The Vic Bar and Kitchen in Buckeye AZ

I went west to Buckeye AZ and desired to to try some of the amazing sounding food I read about on-line from The Vic Bar and Grill. The Cuisine is New American and is Farm to Table Style so it should be Great! All the sauces and baked goods are made in house. What’s not to like about that!

Upon arrival I gasp at the breathtaking view. I also gasp at the abbreviated menu with few choices unlike the menu I read on-line. We drove around an hour to come here and there are few choices to eat.

I heard that the Chef has worked at prestigious places and has also worked under Restauranteur and Celebrity Chef Colicchio  who is one of the Judges from the Bravo TV Show Top Chef so I thought the food would be pretty darn good.

We decided to start with a few appetizers. The first was a local Blue Sky Farm Duck Deviled Egg.

The egg came from a very tiny duck because it looked hen egg sized. We share the egg and it’s filled with runny and lumpy yolk filling that isn’t flavored so well. I wasn’t sure what the egg was sitting on so I tried some very rubbery unseasoned egg whites. I guess I wasn’t suppose to eat them and possibly they were just used to stand the forking egg up. A mild red sauce topped the egg. My stomach sort of turned after I tried a chopped white and I had reason to worry about the rest of the food after trying this.

We also shared the Seared Shishito Peppers.

The peppers were covered with a sweetened Soy based sauce. They were suppose to come with Blueberry Sugar. The sugar might have been in the sauce.

I ordered the Melon Salad for my Lunch.

It was ripe… aromatic….. flavorful…. and delicious made with, Galia Melon, preserved lemon, micro mint leaves, lavender and goat cheese. It had all kinds of flavors going on that were very right like the lemony preserved lemons brightening everything up. The salad was suppose to also have radish flowers that were missed. Shame because it would have looked amazing with the flowers. This salad was really delicious and is something that inspires me to recreate.

However the Guanciale with the salad was cold and greasy and seemed like it was straight out of the refrigerator.

I do have a hard time thinking of this dish as a salad. It was really more of an appetizer and wasn’t much food. I was still hungry. I didn’t appreciate my server’s sense of humor. He said to me, “You ate all that.” I felt like forking slapping him at that time.

My husband had the Smokie.

My photo doesn’t do a good job of showing you how awkward this sandwich is too eat. It has to be eaten with a knife and fork. Everything on the plate was made in house. The roll the sauces and the sausage. I didn’t try it but my husband said the meat was packed very hard and was grind very fine. He said it felt weird in his mouth.

I do know that this restaurant doesn’t grind their own meat and sends the meat out for someone else to grind. I was going to order the all sirloin hamburger until the waiter told me that. Grinders often don’t get cleaned between grindings and you don’t know what was left behind.

I had room for dessert so I was hoping that the desserts would be delicious. Our waiter suggest two of the six desserts on the menu so I go with one of his choices and it was the Strawberry and Lemon Icebox Cake.

I thought it would be delicious and lemony but it was a thickened Whipped Cream Pie with strawberries on the plate. For the kind of upscale restaurant I thought this was I have to say this pie looks very much like something you’d see at a school or church bake sale and not something a Pastry Chef would create. The gram cracker crust had an added flavor that might have been maple. The pie part was just thickened whipped cream with little flavor of any kind and was topped with more cream that didn’t remind me of real cream.

I took my first bite and I have to pull something from my mouth.

It seemed like a forking piece of SILICON GLUE. It was hard and also like elastic. It was just like silicon.

I showed the waiter and he ran it to the kitchen. He just said it must be some gelatin. I didn’t even get an I’m sorry or anything…..It seemed like they thought that an imbedded object was perfectly fine in a pie they serve.

I had a hard time trying out the dessert after that because my stomach was turning again.

I understand why some people have an aversion to sweets.

This one was awful. The crust was greasy gram cracker with with some sort of flavoring that tasted like maple. The creamy filling was not smooth without a great mouth feel and was sort of gritty and lacked that really perfect lemon flavor I imagined. It was not something I’d ever want to try again.

If you eat with your eyes you will do better than I did because your stomach won’t feel a thing!

Rated 1/2 a Fork because it’s a mix of good and not so good with a Breathtaking View.  Good Luck!

It’s not my intention to write a negative review for the Vic Bar and Kitchen. Your visit might differ. For all I know the Chef or Management might have been on vacation and it is possible the third string workers were holding the place together.

For more information of The Vic Bar and Kitchen please visit www.VicBarandKitchen.com

The Forking Truth

UPDATE*********Sadly this restaurant is now CLOSED for Business

One of the gems in Scottsdale AZ is Carvalho’s Brazilian Kitchen. Inside is a lovely comfortable furnished dining room. With interesting colors and fixtures.There is an open kitchen with full bar and lively live bossanova music in the background.

Outside is a lovely strip mall patio with a breathtaking water feature.

All the food we tried here was just as wonderful as the surroundings.

On my first visit to Carvalho’s I tried the Pao de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

It hot and steamy Cheese Bread that’s made from gluten free cassava flour and cheese. The ball shaped bread pulls like elastic. It’s delicious and lighter in texture than it looks.

For my lunch I had the cold chicken salad.

It was unlike any chicken salad I had before and was covered with potato match sticks. I remember it was delicious and had a mild tropical taste.

My husband had the lunch size Feijoada, that is the National Dish of Brazil. It’s a black bean stew of sausage, beef and pork with some sides like fresh orange, fried collard greens, rice and toasted manioc flour. The manioc flour is sort of nutty and is used the same way as you sprinkle hard Italian Cheese.

Lunch Size Feijoada

The food, service and atmosphere was all really great so we have to come back sometime for dinner.

We started with the Brazilian Cheese Breads Again.

They were hot, steamy and delicious just like before. We got enough to serve the four people we had at our table.

For Dinner I had the Picanha Grelhada or Grilled Coulotte Steak that came with Grilled Pineapple and Brazilian Potato Salad.

I was two pieces of a sirloin type of steak with a rind of fat and grizzle. The steak was amazing with good flavors, melt in your mouth tender and the rind was a special treat for true carnivores. It seemed as good as a steak that might cost twice as much. To my  surprise my husband and father in-law happily enjoy the steak rind I removed from both pieces. They are true carnivores unlike myself.  They both thought it was an amazing treat. The potato salad was unlike any potato salad I had before. It was almost like mashed potatoes mixed with chunks of potato with lots of soft carrots and olives.  I thought it was very good. Even the grilled pineapple was very delicious and very fresh tasting. It was like a fresh picked pineapple. When I saw the slice I though it would have a core but it didn’t and was good all the way threw.

My husband and Father-In-Law had the dinner Feijoada.

A large bowl of Black Bean Stew with sausage beef and pork, rice, fried collard greens fresh orange, vegetable relish and toasted nutty cassava flour. They both enjoyed it and thought it was delicious.

My Mother-In-Law had the Shrimp in Pumpkin.

I thought this plate had the most visual appeal. It looks delicious doesn’t it?

We were all full by now but still wanted something sweet and we shared one order of the Chocolate Truffles. Out came four bite size truffles.

It was the just right sweet ending to a lovely meal.

Carvalho’s Brazilian Kitchen in Scottsdale AZ is Certainly Worth a Fork! For more information on Carvalho’s Brazilian Kitchen please visit www.Carvalhos.co

Worth a Fork….. You might Travel across Town to Dine Here because they offer something different you can’t find at most places. Where the FORK ELSE are you going to find wonderful Brazilian Food in the Metro Phoenix Area?

The Forking Truth!

Chompie’s is a New York Inspired Style Deli Restaurant with a few locations through out the metro phoenix area. They are an institution in the area and have been in business for close to forty years. They are well known for all-day breakfast, bagels, breads, sandwiches, desserts and more. They also happen to have the “Chutzpah” to offer deep fried matzo balls with chipotle ranch dressing on their menu. (“Oy Vey”)

This is the 5th location of this newly opened Chompie’s and is in the Arrowhead Town Center by the Macy’s Department Store.

Honestly I wasn’t expecting much because I already dined at the Paradise Valley Location and was very underwhelmed there. I really only thought I’d try them again because it was near me and they sell real belly lox and I wanted to purchase some. Real belly lox as far as I know is only sold at Chompie’s and one small independent deli called Scott’s Generations.

Perhaps I didn’t taste the real Chompie’s before?

We were welcomed warmly by several people working there. The matronly hostess said your gonna love this to us as she seated us..

Soon someone runs out a complimentary a small tray of kosher and half sour pickles that seem like they might be house made.

I ordered a half pastrami sandwich with matzo ball soup. My husband orders a triple decker sandwich of pastrami, corned beef and brisket.

Soon the sandwiches arrive and here they are……..

My 1/2 sandwich is filled with more meat than most whole sandwiches. To my surprise the pastrami is very good. It’s smokey and balanced with lots of flavors and is also very succulent with the right amount of fat. It’s all grilled and delicious. This is unlike my one and only experience at the paradise valley location were all i tasted was smoke and very little spice or the right succulence. This is much better and so fresh tasting. It’s so much better than what I tried from the other location.

Even the meats in my husband’s sandwich were good and far better than what we remember trying before at the Paradise Valley Location. We were both pleasantly surprised.

I can’t help to wonder if we hit the other place on an off day??……. Don’t know.

Finding good bread in Arizona is like hitting the lottery. It just doesn’t happen.

The bread is not New York or East Coast at all but still is a very tasty bread and better than  much  other of the rye bread you can buy in Arizona. Real New York Rye has a hard crust, is usually cut thin and has this perfect developed flavor of sour against the rye to bring out more flavor. Chompie’s bread is different and is sweeter, softer and milder but this bread is tasty.  If your from Arizona this is very good bread. If your from the East Coast it’s not the same. You must need to know bread in Arizona and California bread is not the same as east coast rye. I don’t know if it’s the water or the atmosphere or a combination of other things. The bread is different but there are a few small artisan bakeries in Arizona and California where you can get something closer to East Coast Style. All that said the bread does hold up to the massive sandwiches that Chompie’s serves so that’s a good thing that must be said.The bagels are tasty but are not like east coast ones either. They are twice the size and lighter and fluffier and don’t have the same chew and structure.

Well this is Arizona so things do differ.

Back to my sandwich. I liked that Chompie’s grilled the bread to perfection in my sandwich. This day it was among one of the better pastrami sandwiches I tasted in Arizona.

The cole slaw was very good. It was fresh and crisp and bright with flavors. I also think the potato salad was maybe the first potato salad I tried that tasted like from what I had from the east coast.

The matzo ball soup was the only thing that wasn’t near the same level to me. Don’t get me wrong it was OK but not what I’d consider a representation of typical matzo ball soup. This is Chompie’s version.

The soup was clearly soup base and could have been better if they didn’t use so much soup base.  What you need to know about matzo ball soup is that it’s all about the matzo ball. It should be light, fluffy, flavorful and is a sponge to suck up a natural light broth. A fresh piece of dill also brightens it up to make it delicious. Well that’s my taste. Not everyone is as picky as me or has an idea what it should be like. I’ll try a different soup next time.

After our meal we visited the deli side and ordered our belly lox.

Belly Lox on a Chompie’s Bagel

I didn’t notice belly lox on the menu but I knew it was there. At the counter they were offering samples of some of the desserts. I tasted a chocolate filled flaky pastry of some sort. It was really awesome. It made me happy because I haven’t tasted anything this good from three  certain nearby bakeries.

Look at this case. The desserts look awesome! My butt widens just looking at the desserts.

Well Chompie’s is a place I can visit again. Hopefully they will stay as good as what I tried.

I wish them luck and mazal tov.

I’m happy they opened here because the food is much better than from the mostly big chains that are found in this part of town.

You are NOT going to drive across town to dine here because you might have a Chompie’s location closer to you. But If your in the neighborhood this place is suggested because they serve sandwiches and desserts that are better than from the big chains that are in this area.

For more information on Chompie’s please visit www.Chompies.com

The Forking Truth