Day one of the two day AZCENTRAL Wine & Food Experience took place at Monterra at Westworld in Scottsdale Arizona November 3rd 2018. It was a festival of sampling food from mostly local restaurants, wine, some beer and a few spirits. The headliner for Saturday was Celebrity Chef Marcus Samuelsson.

Marcus Samuelsson Demonstration started fifteen minutes after general admission were allowed to enter so the seats were already filled up.  I couldn’t hear or see what was going on but I worked hard to get this picture…Everyone that was standing in front of me was at least a foot taller than me….so this was the best I could get.

This was my first bite and also was one of the most interesting bites of the day.  It was a crisp crepe, Ritiba Farms Big Jim Chilies, BBQ Acorn Squash, Somalian Spiced creamed Butternut Squash, lemon, Oyster Mushroom Jus, Arugula and Mint……From the Crepe Bar. This was so interesting, complex and different…..If I had more room I would have made a second trip here.

The Market by Jennifers offered all kinds of things….Push up dessert of brownie with caramel corn, Asian noodle dish, butternut squash soup and sweet potato chips.

Shrimp Remoulade from Mingo’s Louisiana Kitchen.

Tommy Bahama did serve a very good Chicken Lollipop and it was more than a taste….it was a meal.

Lou Malnatis Chicago Deep Dish Pizza was HOT and Fresh!

Melting pot offered strawberries and marshmallows dipped in chocolate.

Barilla Pasta was there serving pasta with eggplant, fresh basil and cheese. They had their own custom plates, napkins and this really cool knife/spoke.

AJ’s offered a variety of pastas…..My husband liked one of the sauces with sausage.

Los Sombreros offered Carnitas on a spoon and Guacamole and a chip.

WOO HOO! This next one was really good! Maybe my favorite bite?

Wright’s At The Biltmore did this Smoked Trout that was awesome…….Might have been my best bite…….

Taco Chelo, Ghost Ranch, Phoenix Public Market….Hummus with Crisp very Fresh Vegetables and a Very Detailed Salad.

West Alley BBQ and a Chicken Slider with some sort of Whiskey Sauce that was very tasty.

Bourbon and Bones Beef Short Rib and Cheesy Grits.

The Food from Cartwright’s Modern Cuisine was very light and low calorie…

Boca Tacos and Tequila offered a Salmon Taco on some sort of Green Tortilla…a variety of salsas were offered. I added the Green Sauce and it was delicious!!!

The Wagyu Ribeye was like beef butter from Omni Resorts.

Timo offered a Beet Salad and a Crab Cake.

The Dabba offered a few dishes.

Nothing Bundt Cakes offered some cake tasting.

I tried the Vegan Jackfruit Bun from Obon Sushi Bar Ramen.

Mowry and Cotton served a variety of dishes. Caramelized Shishito Peppers were very tasty. The Shrimp dish looked stunning…but I was surprised that I really enjoyed the Tuna Grilled Cheese on Rye…….It was  surprisingly and also an unexpected  delicious tasting.

Shrimp Tostadas and Elote Street Corn from Barrio Queen.

The Thumb offered Caramel Dessert Sandwiches, BBQ Pork and Brisket Sandwiches with Macaroni Salad.

Beef, Pork, Ricotta Meatballs from Match.

My husband said the Chicken Fried Pies (maybe empanadas) were one of my husband’s favorites…….He said these were VERY GOOD. I was all out of stomach room to try them……DANG! These came from La Hacienda at The Fairmount.

Handmade Cavateli with Braised Lamb sugo from Tanzy.

By Two o’clock the trash cans are as full as my stomach.

Some Pie Sampling from The Bakery Phoenix.

One of my best bites of the day was the Chicken Taco from Gadzooks.

Oh and Hickman’s was there giving out hard boiled eggs….

It was all this and more!!!!!

I tried three of the wines offered….maybe if I tried more I’d find a better one……..?

The Forking Truth is that you never know what to expect when you attend the AZCENTRAL Wine and Food Festival.

The participationing restaurants differed from what was printed in the paper. The yellow high-lighted restaurants I didn’t see there.

www.wineandfood.azcentral.com

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Here is a special Halloween Edition of The Forking Truth that is a collection of some of the most Frightful, Horrifying and also Terrible Foods that was served to me in Metro Phoenix Arizona. It’s not in my interest to bring negative attention to a restaurant that is still in Business. I will only mention the name of the restaurant if they have since closed……

The worst chicken taco imaginable came from Taco Haus that used to be in business in Scottsdale. Imagine a taco restaurant that makes dry flavorless tacos. Even the tortilla sort of expired before it made it to the table. I don’t recall this restaurant being in business for very long. You can see why……..

There are many different reasons for horrible or frightening……Imagine that you are hungry….You go out to a very nice restaurant and only get this much food at lunch time for $16.00. Dang I could have used that other half of the egg….What do you think they did with it?

The Local that used to be in Phoenix had a very talented Chef. I enjoyed his food from years ago at Atlas Bistro. This Seared Tuna Nicoise didn’t give me enough food to even meet 1/2 of a weight watchers standard…..NOBODY only eats just this much food for a $16.00 lunch entree. For God’s Sake even a Gerbil eats more!

What am I suppose to do purchase TWO or Three lunches? Getting a portion of food like this is Horrifying for $16.00. Perhaps that is the reason this place didn’t make it….No matter how delicious the food might be you have to have some common sense on what you serve someone for lunch for $16.00….and this was a few years back.

Old tasting sushi is one of the worst things that can happen to you. This sushi Asian restaurant is still in business today and has a 4 1/2 star average on Yelp……WOO Hoo 4 1/2 stars lets get some disappointing sushi!

Both these desserts were AWFUL…..I couldn’t eat either and I love desserts. .This is a well known restaurant from somewhere in Phoenix that should be great but had an off night. The main courses were just as bad. Below was my main course from this restaurant…Looks like someone already ate it and Forking threw it up to me……..Would you eat it?

The fish from this restaurant in Scottsdale was so strong  tasting it could do push ups.

The meatballs from this restaurant were so dry they should have given us a rain check.

The food was good at this particular restaurant somewhere in Phoenix but the desserts were inedible. They were hard as rocks….neither of our forks could penetrate them…..My husband was determined to bust them up with his hands. We should have brought a jack hammer with us. It was very odd when we brought this to the attention of the owner or manager. He said nothing was wrong with the desserts….and they just needed to be heated up….Dang I should have brought my portable furnace with me to warm up rock hard desserts that are served to me…..Dang!

Indi Fusion was a very nice mixed culture restaurant that used to be located in Scottsdale. Most of the food I tried was reasonably tasty….But I will never forget the Fondant they served me…..In case you are not familiar with the French Dessert Fondant….It’s basically a Molten Lava Cake…..The Chef at Indi Fusion misunderstood what a Fondant was and served me a big lump of frosting.

Nobody likes finding things in their food…..I don’t know what it was but this thing seemed just like lump of silicone in the dessert. The waiter just laughed and said it was part of the dessert….(yeah right…that’s a good one)……My stomach turned from most of the food I tried at this place.

I prefer my Bon Choy Washed…..instead of that earthy style……

The 2nd worst falafel I ever tried….It was number one until recently. This one lacked herbs and was very dry. This restaurant is on several Best of Metro Phoenix List……..I’m telling you that this is not a good falafel…..A good falafel might have a crisp exterior, should be fluffy and has a moist but not mushy or dense center and is embedded with fresh herbs…..It is possible that this restaurant’s recipe for falafels have changed since my visit but I wouldn’t know……Why would I go back when all the food sucked?…….

My fish was a little over cooked but the worst part of my plate were the vegetables…..The vegetables appear that they were re-heated for several days…..maybe two weeks old… The vegetables are in a state of decomposing…….It’s terrible that this was a $34.00 dinner …By the way this restaurant is also featured on a Best of Phoenix List. I note that I did also have very good food from this restaurant too…… but this dinner sucked the big one! Nobody wants to pay $34.00 for OLD reheated food.

This was a newly opened restaurant. Multiple problems with all these plates. Sorry now I didn’t take a better photo of the tuna tartare because it was really hacked in a bad way.  It was like one piece of fish that was scored by a chimpanzee. The fish also didn’t taste fresh. But the major problems were the sauces and the slaw (and management). The slaw was suppose to be a corn jicama slaw and didn’t contain corn or jicama.  When I told the management about the slaw they told me that green cabbage looks the same as crisp white jicama……they said nothing about missing corn (at this time).   The sauce on the falafel Sandwich was suppose to be a green curry coconut sauce but it just tasted like loose white liquid. The sauce on the tuna tartare was also loose white liquid. The management of this restaurant reacted very negatively to me when I pointed out some of the problems with their food (and service). They said they were new so I should expect them to run out of stuff…….OK dudes….New restaurants run out of stuff, push out the food any old way and are not obligated to inform you…THANKS I get it now!

You don’t expect a small lump of dry over salted fish when you go out and spend $300.00 for dinner. I note that this is a very nice restaurant and all the other food we had was very good…..but they did screw this fish up.

This dry fish was even worst…..this one came from a nice resort in Scottsdale. This fish seemed like it was saved from a buffet (or the trash) and then was slightly re-heated for me……….How Forking Nice was that?

This beef was so bad I couldn’t eat beef again for the rest of the year. I’ll be honest and admit I blocked out what the green sauce that looks like pond slime tasted like but I do remember it was horrible. I remember the beef was very chewy, didn’t have a good flavor and me and my husband decided it wasn’t good enough to bring home to my dogs. (and the dogs I have now aren’t as fussy as my last dog Louie….incase you didn’t know Louie had a palate better than most people)

This came from a food truck. The fryer grease must have been very old and ripe ……the food tasted like a they were cooking up old sour road kill every week for a year before they cooked these meat stuffed rolls for us….(oh what fun……)…The rolls didn’t even get crisp……..We were suppose to receive a roll filled with corned beef and the other was suppose to be beef…..The roll with corned beef was mostly empty because the corn beef fled to find a better resting place.

The other roll was a mystery roll filled with mystery meat…….??????? Could have been a varmint like chipmunk but it was probably pork……or was at one time.

After this I thought I might not ever eat from a food truck again.

This Fish Platter was awful from some place in Peoria….that is on a Best Food in Peoria List. Even the couscous was awful…Shame because the last time I was here the food was delicious….below is what I had last time.

I contacted the restaurant because I wanted to know if they changed the chef. They told me that they had the SAME chef……….I guess he lost his touch or came down with a memory disorder and forgot on how to cook…….

Every FORKING THING is subject to change…….You and ME have to remember those truthful words.

The food we tried at this particular restaurant in Phoenix was good but their apple pie is one of the worst in the whole world. It was filled with unseasoned hard apples and the dough is RAW. Even the ice cream taste like NO FRILLS ice cream. It’s a YUK!

A restaurant should be tested by a crew of critics before it gets a license to open.

We were served breaded freezer burnt fish here. The red beans and rice were sour. The tarter sauce was watery and old tasting. Macaroni and cheese was very artificial but also watered down tasting with gooey noodles.  Sadly the sweet potatoes have seen better days. After tasting we threw out the food and ate someplace else.  I don’t know but I think this was the result of poor cooking skills combined with possibly failing restaurant equipment…………..But I think the Owner/Cook missed her calling…….she should prepare food for the county jail.

Wow! I’ve been to one of the worst Sonoran Style Mexican Restaurants in Phoenix.  The Chips were not as good as packaged chips (they were flavorless and salt free). The salsas were not as good as bottled salsas and lacked salt and seasoning. For some odd reason the hot sauce  tasted like they added strawberry sauce to it (WTFork). This salad was the most uninspired salad I ever had anywhere. I would NEVER come back for anything I tried here. I would also never recommend this restaurant to even my enemies. I am clueless as to why this is one of the most popular restaurants in town. Anytime you drive by this place the parking lot is full……

The fresh baked bread and the slaw were delicious but the chicken in this sandwich was very similar to a steel belted tire.

I’ve been to this restaurant a few times and it was great. I go back and find out the chef left and got lousy food. Everything pictured here was AWFUL. I remember I sent my plate of the left with 80% of the food back to the kitchen to trash it. The waiter said that he was sorry. The fish was old tasting and was topped with with a thick spread of raw sour tomato paste. One of the corn splats tasted like wet RAW flour and the other corn splat was just awful.  On the right was not good tasting soggiest gooiest pierogi I ever tried in my life. It was all horrible!

Oddly the management contacted me and said something along the lines that since my first two visits were great….That I should be happy and the first two visits made up for my last visit….

It’s always wonderful to get uncooked food!

This was a newly opened restaurant at the time but there is no excuse for serving grits that are uncooked. A normal person would say our grits aren’t ready yet. A person that serves paying customers uncooked food isn’t cut out for the restaurant business. (What kind of person does this?…..) We did tell someone that worked there about the grits and they didn’t do a thing. Nobody said they were sorry. Nobody said we will take that off your bill. Nobody got us a new one. The person just ran away.

This particular restaurant also served the brisket before it was ready so the meat was like rubber with hard fat to pull off.

What do you think that tall yellow tower is?

This particular restaurant had a different chef at the time………(doing their damage someplace else)…… But WOW I will never forget the Polenta Tower on my plate. It was a very stiff polenta. The artichoke sauce on the plate was awful too.

I got this beauty from a Steak Sandwich Shop that opened up somewhere in Metro Phoenix this year. The filling they made isn’t bad but they use the WORST BREAD IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD HERE that just disintegrates……Why WHY WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY would someone open a sandwich shop and use the worst bread in the whole wide world?

Unfortunately I went to a Mediterranean Restaurant that was mostly HORRIBLE (the rice and bread was good…not great but good). The Falafels were the worst I ever tried….They had hard garbanzo beans that turned kind of burnt and never got soft…actually the whole ball just sort of was burnt like with little hard rocks. It was gritty like mortar and burnt tasting rocks. You couldn’t really eat it because you could break your teeth trying to eat the falafels but you also didn’t want to eat them because of the burnt taste. The Eggplant dip was so smokey I screamed when I tried it……… Beef Sharma was so dry I couldn’t eat it because it was like trying to eat a braid of hair. I thought a very large bottle of smoke flavoring was added to the eggplant dip but the owner contacted me and said he doesn’t use smoke flavoring so I have no idea on how he got so much smoke in there.It was eating a pack of used cigarettes. Also I received a decomposing pickle ……that’s not the end but I’ll stop here.

This doesn’t look bad but it was mostly horrible. The meatballs were incredibly mushy and contained hard carrots. The sauce was bitter and also contained hard carrots. This was awful….who opens a restaurant that can’t cook? This is tragic. I also thought this restaurant shouldn’t have a license to sell food….After all you need a license to drive…..you pass a test and get your drivers license…..I think restaurants should also pass a test to sell food. Some restaurants really do need to pass a test first.

This bread pudding might have been the worst I ever tried in my life. It was so heavy and dense that it was painful to eat. It was also hard to stomach the rubbing alcohol flavor it had. I tried this bread pudding at a very nice well known restaurant. For GODS Sake The Forking Truth is that even ten year old children make better bread puddings in their home economics classes than this one I tried……

Here comes another one

Doesn’t this plate look scrumptious?

Don’t the potatoes and vegetables look delicious!

Oh Goody Goody Joy Joy….I got me some mediocre fish, once frozen then water logged vegetables and potatoes that look like they are infected with gangrene……how FORKING Tasty is that?

Here’s an even better look at the yummy potatoes…..

I know you’re jealous!

This was the Halloween Special Edition of FRIGHTFUL HORRIFYING Food served to me in Metro Phoenix AZ.

and they were-

The FORKING TRUTH is that EVERYTHING is subject to change and your experience may or may NOT Forking differ.

I hope you enjoyed The Special Halloween Edition of the most Horrific Frightening and Lousy Food served to me in Metro Phoenix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to try this new Restaurant that opened somewhere in Metro Phoenix about three months back. They currently (October 2018) have a 4.5 star average on a popular review site called Yelp…..I thought they might be pretty good. I thought after being open about three months most of the bugs might be worked out. I didn’t mention the name of this restaurant because it’s not in my interest to put them in a poor light since they are a new business.

Between me and my husband we tried three of the four meatballs they have on the menu and two of the eight sauces they offer.

Here are Vegan Meatballs made with Cauliflower, Mushrooms HARD Carrots, White Beans, Brown Rice, Panko, Herbs and Spices. The Vegan Balls are very mushy and are studded with Crunchy Carrots.

The Marinara Sauce is one note, acidic and very bitter and also studded with crunchy carrots.

Up above is undressed Penne Pasta topped with Bolognese, two Beef and one Spicy Pork Meatballs. There isn’t Parmesan or Romano to top the pasta. Pretty much everything is one note or flat and both meatballs are dry.

I think most people know that pasta should be lightly dressed like in the picture below.

On the bright side I noticed that beer is very inexpensive here. They had some sort of beer special where the beers were priced at something like FOUR Beers for $8.00.

This restaurant in October 2018 has a 4.5 star average on Yelp. I also noticed that this particular restaurant is a paid Yelp Advertiser. I can’t say if that has anything to do with anything….because there IS a disclaimer posted on Yelp that advertisers with Yelp don’t get any special treatment.

After Four Beers maybe it just doesn’t matter what the food taste like?

****UPDATE since CLOSED for business

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