Review: Smashburger, Tempe AZ

Jeez, it's about time I updated this thing. JUNE? Really? Pioneer Woman churns out updates with LOTS of photos every single day, and I can't be bothered to write about a restaurant or cooking for six months. At least I got to meet PW on her book tour. She's an awfully nice lady. Anyway, the title of this post isn't What The Hell The Jester's Been Up To All This Time (hint about other things that happened: Aim your car's airbag at your chest, not your face), it's about a brand new burger place in the heart of Tempe.

Before Smashburger even opened, there were press releases in my inbox about this brand new burger place opening on campus just yards away from long-time (Over 278 Sold!) college favorite The Chuckbox. When I looked at their website and saw that they are hellbent on opening franchised locations across the country, I was a little nervous. When I saw that it was opening in the same strip of restaurants that included such dreary options as Port of Subs and Panda Express, I would have bet you pot brownies to pound cake that Smashburger would be anything but a smash hit.

My friend Blaze and I wandered in on an unseasonably warm autumn Arizona evening. I was in the mood for something classic, so I got their 1/3 lb. Classic Smashburger (American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, ketchup, and Smash sauce on an egg bun; $4.99) and an order of Smashfries ($1.79 when ordered with a burger, $2.79 a la carte), which are fries tossed with garlic and herbs. Blaze was feeling as fiery as ever, so she went for the Arizona Smashburger (habañero jack, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, onion, fresh jalapeños, and chipotle mayo on a chipotle bun $5.99) in the same size. For her side, she was feeling a little healthy, so she went for the veggie frites ($2.99/$3.99). After a quick trip to the soda fountain (Woohoo, they have Coke Zero!), we settled into one of the booths by the window overlooking all of the nubile coeds and virile gents strolling up and down College Avenue.

A short time later (maybe a bit less time than one has to wait at the In-N-Out up Rural Road), our chow hit the table and our eyes lit up. The minimalist plating, a wax paper lined steel basket free of garnishes such as the silly shredded carrots and beets at Delux, only focused our attention on the matter at hand that much more. I flipped the toppings onto the bottom half of the burger and dug in. I was blown away. This burger was as close to perfection as I've seen. The patty had a nice sear on it but was still juicy, the toppings were fresh and crisp, and they gave the bun a good buttering and toasting before they assembled the whole thing. The fries were delicious too. But then, anything deep-fried and covered with garlic is going to be tasty. I think Blaze liked her burger. When I got up from the table to refill my beverage, I came back to see her burger GONE and she's staring like a starving hyena at what's left of my burger. I can only take that as a good sign. I quizzed her about it to make sure she didn't just inhale the thing. She said that the fresh jalapeños were much better than the canned ones you see on top of bad nachos, and that next time she's ordering it with extra jalapeño. She also remarked that she wasn't a fan of the chipotle bun because it didn't hold up all that well under the juicy burger and all the toppings. I'm not sure how she could figure that out; I think I couldn't have hummed the Jeopardy theme in the time it took her to devour that burger. She then set her eyes on the veggie frites, and took a bit more time to enjoy those. I was expecting to see a tempura style batter on the vegetable pieces, but instead the asparagus, green beans, and carrot sticks were fried au naturel, and finished with a sprinkle of salt and some ranch dressing for our dipping pleasure. We were both quite fans of these. The frying helped caramelize the natural sugars in the veggies, and gave them quite a delicious flavor. They weren't crispy like the Smashfries were (of course they weren't, these veggies aren't high in starch like Russet potatoes), but they certainly weren't cooked to death either. I look forward to future visits to see if a normal side salad can be as interesting.

The total bill for both of us was just shy of $20. While that's fairly high for a quick-service burger joint, I still felt it was a great value. The burgers were better than they had any right to be for a burgeoning nationwide chain, and everything else about the place was just right. I'm quite curious about their salads and hot dogs to see if they're up to the same par as the burgers. Maybe I can convince myself to try one of their Häagen-Dazs milkshakes by getting myself a salad for my entree so the two can cancel each other out.

Review: Haru Sushi, Tempe AZ

love the concept of kaitenzushi, conveyor belt sushi restuarants. At first it looks like a regular sushi bar, but there's a little belt that goes all the way around the bar area, with little plates of all different colors moving up and down the line. To start eating, you take a seat, and if something looks good, you snag it off the belt. It ends up feeling a lot more casual and social this way, and something about pulling the food off the belt before it moves too far away is mildly interesting to the normally latent hunter-gatherer part of my brain. Admittedly, this is about as close as I'm going to get to catching food while it's moving, but it amuses me nonetheless. The first place to do conveyor belt sushi in town is Sushi Eye In Motion, over in the historic district of downtown Chandler. I've been going there whenever I can practically since they've opened, which isn't nearly as often as I'd like since I live 45 minutes away. Now, there's a newcomer to the field: Haru Sushi, on the northeast corner of Priest and Ray in Tempe, not too far east of I-10. Naturally, comparisons between the two abound.

The room has two separate areas. The sushi bar has three sides, with two sides dedicated to standard counter style sushi bar seating, and the third with booths so that groups can still sit at the sushi bar. These booths do have access to the conveyor belt. I think this touch is a very nice one, and I would love to see more places in town have seating like this available. There are about six more booths available, but service at these is only from the waitress. The decoration of Haru is noticeably less trendy and hip than that of In Motion, but colors and light are bright and cheery, they made a good effort to make the place look nice with various Japanese things stuck to the wall, and you can play one of my favorite restaurant games, "Spot The Stuff That Came From IKEA". This is one of the few places I've seen that pulled off having a warehouse-style ceiling. They did it by dividing the vertical space twice over; the top third of the room vanished with a matte black paint job, and the rest of the cavernous space was bisected by enormous wicker-shaded pendant lamps. I would imagine that volume levels would be acceptable even during very busy times, as the booth seating area does have a dropped ceiling (did someone just snag both spaces in the strip mall and knock down the wall?), and I do have two quibbles over the decor; one is the flat screen TVs on opposing walls (one was tuned to Telemundo, the other to ESPN), and the other is that the radio was tuned to hip-hop station 104.7 FM. I found that hip-hop and sushi really don't go together all that well; I would have much preferred peace and quiet like one can find over at Sushi Ken.

Places are set with a fast-food issue paper napkin, and good quality wood chopsticks. We naturally took a seat at the sushi bar, and ordered hot tea ($1) and ice water. Moments later, the tea came, along with the requisite soy sauce boats (with the dollops of wasabi in them) and a big plate of pickled ginger. With equipment in hand, we dove in. I like the style they do for their conveyor belt. There is a small place marker with the name of a type of sushi, and that type of sushi follows it. This is good for someone who isn't familiar with various things; you don't really need it to tell you that shrimp is shrimp, but on the complex rolls so popular stateside (such as Las Vegas rolls, which are about six different things rolled and then fried in tempura batter), it's nice to know what they are so you can get them again if you want. It's a different system than at In Motion, where everything is scattered all over the place so you don't have to wait for one specific thing to come back around if you decide too late to grab it, but if you're curious about something you have to ask the staff what it is. At Haru, they also have a selection of other things going up and down the little catwalk, including gyoza (I promise I'll try them next time), Ramune sodas (a popular brand of soda in Japan that comes in a glass bottle sealed by a marble; if you haven't tried one, it's worth doing at least once), little pre-packaged fruit cups for the kiddies, and a couple of sweets. If there's something that you would like to try that isn't on the belt, you can always ask the itamae (sushi chef) to make something from their (very short) menu for you.

The sushi itself was merely OK. The selection was all pretty standard, not much of anything truly exotic, but it covered the bases of nigiri, hand rolls, and maki rolls. It was leagues better than what I've had at Ra and Stingray, but that's not really saying much. The rice had a proper amount of rice vinegar added to it. The fish was a step below what I'm used to at In Motion (Such deep red tuna! Such vivid orange salmon!) but was certainly acceptable; nothing showed any signs of being old. The servers were friendly and willing to help, but that was only when you could find one. For the most part, you don't really need anybody around, but beverage glasses did sit for quite a while unfilled. It looked like we came in at the tail end of a rush when there were only two servers on the floor (most of the seats at the sushi bar were empty with plates stacked up in front of them when we came in), so I should likely hold back on saying anything firm about the service until I've been back.

Thankfully, they don't charge nearly as much as In Motion. Plates range from $1.25 for simple things (such as tamago or avocado roll), up to $3.25 for the fancy rolls (Rainbow, Las Vegas, Caterpillar, et cetera). It's easy to tell the price on something by the color of the plate; white plates are the least expensive, black plates are the most expensive, with other colors coming somewhere in between. It seemed like most of the plates that were going around were either the mid-range green (this was most of the nigiri, I believe it was $1.75 for two pieces) or black plates. My friend and I both ate quite well; we had about a dozen plates stacked up, and the bill came to about $37 including the tea. For a similar amount at In Motion, the bill would likely have been close to twice that.

As for which one is better overall... Sushi Eye In Motion wins that hands-down. It's better across the board: The sushi is higher quality, the sushi chefs are more creative and know what they're doing with a knife better, the atmosphere is more fun, and the service is much more accommodating, making you feel like you've known them for ages from your first visit. However, Haru Sushi is still competent sushi, and their bargain price point makes them very hard to resist. As far as value goes... I feel that both Haru and In Motion are a very good value. Which one I end up going to in the future is going to be flat-out determined by how much money I have in my wallet when I get a craving for sushi. Since it's the slow summer season for this bartender... I'm going to miss my friends at Sushi Eye In Motion for a little while.

Urban Campfire: Yay, it's still there!

A couple of days ago, the Arizona Republic's Howard Seftel ran a story that both the Scottsdale eatery Twisted and one of my personal favorites, Urban Campfire down in Tempe, were both a couple of higher profile restaurants to recently bite the dust.  While it is true that Twisted is no more, Urban Campfire is still going strong.  I went recently and everything is as delicious as ever.  Nearsighted people will be happy that they don't have to crane their neck to see the menu written on the wall, as they have now changed over to printed menus.  The yam planks are being cut thinner now, definitely into the realm of chips rather than the chip/fry hybrid that I enjoyed, but still extremely delicious.  They're also baking all of their own breads on-site now.  While the breads tend to be dominated by anything that goes on them (it's barbecue, what did you expect?), they still hold up a lot better than anything store-bought ever would.

So... if you haven't been there, GO.  It's still the same terrific value it was when they first opened.

Review: Chill, Tempe AZ

If you've been reading the blog for a while now, you might remember my recent trip to Las Vegas, where I got the chance to try frozen yogurt from Red Mango, the company responsible for starting the renaissance in frozen yogurt.  Gone are the variety of sweet flavors, replaced by just two flavors:  Regular yogurt, and yogurt with green tea added to it.  The regular yogurt isn't nearly as sweet as the frozen yogurt that you're used to, and it has a bit more twang to it, a bit like the popular Greek style yogurts that grace the dairy case at Trader Joe's.  Think of this new frozen yogurt as... yogurt flavored frozen yogurt.  There are a couple of places up in north Scottsdale that have offered this treat for a little while, chief among them Ice Tango just off the 101 at Frank Lloyd Wright.  I've been meaning to get up there and try it, but that part of town just isn't on my regular rotation.  Somehow driving half an hour just for frozen yogurt seems kind of silly, but planning a trip to Vegas with getting my hands on more Red Mango in mind is easily justifiable.  While I am planning on heading up to Vegas again soon, I was very happy to hear that a new fro-yo place just opened in Tempe, and they even offer gelato.

The new place is Chill, located in the same strip mall that houses Pita Jungle on Apache in between Rural and McClintock in Tempe, a veritable stone's throw from campus.  The interior certainly takes its cues from the industry big shots, with warm colors and modern looking furnishings.  The frozen yogurt machine has the regular yogurt, plus something I haven't seen anywhere else:  Non-dairy frozen soymilk.  Vegans, rejoice!  The yogurt can be topped with a variety of fresh fruits sliced up in-house and small candies such as chocolate chips.  Something you might want to try for a topping is mochi, a Japanese treat made of glutinous rice pounded into cakes.  It has a chewy texture and a lightly sweet flavor that pairs nicely with the smooth tanginess of the yogurt.  The gelato at first bite is better than average.  I'm happy that I didn't see any way out of season flavors that indicate the use of canned bases instead of real fruit (Gelato Spot, I'm looking at you), but I'll have to try more of the gelato before I can say for sure whether it's truly top-notch stuff.  However, the sheer deliciousness of the frozen yogurt may keep that from ever happening.  Stay tuned to find out ;-)

Review: Urban Campfire, Tempe AZ

There are certain times that it's really hard to write a review of a restaurant I've been meaning to try once I have been there. Sometimes, things just don't go the least bit like you would expect. My recent (massively disappointing) trip to Grilled Expedition was one of them. This review is hard to write for a different reason entirely. You see, Urban Campfire is a brand new restaurant in the space on the southeast corner of Rural and University that was home to Greasy Tony's since before I was born. The owner of Urban Campfire, Robert Stempkowski, has worked in a number of restaurants around town. You may have heard of one or two... Richardson's, Christopher's, Michael's at the Citadel, Binkley's, Mary Elaine's... and the list still goes on. Robert decided to open up his own little place, and offer up grub that the kids at ASU could not only afford, but also truly enjoy. So, he rolled up his sleeves, cleaned up the old Greasy Tony's (turns out the name was accurate; according to reports from our waitress, it looked like Tony stopped caring about the kitchen some time in the late 80's. Judging by what I remember of the dining room, that sounded about right), and opened up Urban Campfire a couple of months ago. The reason I'm so reluctant to write about this place is because once word gets out as to how utterly amazing Urban Campfire is, those eight tables in the restaurant are going to be a hell of a lot harder to come by.

The whole shebang started out when I met my friend Jeff at the restaurant. The moment he walked in the door, my friend Geena (a true urban gypsy if ever I knew one) called to let me know she got out of work early and was all set to go dancing. So, off I went to pick up Geena, leaving poor Jeff all by his lonesome. Well, not completely by his lonesome... I think he plotted with the waitress to have some kind of errand pop up just as I returned. Once I came back with Geena in tow, he had memorized most (OK, all) of the menu. I had already perused the menu online, so I pretty much knew exactly what I wanted. I got a half-rack of spare ribs ($11.95) with their Yam Planks (yes ladies and gentlemen, it's another place with sweet potato fries!) and baked beans. Jeff got their Cobb Sandwich ($7.95) on marble rye, a creation that put the classic salad between bread, with turkey, ham, bacon (all three of which are smoked in-house, as were my ribs), blue cheese, and other accoutrements. Geena... just ate before she got off work, and got to watch me and Jeff eat. We also decided to split a one-liter carafe of kiwi-basil white sangría ($15.99). The sangría came along pretty quickly, accompanied by Mason jar mugs full of ice, certainly a nice homey touch. It was a fairly simple sangría... maybe a little too simple. I would have liked the kiwi and basil to be a bit more evident; you could pick them up, but they weren't immediately obvious, at least with the first glass. The second glass was a lot sweeter and more obvious with the kiwi and basil (which work very well together, I should say), meaning that next time I get the sangría, I should likely give it a more vigorous stir before pouring.

We waited for a few moments, and our waitress picked up some tiny plates from the expo window. I see the plates coming and my first thought was "No way... they didn't..." When the plates were set on the table, my suspicions were confirmed. They brought out an amuse bouche. Needless to say, I completely did not expect it; usually amuse bouches are something served at places that cost four or five times what Urban Campfire costs. On the plate was a deviled egg, and a few bites of romaine lettuce with a creamy red tomato vinaigrette. The deviled egg was exemplary, with a little bit of horseradish and something else mixed in... I'm not sure what it was, but I'll do my best to catch it next time. Atop the egg was a little bit of minced red onion. The tastes melded together very nicely, and the egg itself was done perfectly, with a just-firm-enough white holding a silky, creamy yolk mixture. The tomato vinagrette was also outstanding, with a bit of tartness to keep the sweetness of the tomatoes in check. With a vinaigrette this good, who needs ketchup for fry dunking? I mentioned to our waitress how much I loved it and she mentioned that in a few months, they'll start bottling it. I have one thing to say about this... Good call.

Shortly after we polished off the amuse bouche, the entrees came along. I was very glad that I didn't attempt to polish off a full rack. The half rack brought a pile of about six or seven spare ribs, very nicely charred on the outside, napped with a slightly thin barbecue sauce that smelled oh so nice and tangy. The beans were in a small ramekin, and the Yam Planks were in a small basket on the side since there was no more room left on the plate. Since I know everyone here is crazy for sweet potato fries, I started out on those. These are wonderful. They aren't your typical fry; they're long sticks about an inch wide and maybe 1/8 inch thick. They're too thick to be potato chips, but too skinny to really be fries. You end up with the best of both; a whisper of a tender interior, with lots of crisp, caramelized exterior. To further enhance the Yam Planks, they are tossed with thyme and black pepper. The seasonings brought out the best of the yams, making them taste more sweet potato-y than just about any other sweet potato fry that I've had. After nibbling a couple of those, I dove into the ribs. This is some serious, serious barbecue. The ribs themselves were nearly falling off the bone and perfectly smoky, and the sauce on top was just the right balance of sweet, tangy, and spicy, with the tangy just barely ahead of the other tastes. The beans were no slouch either, with good smokiness from the bacon added to them and a little sweetness from brown sugar. Jeff greatly enjoyed his Cobb Sandwich; the smokiness of the meats worked well with the blue cheese on the sandwich, and the smoked turkey was so tender it melted in your mouth like it was paté. The fries were classic American hand-cut fries, tossed in grated Parmesan for extra dimension. These were quite nice, but were a bit on the limp side; they would do well to do as the Europeans have done for ages and fry them twice to amp up the crispness. Still, I'd take these over the ones that come out of freezer bags everywhere else; it's rare to find a place that does real fries anymore.

We almost licked our plates clean, and by some miracle still had room for dessert. They have one item for dessert on the menu: Haystack cookies ($1.25 each). You may have made something like these when you were a kid, using chow mein noodles and chocolate. Urban Campfire's are made from pretzel sticks and mini marshmallows, held together by a thick peanut butter and butterscotch sauce. The use of pretzel sticks gave them a little bit of a salty kick, much like with sea salt caramels. It's a good thing they did that; if they used something else, it might have been too sweet. Other than that, these seemed fairly pedestrian (like I said, sort of like something you'd make at home for or with kids), but I'll probably end up getting one every time I go there just because they're still darn tasty. I was talking to some friends about Urban Campfire before I wrote this, and a couple of them thought that some kind of s'mores would be a more appropriate dessert; I'm not quite sure how successfully s'mores could be made in a restaurant kitchen, but it would certainly be something interesting to see on the menu. Before the check arrived, here came our waitress with three more small plates, this time with ramekins of watermelon chunks as a palate cleanser. While I was happily munching away on the fresh fruit, Geena noticed something that didn't even cross my mind- the watermelon got a squeeze of lime before it went out of the kitchen. Considering how much I enjoyed it, I would have to say that the combination worked very well indeed.

Our server then brought the check, which came to just a hair over $42. For the outstanding quality of everything and all of the additional thoughtful touches by both the kitchen and our server (I am going to guess that she's been in the business for a while and is glad to work somewhere casual again), I would have to say that this was an absolutely outstanding deal. This is the kind of place that makes me wish I didn't work during the dinner shift so that I could take friends out to eat here more often. Jeff had other plans for the evening, so we had said our goodbyes and went out the door to our respective cars. Just as we were about to part company, the owner came out the front door with a big grin and a handful of long, brightly colored sticks of something in plastic... Otter Pops! We each got our choice of flavors, got to chat with Robert some as he nibbled the end bits from cutting the Otter Pops open (one of the benefits of being the boss), and found that an Otter Pop on a balmy late summer evening here in Phoenix is a darn near perfect ending to a meal. In all... I think it was five courses in all (every single one a home run, no less) plus a carafe of sangría for just over twenty bucks a head? I'm sold. I can barely wait to return again.