********UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS*****Roland’s Cafe Market Bar is a casual restaurant with wait service in downtown Phoenix AZ. This restaurant is a collaboration of James Beard Award Winning Chef (The Pizza Guru) Chris Bianco and Taco Specialist Chefs Nadia Holguin and Armando Hernandez of Tacos Chiwas Restaurant. In a recent article by our local newspaper they wrote that this restaurant could be one of Phoenix’s BEST NEW RESTAURANTS.

When you walk in you see a hostess desk and a small pastry case. A few items for sale and a reserved table that looks like it was from an old dining room. You can clearly see that this was a vintage building with an old tin ceiling and an old brick wall with bricked up windows.

There is a very large open kitchen lined with cans of Bianco Brand Tomatoes and Cutino Brand Hot Sauces (a Bianco Cutino partnership ((Cutino was known as Homeboy Hot Sauces before the Bianco Collaboration)). There also is a very large bar with opened garage door windows.

This was the menu we ordered from. Everything is quality here. Local as possible. Chicken is free range organic. Bread and tortillas are made with flour that is ground at Pane Bianco from local heirloom grains. The menu is mostly Mexican with a non-traditional touch and a little sprinkle of Italian such  as the mortadella quesadilla.

I thought the Citrus Salad sounded great but I went with the Pollo Asado Sandwich with vegetables as my side.

It is a very large sandwich on amazing Bianco Bread. The sandwich is made with quality free range chicken. It’s much different than I was expecting. I don’t know how the chicken was prepared but it’s soft and tender like butter and seems like it was either sous vide or slow poached. So the chicken didn’t seem grilled or developed with flavors like I was expecting but it was good. I also wasn’t expecting refried beans spread on my sandwich as the beans aren’t listed in the description. I don’t know if this was accidental or an opening hiccup. I don’t like refried beans on a sandwich (but some people do)…..if I saw this in the menu I would have told them to leave the beans off. The beans are very mild and add very little taste and just feel like paste in my mouth. This sandwich also contains a fresh slaw and pickled onions……Most of the flavor for this sandwich is in the little metal container to the side. IT’S A BOMB OF FLAVOR……a little goes a LONG WAY……It’s a delicious sauce and makes the quiet sandwich scream. The sandwich came with a nice generous medley of fresh vegetables that were tasty. Like I said before it was a big sandwich I took half home.

My husband had the Carnitas Sandwich.

Take a closer look.

There are a few opening hiccups here…It’s not in the menu description of the Carnita Sandwich but there is isn’t arugula instead they gave him the romaine (I note it might not be the romaine we were told to avoid on the news?) But for us the BIG HICCUP is the extra generous amount of MAYONNAISE applied to the sandwich. This sandwich is smeared with refried beans and TONS of mayonnaise. I personally don’t care for mayonnaise and refried beans together but other people might.  If you read my reviews you might remember my husband finds mayonnaise polarizing…..so he was horrified by all this mayonnaise on this sandwich. Our waiter was very understanding and agreed that mayonnaise should be listed as an ingredient. He had a new sandwich with out mayonnaise made right away. This sandwich was also spread with refried beans and was topped with romaine and some pickled onions. The carnitas were also mildly seasoned but were also made from high quality pork. Like the Pollo Asado Sandwich the Carnita Sandwich also turns up the flavors from the Salsa served on the side. The Salsa de Arbol is another Sauce BOMB. (We don’t know if this sandwich contained the lemon vinaigrette.)

By using the sauce on the side you crank the sandwiches from a whisper to a scream.

I saved a little room to try a dessert…..

The desserts today were cookies, cherry scones and something else I forgot. Decided to try the Cherry Scone.

It’s a smaller dessert and we are splitting it…

The scone is made nicely and baked perfect but only has trace amounts of dried cherry…….My half was free of cherries.

It’s a slightly fruited Almond Scone.

Parking is somewhat difficult. The lot and overflow lot are all filled up and we had to park not too far away in the street.

This person in the Black Lincoln was unaware (or didn’t care) of our car behind and parked less than an inch in front of us. I guess he thought our car could just levitate out of the tight spot. I offered to run into the restaurant as ask the hostess to find the owner of the Lincolon but my husband preferred to back up the car over the curb to get out.

That was my visit to Roland’s Cafe Market and Bar.

www.RolandsPHX.com

I do note that at this time (April 2018) This is a Brand NEW Newly opened restaurant and they might or might not be working out some things.******UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS******

EVERY FORKING THING EVERYWHERE is subject to change and your experience may or may NOT differ.