Tag Archives: #PhoenixFood

A Taste of Squid Ink Sushi in Peoria AZ – Tasty Entrees

Squid Ink Sushi is a Japanese Asian Fusion Restaurant located in North Peoria Arizona. They offer comfortable dining in a sleek modern environment.

They offer a bar up in the front of the restaurant with TVs.

They have a nice long sushi counter.

They also offer patio tables for when the weather is nice.

On the menu is traditional and various non traditional sushi. Squid Ink Sushi offers various appetizers like squid and Nancy (tempura fried squid), Korean sticky ribs, char grilled chicken wings with hot pepper sauce. They offer salads and bowl meals like Squid salad, ginger chicken salad, wagyu beef salad. Some of the entrees they offer are grilled salmon, coconut curry shrimp, a wagyu burger, and pepper crusted filet mignon.

Today we started out with some sushi (a spicy tuna roll, salmon, mackerel, and tuna).

The one thing that is noticeably different was the rice. It was pressed tighter than most places press the rice. That is a good thing. The FORKING Truth is that my introduction to sushi was from the Iron chef himself Masaharu Morimoto when he was the actual working chef at his namesake restaurant in Philadelphia. I didn’t know him personally but ate at his restaurant often enough to get a wave from chef Morimoto when I came in. Getting back to sushi Morimoto’s sushi was the prettiest, smallest and most tight sushi I ever had anywhere. To this day I’ve never had sushi anywhere like Morimoto’s sushi. So the tightness of the rice brought back that memory for me. Today the fish is very similar to other sushi restaurants in the area but the rice is shaped better.

But I am finding out the stand out items to be the entrees.

We split the Japanese Beef Salad made with grilled wagyu steak.

This is a different and really great salad. The beef is tender and flavorful. In the salad are soft greens, red onion, sweet tomatoes, mushrooms, cilantro, wasabi peas, and a sweet and spicy vinaigrette. These are especially good salads.

On a past visit we took out the Thai style chicken fried rice and the Atlantic salmon bowl. These were tasty and good.

But my favorite plate I had was a take out plate when they had Scottish salmon on the menu (not on current menu) On the right side of the photo below.

This salmon was amazing…Like from the best restaurant. So silky fresh and cooked medium like just right with a tasty char. On the left is a beef yakisoba. I didn’t try that one.

GET the Japanese beef salad made with wagyu beef!

Don’t miss the Scottish salmon when they have it.

Well that was a little taste of Squid Ink Sushi in Peoria AZ.

www.SquidInkSushi.com

Everything is subject to change.

The Forking Truth

Little Miss BBQ Sunnyslope Phoenix AZ – Worth a Fork!

Little Miss BBQ is a casual central Texas style bbq restaurant with two locations in Phoenix Arizona. The original location is smaller and is located near the Phoenix Airport. It’s Little Miss BBQ University on University Drive. The 2nd location is in North Phoenix in the Sunnyslope area. The Sunnyslope location offers more seating, expanded hours, limited alcohol, and a few more menu items.

First you wait in line. Usually you start by waiting on the porch and get a whiff of BBQ from all the smokers going. Then you look at menus and decide on what you are having today.

The line moves slow soon you will be inside.

Here is a closer look at the front where you order.

You pass some rubs, sauces, canned alcohol, and some other stuff.

Now it’s your turn. Time to decide on what you want.

Then they slice up the meat for you. You get your sides. You pay and seat yourself.

You can seat yourself on the patio.

Or inside.

Today we shared a two meat plate of 1/2 lean and 1/2 fatty brisket (They use the highest quality prime here), turkey with slaw and potato salad. On the upper left corner in the below picture is the pork belly. My husband said his favorite today was the pork belly. …The pork belly was even more succulent than the fatty brisket.

Sometimes the fatty brisket is too succulent for me. But I know that is how most people prefer it.

My husband also tried a burrito.

He got it with the red mole sauce. He liked it for $10. but is a bigger fan of the meat plates.

Once I came on a Thursday and got the Thursday pastrami special…(This was excellent).

The above plate is from a prior visit….They did differ some in taste (turkey and the brisket) but it’s all very good…No complaints.

This plate has the jalapeño cheesy grits, meaty beans, fatty brisket, pulled pork, and sausage.

Little Miss BBQ is Worth a Fork!

Worth A Fork!

www.LittleMissBBQ.com

Everything is subject to change.

The Forking Truth

Chino Bandido Phoenix AZ – Around 90,000 Combinations of Food for around $10.00 or Less – Worth a Fork!

Chino Bandido is a casual one of a kind unique restaurant located in North Phoenix Arizona. According to Food Network Chino Bandido is one of the top places to eat in the country. A quote from Guy Fieri of Food Network, “One of the most original on DDD” (TV Show Diners Drive-Ins and Dives) The menu offers food that is sort of American Chinese style, some food is Mexican-ish, and some food is Jerk Style. You can pick your pan of food as a single entree with a side or for only a little over a dollar more get a combo with two sides. Then you have even more choices. You can upgrade and burrito-ize any entree. You can also quesadilla -ize any entree. There are almost endless combinations. (according to Food Network they calculated nearly 90,000 combinations)

Here’s the menu the rest is up to you.

When you come in you fill out your order on a slip of paper on a small desk by this wall near the door you just came threw.

Then you wait in line.

It’s always busy.

When you get closer it looks like this.

The menu is up on the wall and the TV on the right plays Food Network shows with Chino Bandido.

You almost don’t see the mascot unless you look for him.

He’s in a corner of the main dining area.

After you order and pay. You get your beverage and seat yourself. When your meal is ready someone will run out of the kitchen calling your name with your tray of food and run it to you.

I got my usual Chile Relleno with emerald chicken with white rice and black beans and my husband got the carnitas quesadilla with hengrenade chicken, jerk rice and black beans.

It’s a lot of food. For me this is two meals but my husband eats his whole pan. We share one cookie for dessert. The Chile Relleno is very large and it’s packed with lots of cheese. The coating is a lot of crushed saltine crackers. I always like the emerald chicken. It’s white meat chicken that is always tender and moist and it’s topped with fresh ginger and scallions. I think it goes with the white rice and black beans.

The snickerdoodle is always a perfect sweet ending.

Hey I got two tasty meals that are better than fast food anywhere and are also cheaper than fast food.

I have to say-

Chino Bandido is Worth a Fork!

Worth A Fork!

www.ChinoBandido.com

Everything is subject to change. (I bet the prices will have to go up a little sometime) Also a dog friendly patio is posted on the door but on the day of my visit they didn’t have patio tables yet.

The Forking Truth

Pizzeria Bianco Phoenix AZ – Worth a Fork!

Pizzeria Bianco is a nationally known pizzeria with two locations in Phoenix Arizona. Many celebrities, Food Network TV, magazines, and food critics give Pizzeria Bianco much positive recognition. The chef and owner is James Beard Award Wining chef Chris Bianco. The menu is limited but is all very high quality. They offer a few small plates, sandwiches, salads, and six pizzas. Part of what is special is the wood fired fermented dough made from locally grown heirloom grains. The mozzarella is house made. The canned tomatoes are California grown Italian style grown by Bianco. The produce is fresh plucked local and is sometimes actually plucked by Chris Bianco.

Inside is small, industrial looking, and loud.

If you can’t find a table inside there are tables outside and a few seats at the bar.

Today we went for pizzas.

I got the rosa pizza.

It looks much different than my last pizza from here. I haven’t been here in years…..mostly because I used to wait two hours to be seated. By the time I got seated I think we were usually on a second bottle of wine. Then when we finally got a pizza we were starving and my pizza from this location was charred so much that it tasted burnt to me and was extra light with toppings. For a few years after that I would get Bianco Pizzas from Pane Bianco (a sister restaurant) because they didn’t char the pizzas as much and went slightly heavier on the toppings……But again this pizza is very different from what I remember from this location. (It’s more like the Pane Bianco pizzas that I enjoyed)

This pizza has a crunch, a chewiness and crispness like no other. The outer crust is almost like a shattering crisp cracker. This crust does have a different taste to it that isn’t like flour. It is unique and is not like any other pizza out there…….

My pizza today has a delicious layer of parmigiano reggiano cheese.

Each bite does taste different. Some of the local Arizona pistachios have a nice rich fresh pistachio flavor and other pistachios are chewy. The red onion goes well with these flavors. My favorite bites are the ones with rosemary that brighten and freshen everything. Some pieces don’t have rosemary. I confess that I wish that this pizza came with slightly more rosemary. But it is great the way it is…that is just my taste.

My husband had the Sonny boy today.

This pizza was made with Bianco tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, salami, and gaeta olives.

It was nice to get seated soon after we arrived.

These pizzas were much better than what I remember from many years ago. These pizzas are also unique with a lot of work that goes into them and these pizzas don’t taste like any other.

Pizzeria Bianco is –

Worth a Fork!

Worth A Fork!

www.PizzeriaBianco.com

Everything is subject to change.

The Forking Truth

The YUMDINGER Dish – The Kokomo Chop Bowl from Little Cay in Scottsdale AZ – Worth a Fork! *****UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS***

The YUMDINGER dish does taste marvelously good, It’s a FORKING Tasty dish.

Ok you might not get this one because it looks like just a salad…but you are wrong…..It’s not just a salad. This plate of food is distinctive and uncommon. This one taste like an explosion in your mouth. What we got here is marinated moist flavorful deliciously charred chicken thigh in a bed of heathy greens and tomatoes. There is yellow rice in here, black beans, curry mayo and RUM SOAKED cranberries……..All this is really delicious and then it POPS when you add the pique (Puerto Rican Hot Sauce. OMG there is so much delicious going on. You got sweet, curry, some heat, some smoke some delicious, tart, sour and rum soaked cranberries! It’s really FANTABULOUS!

you MUST add the pique!

The Kokomo Chop Bowl from Little Cay in Scottsdale is a YUMDINGER DISH.

*****UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS******

Worth Fork!

Worth A Fork!

www.LittleCayAZ.com

The Forking Truth

The most popular restaurant in Peoria AZ might be Mercer’s Restaurant – They must be doing something right

Mercer’s Restaurant is located in Peoria Arizona. They are a family owned and operated restaurant since 1987. They serve comfort foods at reasonable prices and are open seven days a week from 6am – 8:30pm. They serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner and also offer daily specials.

Every table is full and people keep coming. Many people are here for take out too!

Mercer’s Restaurant is on the end of a mostly deserted mall.

The menu reads that salmon is a favorite here so I should get it?

So I ordered it.

Dinners come with salad or soup.

The above salad is what you get with dinners.

The baked potato is light and fluffy and I like the soft butter that goes with it. I also think that the tartar sauce is unusually good……The salmon taste similar to the frozen salmon from my local Safeway. The texture of the fish has a lack of succulence. It also contains that fishy taste……………………The carrots are not tasty to me. I can’t identify what is on them.

My husband got the chicken fried steak with potato salad. He said, “It’s ok but not the best.”

I tried the potato salad. It’s a little too creamy for me but does have good flavorings to it.

Why critique this?

Some people judge restaurants by the amount of business that they have.

Apparently Mercer’s is doing something right.

www.MercersRestaurant.com

Everything is subject to change.

The Forking Truth

My Trip To H Mart Korean American Supermarket in Mesa AZ

H Mart is the largest Korean/American Supermarket Chain in America. They have around 85 locations nationwide and also have a few locations in Canada and London. We took a trip to our closest H Mart in Mesa Arizona and these are only a few of things we came across.

Interesting melons

fresh durian fruit

red skinned passion fruit

jujube crunch

fresh wood ear mushrooms and lots of other interesting mushrooms

fresh lily bulb

ginseng

The largest scallions

wagyu beef

yellow chives

garlic stems

green radish

salted egg salmon skin

wasabi pea crackers

live fish …actually the fish section was very large and didn’t smell either. They also offered a lot of frozen fish too..

dried fish

wafu dressing

After we shopping we decided to have lunch in the Market Eatery also known as the H Mart Food Court.

Here is Paris Baguette. Lots of baked goods.

Food Garden

Sogongoong Tofu & BBQ – This was my first choice but they were out of the mackerel I wanted to try.

Jeong’s Noodle

Meisen Katsu – breaded cutlet meals

Korean Fried Chicken

Da Pan …This one seemed interesting to me. I thought I’d like the spicy chicken topaki and my husband thought he’d like the bulgogi Risotto. They also have some weird sounding dishes like Dorito Mac and Cheese here.

This is pretty weird…..It looks like a pizza but it is without crust. I didn’t know that they would sprinkle cheese on it. It’s made of chicken, chewy rice cakes, fish cakes, cabbage, carrots in a sweet but medium spicy sauce….The sauce taste something like that sweet sauce that goes on cabbage rolls. This is weird to me…….It’s a lot of sweet sauce….It came radish kimchi with a soup that frightened me….because I thought looked like urine so I didn’t even try it. Good thing this chicken dish was a big portion because me and my husband ate this because the other dish we both couldn’t stomach.

We thought we would be getting something like this because it is the picture of the dish from the business posted as menu on www.Yelp.com It looks good doesn’t it? I also remember our last food critic from our local newspaper wrote about how great this dish was…..I guess Da Pan made him this version.

www.Yelp.com menu

But we got this instead.

I tell The FORKING Truth so I have to say that……..It’s really grosser than it looks. Honest to GOD!>>>It’s like they took a brick of cream cheese and put the bulgogi in a blender with the cream cheese with not much else and mixed it with rice.

It’s like vomit on a skillet.

I did better with some of the vegetables that I picked up at H Mart.

Endives fried in chicken fat with lime, peanuts, basil, mint, yellow chives

Bok Choy Garlic Stems & Chestnuts in Banchan Sauce

That was my trip to H Mart in Mesa AZ

www.HMart.com

The Forking Truth

Let the good times roll at Maya Ice Cream Rolls in North Phoenix AZ

Maya Ice Cream Rolls serves a variety of Thai Style dressed ice cream rolls. The ice cream is made right in front of your eyes on a special metal sheet that freezes the cream. Then the ice cream gets scraped off the sheet into a roll shape.

In addition to the ice cream rolls Maya offers sweet and also savory crepes. Some of the crepes are tiki masala, fajita, Nutela, and Biscoff.

You can seat yourself inside or on the patio.

Doors to the patio.

I tried the tropical fusion ice cream rolls.

The ice cream is vanilla based with added mango, pineapple, coconut and condensed milk. This one is delicious!

Here’s the choco loco.

This one is chocolate based with brownies, chocolate chips and chocolate drizzle. This one is only mildly chocolate flavored.

There is another location of Maya ice Cream rolls in Arrowhead Town Center (The Mall).

Their website is incomplete at the moment but you can find Maya Ice Cream Rolls on Facebook.

The Forking Truth

Smashers EATS Phoenix AZ – Smash Style Burgers and Cured in-house Pastrami******UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS

******UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS *****Smashers EATS is a casual full service not too fancy inexpensive restaurant located in a strip mall in North Phoenix Arizona. The main dig at Smashers EATS are various smash style burgers but they also offer other things. They also offer appetizers, salads, various sandwiches, a few entrees, some pasta dishes, a children’s menu, milk shakes, some desserts and alcohol. They also do make some home made desserts …….I heard that the specialties are cheese cake and cookies….but they are made on Tuesdays so by the weekend they are all gone.

It looks like you order at the counter but you don’t and seat yourself instead.

The walls are bricked and decorated with lit stain glass panels.

A few big screen TVs are on the walls. The Table tops are unique with carving and colors.

My husband went with a 6oz. green chili burger (doubled (ANOTHER 6oz….for $3.00 more and brought some burger home for the dogs) and picked onion rings as his side.

Under the seeded bun top are some pickles, lettuce and tomato slices. In the mouth was a juicy nicely seasoned delicious burgers with a good amount of melty pepper jack cheese, bacon and green chilies. He got a generous amount of crispy onion rings with it too!

I had the house cured pastrami melt with Cole slaw as my side.

Just the way I like it!

Really greatly thin grilled toasty marble rye and the tasty delicious flavorful pastrami. It had the just right amounts of sauerkraut Russian Island dressing and melty Swiss cheese. WOW! It was a YUM-DINGER! The Cole slaw was really great too. Nice fresh and crunchy with the just right amount of sweetness.

I don’t know how everything is at Smashers Eats but the smash style burgers and the cured in-house pastrami melts are recommended.

******UPDATE NOW CLOSED FOR BUSINESS********

I haven’t found a website for Smashers EATS but they are on Facebook.

16816 N Cave Creek Rd PHX 85032 602-283-5600

Tue.-Sat. – 10am-8pm

Everything is subject to change.

The Forking Truth

A Taste of Halo Halo Kitchen Filipino Restaurant Phoenix AZ

Halo Halo Kitchen is a casual Filipino Restaurant located in Phoenix Arizona. This restaurant is mostly cafeteria style and also offers some grocery and desserts. Parking is easy because they are in a strip mall. You might be wondering what does Halo Halo mean? The restaurant might be named after Halo Halo the popular Filipino dessert of shaved ice, evaporated milk, and may contain boiled beans, coconut, palm tree starch, jelly, potatoes, and fruit.

Halo Halo Delux

Here is the cafeteria line.

You either order what is on the line or order off a menu board. They offer all day Filipino breakfast plates called silog plates that were only $8.95 today. (subject to change)

Today (Saturday) They also have Lechon (roasted baby pig). I noticed that the Sunday special is Filipino spaghetti with fried chicken.

Halo Halo offers many other Filipino foods that are a fusion of Spanish, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian & American. I made a cheat sheet of some of the dishes so I’d know what they are.

fish case mostly sold out already
menu

Halo Halo is also part grocery store with dry goods, frozen foods and refrigerated food and also sells pastries and desserts.

Once you decided on your order you pay and seat yourself with a number card. They will run out whatever you didn’t get to pick up.

After your meal you might want to visit the dessert bar for a Halo Halo, a boba slushy or a flan.

Some of the dishes we tried here were.

all day breakfast Sisig plate with pork.

corned beef Sisig plate (our mutual least favorite)

grilled pompano fish with bittermelon vegetable medley and steamed rice

tofu, eggplant, vegetable dish with rice

coconut chicken

adobo pork

beef dish

adobo pork more recently (this plate was only $6.75….subject to change)

It doesn’t cost much to dine here. Two meals today were only with tax $18.00.

That was a taste of Halo Halo Kitchen in Phoenix AZ.

Every FORKING thing is subject to change.

wwwHaloHaloKitchen.com

The Forking Truth