Maisen Katsu

Whether it’s German schnitzel, Mexican milanesa, or Italian parmigiana, many of the world’s culinary traditions incorporate a dish made of thinly cut meat that is breaded and then fried to yield a contrast between a crunchy crust on the outside and tender meat on the inside. Japan is no different with its katsu, usually made with panko bread crumbs encasing a flat piece of pork or chicken. In the food court at H Mart in the Mesa Asian District, Maisen Katsu celebrates katsu by serving hearty platters of crisp, breaded meat, as well as appetizers, sides, and noodles.

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EZbachi

There seems to be no limit to what kind of food can be prepared on a truck. While mobile operations might traditionally have been associated with hot dogs, tacos, and other hand foods, chefs and entrepreneurs seem to thrive on finding ways to prepare items like pizzas or lobster rolls in the cramped space of a kitchen on wheels. Along Central Avenue, EZbachi has created its own niche with a food truck version of teppanyaki, the Japanese method of hot iron plate cooking that is a longstanding, if somewhat Americanized, tradition at chains like Benihana.

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El Zaguan

In Spanish, a zaguan is a passage that typically leads from a building’s entrance to an interior courtyard or central patio. On Adams Street in the downtown Phoenix business district, the small storefronts lack that architectural feature, but that has not stopped one new restaurant there from using the word to create the sort of welcoming atmosphere that might be associated with walking through an actual zaguan. El Zaguan has joined the small restaurant row on Adams, catering to populations of workers returning to offices, as well as those who never left.

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Lylo Swim Club

At so many local hotels and resorts, the poolside restaurant is an afterthought, a snack bar that offers only a subset of the menu found in a more substantial indoor dining area. For the most part, that makes sense since people spending time by the pool may be more concerned with swimming or sunbathing than eating. Nevertheless, one recently refurbished Phoenix hotel has made its restaurant and bar by the pool the biggest culinary offering on the property. The appropriately named Lylo Swim Club is the breezy main restaurant for the Rise Uptown Hotel.

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Pop Stand

Checking in at most hotels, a guest is lucky to receive a bottle of water. If a visitor is spending a lot on a suite or has attained a top tier in a frequent stay program, maybe there will be a fruit basket waiting in the room. One exception is Doubletree hotels, which provide their signature chocolate chip cookies in an edible act of hospitality. In Phoenix, the Rise Uptown Hotel has created its own approach to making arriving guests feel welcome: a complimentary popsicle. Fortunately, those popsicles are also available for any to purchase, hotel guest or not.

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Snowtime

In the summer of 2002, H Mart, the Korean-American grocery chain, finally arrived in Mesa’s Asian District after years of speculation and delay. Like most H Mart locations, the Mesa store features a food court full of Korean food, offering everything from kimchi fried rice to tofu soups. With six stalls devoted to savory entrees, the limited room remaining is allocated to desserts. One option is a bakery, and the other is a locally based shop devoted to frozen treats. Snowtime, named for its signature shaved ice dish, offers snow and more to follow a meal.

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The Stone Korean Tofu House

The stereotype of Korean food in America often involves BBQ, the concept of unlimited quantities of beef cooked at a tabletop grill. It’s a tradition that maps easily to our big appetites for red meat, but it’s far from the totality of Korean cuisine. Korea’s food traditions involve soybeans as much as they do animal protein, and in the Mesa Asian District, the Stone Korean Tofu House devotes itself specifically to a tradition of tofu, not so much as a meat substitute, but instead as an ingredient to be used side-by-side with meats and seafood in complex dishes.

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Nanny’s

It’s not uncommon for restaurants to begin as food trucks, operating with a mobile model before settling into a permanent location. Sometimes, the transition can be as simple as parking the food truck and continuing to use its kitchen to prepare food to be served inside the new restaurant building. Nanny’s, which specializes in fried chicken, French fries, and fish and chips, has followed just that approach with its move from a Laveen-based food truck to a small restaurant on Washington Street, about two blocks from the 12th Street light rail platforms.

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Adams Table

For decades, the wedding cake design of the Hyatt Regency hotel has been part of the city’s central business district and convention center. More recently, the Hyatt brand has been extended more broadly with the mid-priced Hyatt Place concept, including a newly built property just a few blocks away at Second Avenue and Adams Street. With a moderately priced hotel, there is also a need for a more casual restaurant. Adams Table, named for the street named for the nation’s second president, is now filling that role at the new hotel in downtown Phoenix.

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Kahvi

The distance between Finland and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula is nearly 6,000 miles, and neither place is particularly close to Phoenix. In terms of culture and climate, the three locations are also about as different as possible. That doesn’t stop them all from coming together in the Monorchid building at the north end of downtown Phoenix. Kahvi, a new coffee house named for the Finnish word for “coffee”, brings together a Nordic concept of cafe culture; a tropical theme associated with the beaches of Tulum, Mexico; and the steady development of Roosevelt Row.

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Pedal Haus

Trends in restaurant branding are always changing and seldom boring. Two current ones include associating a business with bicycling and using the German word “haus” to describe a building. Combining the two, Pedal Haus started as a brewery and restaurant in 2015 in the big “haus” of the Centerpoint development in downtown Tempe, an area known for its widespread use of bicycles. Since then, it has expanded to multiple locations, with the latest to open being in the Monorchid building on Roosevelt Row at the north end of downtown Phoenix.

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The Bread and Honey House

On the east side of Phoenix, next to a neighborhood called Delano Estates and in the shadow of the SR143 freeway, there’s a little building on Van Buren that has served for decades as a dining space. It was once a tiny Mexican restaurant, but more recently it has been re-imagined as a breakfast and lunch destination offering a blend of American and Mexican comfort foods. The result is the Bread and Honey House, a small establishment that opened just half a year before the pandemic and has adapted, endured, and expanded over the past few years.

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