Bahia De Guaymas is a Sonoran Mexican Restaurant located in Phoenix Arizona. They offer mostly seafood items but also do offer meats and chicken. The menu is mostly in Spanish. Here English is the second language but the servers are bilingual.
This isn’t a fancy place but parking is easy since they have their own parking lot.
In the front of the restaurant a bar stretches across the room and behind is a dining area filled with traditional tables and booths along one side.
The tables are set with a bucket of many bottled sauces that don’t look clean or safe to use.
Lets take a peek at the menu….
They start us off with chips salsa and a bowl of limes.
I see marlin tacos on the menu. You can’t find marlin tacos everywhere so we share one.
This marlin taco is served on a fresh made grilled slightly puffy shell and has melted white cheese inside with the smoked marlin and is garnished with a little salad.
For my main I had the filete a la diablo.
It’s a nicely grilled mild white fish covered in a blanket of a chipotle-ee tomato-ee sauce. It’s a little spicy…….The rice is seasoned some with maybe a chicken broth and is studded with a few vegetables like peas, carrots and corn. The refried beans are very loose and soupy. We also got tortillas to share. The corn tortillas were hot and were grilled extra nice. The flour tortillas were maybe the thinest flour tortillas that I have ever had anywhere. I don’t know if they made them but they did taste like home made tortillas.
My husbands meal was very similar but was with camaron (shrimp).
That was my trip to Bahia De Guaymas in Phoenix AZ.
This restaurant has an authentic feel to it. The standout dish was the smoked marlin taco.
I haven’t found a website for this restaurant but they are on Facebook
I found this recipe on the web and it was done by a famous chef so it seemed like it was worth trying……I made it but after tasting it I thought it was tragically under seasoned and didn’t even taste good. I am certain that their food is good from their restaurant but I suspect that much of the recipe was missing.>>>>because it just didn’t taste right. I think with everything I added it is at the very least good now. This is sort of how I started my blog…..by fixing other peoples recipes.
Ingredients for around 4 servings
1 butternut squash – peeled, seeds and membranes removed, and cut into large chunks
hot red pepper to taste – seeds and core removed, – rough chopped
5 garlic cloves – peeled
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
6 oz tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
water to thin down – around a cup
4 oz mushrooms – sliced thin
4 oz spinach
a little cream or yogurt to taste to cream the sauce slightly
Directions
Puree the cardamon, peppers, tomatoes, chili, garlic, ginger, tomato paste, salt, water, garam masala, sugar, nutmeg, white pepper, turmeric and asafetida. Bring this mixture to a boil. Add the butternut squash chunks. Continue cooking until the squash is soft and edible. Add the sliced mushrooms. Cook 2 minutes more. Lastly stir in the spinach and serve.
( was fancy and added fried crispy mushrooms…Just washed off mushrooms dipped in corn starch and fried. I highly recommend making these mushrooms because the dish pops more with them.
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.
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.
I recently got my hands on gochugaru pepper powder and had to do something with Cauliflower. By looking at the photo it looks dry but it isn’t. It taste so darn good that I don’t want to change anything about the cauliflower. To make the cauliflower this is an easy, quick and delicious recipe. You might notice a confit egg on the cauliflower. I sous vide it at 147 degrees F for an hour. It came out slightly jammy but also loose. I think I want just slightly more jammy than loose. I’m thinking that I might cure an egg next time or if I confit the yolk do it a temperature or two higher for next time. Any egg that you prepare will go great here so I didn’t give any directions for the egg since it is optional. Serving size is difficult to just because I don’t know if you want this as a dinner side or a meal. My serving size may indeed differ from your idea of serving size. Also the cauliflowers do differ greatly in side. I used one very large cauliflower. You might have more sauce than you need if your cauliflower isn’t as large as mine was. So I do warn you that if your cauliflower is too small that you might accidentally boil your cauliflower in the oven from the extra sauce that you don’t need.
This recipe makes around 6 servings
1 large cauliflower – cut into florets, core saved (dried out bottom of core shaved off) and sliced thin
1 Tablespoon canola oil
2 oz unsalted butter melted
1 teaspoon garlic confit (or substitute garlic (1-2 cloves ground to paste) or granulated garlic (1/2 teaspoon))
2 Tablespoons gochugaru pepper flakes
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup dried chives blended into dust (this was more than I used…you can try using less)
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
2 Tablespoons canola oil
small splash (maybe 1-2 Tablespoons) pickled hot pepper brine
non stick spray
2 whole pickles in slices
optional a few eggs cooked however you like
optional some fresh cilantro will taste well here
Directions
Set oven to 450 degrees F
In a small mixing bowl combine the 1 Tablespoon canola oil, butter, garlic confit, gochugaru, maple syrup, and rice wine vinegar. Either use a bag or large bowl and mix together the cauliflower florets and the gochugaru sauce you just made. Get out a sheet pan and spray it with non stick spray and in a single layer spread out the cauliflower florets.
In a small bowl mix together the dry chives, granulated garlic, canola and a small splash of pickled hot pepper brine. Get out a small baking sheet and spray it with non stick spray. Get as much as the green stuff on each side of the core slice surface as you can and lay them out on a baking sheet.
Put the cauliflower florets on the middle rack and the cores on the lower rack. Ovens do differ. In my oven they were nicely charred in 25 minutes.
Put it all together.
Gochugaru Cauliflower with Chive Cauliflower Core and Pickles
I was reading recipes and I wanted to do something great with cauliflower. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Gordon Ramsey, and another chef George Blanc do cauliflower with caper raisin sauce (so that must be the thing that makes cauliflower sing?). The caper sauces differ slightly and one chef pickles the cauliflower and the other chef frys the cauliflower (I haven’t found chef Blanc’s recipe yet). I had three kinds of cauliflower so I thought that I should do three different cauliflowers. I roasted around a third of the cauliflower, pickled about a third of the cauliflower and pureed a round a third of the cauliflower. I picked Jean Georges Vongerichten’s recipe for the Caper Raisin Sauce because it sounded tastier to me.
Ingredients for around 12 servings
3 heads of cauliflower (I used one large white and a small purple and small green cauliflower) – break down to florets
3 cups apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon granulated onion
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
around 3/4 of a cauliflower (for puree)
1 oz unsalted butter
1 cup milk
1/4 cup cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoons boiling water
2 pinches saffron
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 red onion thinly sliced
1/3 cup capers – drained
1/4 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup water
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter – room temperature
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar
Directions
Pickle around one third (or a little less) of the cauliflower. Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, hot pepper flakes, granulated garlic, granulated onion, ground mustard, ground black pepper, ground coriander, and Old Bay Seasoning. Bring this mixture to a boil and then pour it over up to a third of the cauliflower florets. Let this sit out an hour. After an hour you can drain it. Either use it right away or refrigerate.
Make the cauliflower puree. I guess it doesn’t matter what color you use but I wouldn’t mix up the colors. I had a very large white cauliflower so I used maybe three quarters of the white cauliflower for the puree. Put the florets in a sauce pan with the butter and milk. Cook till soft on medium high. Then blend with the cream cheese and white pepper.Use when ready or refrigerate.
Make the saffron smoked paprika roasted cauliflower.
Set oven to 400 degrees F.
Combine the olive oil, boiling water, saffron, and smoked paprika.
Spread out the cauliflower florets and red onion slices and pour the saffron smoked paprika mixtures evenly over the florets and onions. Place pan on a middle rack in the oven and cook till cooked threw and slightly charred. (this took 20 minutes in my oven…yours may differ)
Make Jean-Goerges Vongerichten’s Caper Raisin Sauce
Put the drained capers, raisins, water in a sauce pot and simmer for around 15 minutes. blend and slowly add the butter one tablespoon at a time while blending. Add the sherry.
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.
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.
Mariposa Latin Inspired Grill is an upscale Latin Style restaurant located in Sedona Arizona. They offer high quality Latin style foods in a really rich atmosphere with museum quality accents and breathtaking views.
From the second you get into the parking lot the views are stupendously impressive.
Whimsical butterfly motifs are everywhere here.
On top of the small roof above the door is a large butterfly and a wind charm butterfly. There is a butterfly on the doormat. The front door is encrusted with beautiful gems into a butterfly. You really can’t see how amazing the door really is until you enter.
Behind the hostess desk are more hand made lite gem artwork that is truly astonishing.
Looks like more hand made gem encrusted windows above the wine fridge.
Only reservation available that I could get was as they were just opening. (I never ate that early before but it worked out in the end). But it did fill up within the hour.
We were planing to start out by sharing the stuffed poblano pepper with vegetables and quinoa (really a dinner but to us it seemed like a not too heavy starter).
The restaurant had some sort of delay and the manager apologized to. us and gave us some complimentary empanadas and made portabella, poblano, caramelized onion and gouda cheese with chimichurri on the side.
My gosh they are so flavorful. They are delicious! Nice treat for us.
We did wait a while for the stuffed pepper called veggie nirvana on the menu but it was worth it.
It’s as pretty as a picture.
It’s stuffed with quinoa, roasted vegetables, jack cheese, romesco sauce, black bean puree and spicy pepitas. This was just delicious.
For dinner my husband had the ribeye with chimichurri and a side of triple queso poblano mac ‘n’ cheese.
I tasted a bite. I usually hate ribeye but this one is delicious, very flavorful, very tender and very juicy . It’s delicious and about as great as a steak can be.
This triple queso poblano mac ‘n’ cheese is a bowl of tasty cheesy goodness too!
I had the fish of the day. It’s called pescado paradiso (it was sea bass today) and came with tomatoes, charred sweet corn, white wine herb butter quinoa pilaf, and black bean puree.
Everything was so delicious tonight that we wanted to have dessert. We ate around half or a little more than half and saved the rest for the next day.
Tonight we tried the flourless chocolate torte called boca de muerto on the menu.
The torte was laced with Grand Mariner and a special hard to find chili called chimayo. It also was adorned with a candied orange slice, some crumbles, and salted caramel gelato.
It was a perfect sweet ending to an amazing meal.
Mariposa Latin Inspired Grill must be a gem of Sedona.
It’s only a little over a ninety minute ride for us to hop in the car and visit the beautiful red rocks of Sedona Arizona. There are the usual tourist shops to visit, some antique shops, jeep tours, some Arizonian wine tasting rooms to do too and more!
Our first stop was Clarksdale.
Our first stop was Violette’s Bakery. They offer some all day breakfast items, a few all day lunch sandwiches, and fine French Style pastries. I saw this place on a local TV show and they said this is a MUST destination if you are in the area. The bakery is a small postage stamp sized place that is actually a small caboose without indoor seating. You sit around the train car or inside this added on edition.
You wait in line at the train with a tiny bakery inside.
It looks like this when you get to the window.
On the day I went they had one person that cooks and one person to take orders and this one person also serves the tables.
Today it was hot…like 100 degrees F….The wait to the window is painfully slow even if you aren’t too far in line. We were around 6th in line and we waited a good twenty minutes to get to the window.
We ordered a bananas foster crepe to share. We paid, tipped and sat ourselves. We were told that it would be around ten minutes.
We waited thirty minutes and never got our crepe. (bahhhh!) My husband tried to find out what happened but couldn’t push threw the tight packed tiny line of people so we just left. (*******As a slight update I’ve just been contacted by someone from the bakery and she wants to make things right).
Then we drove to Cottonwood.
First stop was Merkin Tasting room and Osteria.
Merkin offers plenty of tasting and eating options. They also make fresh pastas here and various lasagna cupcakes.
We did the red wine tasting.
It was a nice start. They all seemed like lighter red wines…Nice to start out like that.
Next we did lunch at the Tavern Grille across the street.
It was packed already. We were lucky to get a seat.
I got an ahi tuna salad.
My husband got the stuffed meatloaf (ham & cheese) and it came with a bowl of hardy chili. All was ok.
Next was Arizona Stronghold for wine tasting.
We shared red flight A.
I thought these wine had quality and character to them. I thought they all were good but some did have more bells and whistles than others.
We also stopped at Pillsbury Tasting room.
Pillsbury makes good wines…a few of the red wines were as rich as some California wines.
Then we had dinner at The Hudson in Sedona.
I made my reservation more than a month in advance and all the patio tables were already booked so I could only get a table inside.
Beautiful mountain views here.
We shared a HOUSE SMOKED salmon bruschetta with pesto cream cheese…(This was really good!)
My husband had a mushroom (ground in house) burger. (it was a little dry).
I had a south west salmon Caesar salad.
The tortilla strips made it southwest. It was thoughtful to put cheese cloth on the lemon to prevent seeds from squirting out. I thought that was a nice touch. I’m not sure why my southwest salad had a lavosh cracker but it was tasty…….I didn’t expect this since the appetizer was so good but……My salmon tasted fishy so they took it off our bill.
The next day we spent some time downtown at various places.
Lunch was at a place located by a small airport called Mesa Grille that is actually built on a mountain masa…(not from Bobby Flay).
You have to go up a steep mountain for a short distance to get there.
You have great views here and you might see a small plane or two take off.
The food at Mesa Grille is NOT TYPICAL airport food. What we tried was surprisingly detailed, interesting and delicious.
We tried the crispy skin cornmeal crusted red trout with spinach, green chili cheese grits, caper butter sauce, crispy vegetable salad, grilled lemon, and crispy trout skin chicharron.
Our other dish was blackened salmon asada with red bell peppers, onions, pico de gallo, guacamole, borracho beans, grilled street corn and hand made tortillas.
Mesa Grille in Sedona was a really great stop! Both plates were really great!
Next we tried a few wineries in Cottonwood. Javelina Leap and Page Springs.
Javelina Leap offers a style of wine that isn’t my style…It’s not bad wine…Obviously it’s award wining wine…Just not my taste.
I forgot to take photos at Page Springs. I have to say that they make very good wine. I haven’t tried all the wineries out here but I have to say for me Page Springs was in the top two that I tried.
An unexpected thing had happened. I planed my trip about 6 weeks back and tonight’s dinner reservation was for Elote Cafe. It’s a good thing we stopped back at the hotel…Because I saw this on my computer from opentable that Elote Cafe cancelled my reservation. I am surprised that they didn’t call me to inform me. I was out all day and don’t carry my computer with me.
OMG! did I panic because I made my reservations SIX weeks back and had a lot of trouble. I couldn’t get a reservation on any patio anywhere I wanted and I couldn’t get a reservation for Mariposa Latin Grill………..
The first place I try to get a reservation for was Mariposa Latin Grill. The only reservation left was for 4:pm at the bar so I took it. Some sort of divine intervention happened. When we got to a front desk person my husband asked if they had a cancellation and asked if any table was available. They didn’t tell us and sat us in a great open dining area with amazing views. We also had the most FANTABULOUS Dinner. I will have to write about it after this. (It was only a few minutes after 4pm……during the week……..the dining room filled up quickly after I took photos.
That was what I ate and wine tasted around Sedona Arizona.
