over the front patio. A second deck is planned in the back and restrooms will be added to both floors. Part of the kitchen will be located in the basement, Turner said.
Illegal Pete’s made national news late last year as it was opening its seventh restaurant, in Fort Collins, Colorado, a city with a sizable Latino population. Critics said the name disparaged Mexican immigrants; Turner maintained that the name was meant to be “mysterious” and playful, and said it pays homage to his late father, also named Pete.
Turner said the controversy took him by surprise since no one had questioned the name in the 19 previous years that he had operated the restaurants.
“It was totally unexpected, and it became way bigger than I could ever imagine it happening, to the point that the New York Times was there for our opening,” he said. “It was a really difficult four weeks out of my life.”
Residents of Fort Collins urged Turner to change the name, but “I did some soul-searching and really know that (the name) was not about” anti-immigration, he said.
“And I just can’t do it. It’s who I know myself as and many, many people know about us around the state (of Colorado). … We are great community partners, great employers. We provide great opportunities,” he said. “Words change in meaning. That word in particular is not a bad word. And who knows if it changes. Hopefully there will be some (immigration) reform in the next five years and things will change back.”
Turner said, though, that he anticipates some sort of protest when he opens in Tucson — his first venture outside of Colorado. He is shooting to open in late August, to coincide with the start of the 2015-16 UA school year.
Lea Marquez Peterson, president and CEO of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber, said she has never heard of Illegal Pete’s, but the name doesn’t concern her. She said she is more excited by the higher wages the restaurant is promising.
“I believe that it is good news for Tucson if Pete has a financial model that supports paying a higher wage,” she said in an email interview.
Costa Vida, a Mexican fast-casual chain based out of Utah, is slated to open in the former Choice Greens on North Campbell Avenue later this year.
The restaurant's concept is similar to the fast-food Mexican chain Chipotle, where customers build their own meals from ingredients in front of them. They also choose their tortillas, made from scratch on a comal in the restaurant. Customers choose entree items like burritos, tacos, enchiladas and salads, then move onto meats, beans and other extras.
"Everything that we serve is Mexican-inspired fresh food," says franchise marketing manager Trent Morrison.
Founder Kenny Prestwich opened the first restaurant after a trip to the beach in Mexico, where he was inspired by flavors of the cuisine, Morrison said.
The majority of Costa Vida's 60-plus stores are franchised. It has three locations in the Phoenix-area; Tucsonan Weston Stewart will operate the restaurant at 4205 N. Campbell Ave. next to Trader Joe's.
The space had been occupied by Choice Greens, which was forced out by its landlord in December after being told the plaza's ownership had changed hands.
You can find more information about Costa Vida on its website costavida.net
One of Tucson’s newest sushi restaurants has taken a more literal approach to rolling out its daily menu items.
QQ Revolving Sushi Bar, which opened in late January in the Hub at Tucson student housing complex, boasts a custom-built conveyor belt that snakes its way through the dining area’s built-in booths, single seats and sushi prep station.
Chefs place rolls on different colored plates and send them down the line so that customers may pick and choose their meals.
The color of the plate on which the sushi sits designates the cost. The white plates, which hold simple dishes such as California rolls and light appetizers, are the cheapest at $1.75. Black plates, home to more complex creations and specialty rolls, are $5.25. Yellow, green and blue plates range from $2.25 to $4.25.
At the end of the meal, the number and color of the plates stacked on the table determine the bill.
“It keeps the price for the customer down,” said QQ owner Ricky Lu. “People tend to think that sushi is an expensive night out. I want to open it up. I want people in Tucson to enjoy casually going out for sushi like they enjoy going out for hamburgers and sandwiches.”
While the conveyor belt concept is popular in other parts of the United States and commonplace in other countries such as Japan and Australia, only a handful of revolving sushi restaurants exist in Arizona.
Lu, 34, hopes to change that. He’s a first generation Chinese-American who started his career in the food service industry working for Chinese restaurants in New York City, before finding his passion in sushi.
He co-owned and operated the traditional sushi restaurant Tenzan 89 in Manhattan for five years, before coming to Tucson in 2014 to be closer to his sister.
When Lu leased the 3,000-square-foot space in Hub on North Tyndall Avenue near the University of Arizona, the thought was to cater primarily to students.
Lu estimates at least 60 percent of his customers come from the student housing complexes that surround his establishment.
The plan is to now expand into other parts of town.
Lu and his partners have already signed a lease to take over the former home of the China Star restaurant on the southeast corner of East Grant and North Swan roads.
The Grant Road space is 6,000 square feet, in a shopping complex anchored by Trader Joe’s and PetSmart. Lu said the location is optimal because it already has a built-in kitchen.
Like the QQ on Tyndall Avenue, the new QQ will offer a full menu, in addition to rotating, conveyor belt options.
Lu said he hopes to have the second location open by the end of April.
He is already in talks for a third location on East Broadway.
“I want to make QQ Sushi a common sight throughout Tucson,” he said.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Oro Valley has a new pizzeria, an outpost of the Laguna Beach, California, chain Zpizza that features a DIY tap room.
Super cool, right? Here's how it works: Customers get a wristband that activates the tap and then tracks how much they drink.
You can give it a test run Tuesday when the restaurant, at 11165 N. La Cañada Drive, off West Naranja Drive, offers $1 pizza slices throughout the day. There's a little catch: Only one $1 slice per customer.
Zpizza, which has been open two weeks, specializes in vegan and vegetarian pizzas and pastas. Vegan cheese and sausage is on the menu, as is gluten-free crust options. But you can also get a traditional pepperoni and other meats with full-dairy mozzarella.
Prices run from $8.11 for a small cheese pizza to $20 for an extra large pie. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Days after it marked its one-year anniversary in St. Philip’s Plaza, Bodega Kitchen & Wine closed on Feb. 23.
A week later, Amalour Lounge took its place in the 95-seat restaurant that was once home to another short-lived restaurant, Liv Cafe and Bistro.
Amalour, owned by the Selby family, opened Monday, serving a new American menu that crosses several continents, said General Manager Katie Jo Willis. There’s Italian influences in the five varieties of bruschetta on the small plates menu, a dry-rubbed all-American New York steak — which at $32 is the most expensive item on the menu — skewers and a trio of fritters. Small plates run $6 to $12.
Willis said Amalour sources as much as it can locally, including working with its St. Philip’s neighbors: it offers Flying Leap Vineyards wine, uses Alfonso’s Olive Oils and Vinegars in its dishes and shops weekly the St. Philip’s farmers market.
“We are sourcing as much as we can local, fresh,” she said.
Amalour also has Dragoon and Barrio beers on tap, as well as a couple other Arizona breweries.
The restaurant, 4340 N. Campbell Ave., is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and until 9 p.m. Sundays. A grand opening is planned for March 20
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
A big hole in Tucson’s culinary landscape is now filled with the recent entry of Ricuras de Venezuela Arepas & More into the area’s burgeoning food truck scene.
On New Year’s Eve, Marlene and Steve Baquet became the first to exclusively serve Venezuelan food when they put the truck into action. They parked behind Hotel Congress and stayed there into the wee hours, having to turn customers away well after their anticipated 3 a.m. closing time, Marlene said.
“Believe me we had to say ‘OK bye.’ We had so many people keep coming,” said Marlene, who moved to Tucson 20 years ago with her mother from their native Venezuela to be close to her sister.
Ricuras de Venezuela is now a permanent weekend fixture downtown. From 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, they serve fresh-made arepas ($6 to $7) stuffed with carne mechada — shredded beef — chicken and mashed vegetables, and savory empanadas stuffed with ground and shredded beef from their spot behind Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St.
The menu also includes K’chapas ($4) — think pancakes — filled with sweet corn and melty cheese, and the traditional banana leaf-wrapped Venezuelan tamales — called hallacas ($7).
The family operates the truck from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays in front of their ABC Insurance office at 890 W. Grant Road, where the Baquets sell insurance and operate a tax preparation business. Marlene Baquet prepares the food at a south-side commissary in the mornings and has a staff operate the truck.
In the six weeks since rolling out, the family business has taken off in ways that Marlene Baquet said was almost inconceivable when they started. The carne machada has become their most popular seller.
“When we started we were going through 15 pounds a week; now we are at 70 pounds,” she said.
Steve Baquet said the couple searched nearly a year before finding the food truck in Sinaloa, Mexico. The idea for a food truck was inspired by Marlene’s mother, who died last May.
“My mom wanted to have a food truck. She said we needed to sell arepas, a flat bread. But I was taking care of my business and other stuff. So I was like, ‘OK , we’ll do it. We’ll do it’,” she said, noting that she uses her mother’s recipes. After her mother died, “I felt like I owed it to her.”
The Baquets have a lock on the Venezuelan food market in Tucson. There are no other restaurants here devoted to the cuisine.
- Gerald M. Gay
A New Mexico fast food staple is slated to open its first location in Tucson in mid-March, taking over the take over the Arby’s at 2810 E. Speedway. A second location is expected to open this May at Valencia Road near the I-19.
Blake’s has 77 locations throughout New Mexico and El Paso, and this will be its first Arizona location.
In 2006, National Geographic recognized the chain for having the best green chile cheeseburger in the world.
With a name like Pie Bird Bakery and Cafe you had best have pie on the menu.
Don’t worry, says owner Maren Christensen, she and partner Will Moyer have it covered. Pies, pastries and brownies share top billing with fresh salads, sandwiches and an extensive beverage menu — all scratch made — at the soon-to-open restaurant in the Transamerica Building, 177 N. Church Ave.
The pair have taken up residence in the space that was home to Arizona Bagel and Deli Company. The building’s owners have renovated it and opened up the adjacent conference room as a dining room to seat 75 to 100, said Christensen, the pitcher for the 2001 Sahuaro High School state championship softball team.
Christensen, who took a breather from graduate school at the University of Arizona to stay home with her young kids, has no restaurant experience. But she ran a successful catering business from home, delivering to downtown businesses in the Transamerica Building as well as Raytheon Missile Systems, she said. Her partner was trained in culinary school, she said, and has restaurant experience with an emphasis on desserts.
Christensen, a Tucson native who went on to play softball for Colorado State University, said she decided to take the plunge and open Pie Bird Bakery mainly because of the location. She will have the potential of a built-in clientele among the 480 tenants as well as the downtown courthouse audience of attorneys, jurors and court officials.
Pie Bird Bakery & Cafe is expected to open Feb. 2. Hours will be from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Home Plate Marana, an offshoot of the popular east side Home Plate Sports Pub, is now open in the former Monkey Business Eatertainment on North Silverbell Road.
The opening is a week or so ahead of the original early June opening date envisioned by owner Rick James when he began renovating the 12,000-square-foot building in January. James has owned Home Plate at 4880 E. 22nd St. for 10 of its 50 years.
Home Plate takes up 4,500 square feet of the building, at 8579 N. Silverbell Road. The remaining space will be leased out to other businesses.
The kitchen opens daily at 11 a.m. and the bar is open until 2 a.m.
The restaurant also will feature batting cages, which are still under construction.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen opened its first Tucson location at 3455 E. Broadway at El Con Shopping Center.
The restaurant prides itself on producing 90 percent of its menu by scratch in a kitchen manned by three times the number of cooks working in most restaurant kitchens, according to a news release.
Cheddar's made inroads into Arizona last March with a restaurant in Chandler. The chain was launched in Texas in 1979 and now has more than 150 locations in 29 states.
Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen's menu includes steaks, seafood, salads, pastas, burgers and chicken dishes.
The Tucson restaurant occupies 8,000 square feet and seats up to 200 diners.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
You used to be able to get pizza slices at 58 W. Congress St., formerly home of Enoteca.
Now you can get traditional Mexican street tacos, the kinds you are likely to find being served from carts in Nogales or Juarez.
The fast-casual Mexican restaurant Street Taco & Beer Company opens at 11 a.m. Monday — months behind owners Dago Martinez and Amjaad Jhan's anticipated late September launch.
"There were a lot of little hiccups along the way getting permits," said Jhan.
The menu includes carnitas, carne asada and barbacoa tacos, as well as burritos, tortas and other Mexican standards. Tacos start at $2 for the vegetarian and go as high as $3 for fish and pork al pastor.
The restaurant also serves beers — more than 100 varieties in bottles and eight on tap, four of them locally produced craft beers.
Street Taco & Beer company is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
- Carthalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
The pair behind the successful Union Public House in St. Philip's Plaza have turned their attention to Mexico City for their second restaurant.
Steve Stratigouleas and Grant Krueger opened Reforma Cocina & Cantina in mid-December in the space once occupied by Vivace Restaurant. Reforma serves richly orchestrated dishes including a sopes appetizer that employs braised beef cheek and a bone marrow salsa ($15) and a Pescado de Pepian Verde that substitutes a daily white fish for the often used pork ($21).
"We live so close to the border and the Mexican restaurants — we have some great ones, but they are all Sonoran," said Stratigouleas, who described the differences in terms of depth of flavors that includes fresh ground corn tortillas. Stratigouleas said they use as much as 100 pounds of corn each day to make 3,000 tortillas.
Stratigouleas said he and Krueger gutted the space at 4310 N. Campbell Ave., installed a new kitchen and expanded by about 1,000 square feet to 7,000 square feet. Reforma can seat 221.
Reforma is open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Union Public House, 4340 N. Campbell Ave., has been open since late 2011.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
What’s stranger than eating pizza in a former funeral home?
Sipping a cocktail in the morgue.
That’s where you’ll find the newest addition to Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink — the 61-seat Tough Luck Club, a cocktail lounge carved out of the basement of the old Reilly Funeral Home at 101 E. Pennington St.
Tough Luck Club opened on New Year’s Eve in the basement, which runs the length of the three-story building, and was used as the funeral home’s morgue.
Reilly beverage manager Niklas Morris said the name is inspired by Manhattan’s famed Turf Club, where in the heyday of metropolitan cocktailing — the 1860s to 1910 — neighborhood celebrities would back the Turf, and when the talk turned to politics mixed with booze, fights would break out.
“No bar is so fancy that it doesn’t have a bit of an edge,” Morris explained. “And we’re also in a former morgue, so (there is) a good chance that if you are here now or previously you are probably having some tough luck.”
The club’s general manager, Courtney Fenton, said Tough Luck serves craft cocktails just as the pizzeria upstairs. It will offer just one beer — Coors in a can.
The club is open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, with plans to extend the hours in the next couple weeks, Fenton said.
Patrons enter the club through Reilly’s beer garden in the back of the restaurant.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Pizza briefly inhabited the restaurant space at 7131 E. Broadway, but later this month, bacon will take up residence.
The Oink Café will replace The Heist Pizza Parlour, which closed in early October after about a year in business.
Oink will serve a scratch-made breakfast and lunch menu of the usual suspects: Eggs over easy, chorizo, omelets, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes.
And then there's the not-so-usual casting of bacon as diva: they serve it by the slice and the flight. That's beer-lovers parlance for a variety pack.
And speaking of variety — cue that waxing-on-about-shrimp scene from "Forest Gump" — applewood smoked bacon, honey bacon, honey cured bacon, jalapeno bacon, peppered bacon, sugar-cured bacon, hickory bacon, apple cider bacon and chef's choice bacon. The flight includes eight slices of bacon, one of each flavor.
"It's all about bacon," said Donnie Baxla, whose family opened their flaghship The Oink Cafe in Phoenix three years ago. The family has operated Peter Piper Pizza franchises in Tucson since 1986.
Baxla, who runs the Phoenix cafe, said his sisters Heather Clauser and Joan Roeber and sister-in-law Noel Baxla will run the Tucson cafe. He said it should be open by the end of January.
- Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star
Chipotle Mexican Grill, the popular, national burrito chain, and Baggins, the popular Tucson sandwich chain, are moving into one of Marana's busiest retail corridors.
Both restaurants are expected to open in the next couple months across the street from one another on West Arizona Pavilions Drive off Interstate 10 and West Cortaro Road.
• Chipotle will take over the retail space that was most recently home to Payless Shoe Source at 5940 N. Business Park Drive. Construction has been ongoing since early December and the restaurant is expected to open sometime in the next couple months, company officials said.
• Construction just got started on the 2,300-square-foot-space where Baggins will serve its menu of gourmet sandwiches and salads beginning sometime in early February, said Baggins Vice President Sunny Bravin. This will be Baggins' ninth Tucson location.
Bravin said the timing is right to move into Marana, which has seen remarkable growth in mostly chain restaurants in the I-10/Cortaro Road corridor in the past several years. Among the restaurants already operating there is Chili's, Native Grill & Wings, Texas Roadhouse, Cracker Barrel and a handful of fast-food outposts including In-N-Out Burger and Panda Express.
Dunkin' Donuts opened a store at 8090 N. Cortaro Road across the driveway from Panda Express in late summer. In early November, Village Inn, known for its breakfast specialities and homespun comfort food, opened at 5955 W. Arizona Pavilions Drive.
"That area is booming over there," said Bravin. "I think that's just been an underdeveloped area for our clients. We have a lot of customers (from Marana) who come to our Oro Valley and Oracle Road stores."
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