Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [198]
You cannot spend more than $10 for a meal, and for $3.25 you can enjoy one of the heartiest breakfasts ever: two jumbo oven-warm biscuits split and topped with sausage cream gravy seasoned with crushed chiles, black pepper, Tabasco sauce, and sage. Gooey sticky buns, made weekends only, have earned legendary status. The everyday menu includes broad, free-form wally cakes (pancakes with walnuts) and a juicy chicken-fried steak topped with the same crazy-spiced gravy used on biscuits. It is not uncommon to follow breakfast with a lofty wedge of pie. Of the several we sampled, the most amazing was lemon cheese, a citrus-perfumed cross between lemon meringue pie and cheesecake, stacked upon a soft-as-cookie crust.
Attention, coffeehounds. If visiting the Bisbee Breakfast Club, make it a point to head toward the heart of old Bisbee, where, among the cluster of Victorian buildings on streets as inclined as those of San Francisco, you will find Old Bisbee Roasters at 7 Naco Road. Here, brewmeister Seth Appell roasts some of the most delicious coffees anywhere. While it is not a formal restaurant, tasting cups are often available and beans are sold by the pound, as are Mr. Appell’s devastating house-made chocolates. Most business is done via phone (866–432–5063) and at www.oldbisbeeroasters.com.
Café Poca Cosa
110 E. Pennington St.
520–622–6400
Tucson, AZ
LD | $$$
Café Poca Cosa has moved to a dramatic new location in a parking garage on East Pennington in downtown Tucson. Gone is the explosion of colorful folk art that set the tone in the razzle-dazzle dining room back at the old Santa Rita Hotel. In its place is a sweeping, stylish space with objects of Mexican art on display as if in a museum. “Upscale a little bit, with the times,” is how chef Suzana Davila described the new quarters. “It has that chic-iness to it, a click to it. It has the feeling of the big city.”
The new place is a cooler environment than before, perhaps not as welcoming as it once was. But the black-clad staff was nothing if not polite and solicitous, and more important, the food has not changed. It is at the same level of excellence that originally put this place on the map of great southwest restaurants.
Davila is an inspired chef, with a menu that morphs throughout meal times to reflect what chiles, spices, vegetables, and ingredients are at that moment available in the kitchen, and what her whim dictates. When you are seated, you are shown a portable blackboard with about a dozen choices on it, virtually all of which need to be explained. Nothing on this menu is familiar; certainly, there are no tacos, enchiladas, or burritos! Nor are there appetizers and side dishes from which to choose. Each dinner comes complete on a plate with exactly what the chef believes should be there.
You will find some glorious chicken moles, or perhaps the variant of mole known as pollo en pipian, for which boneless chicken is cosseted in sauce made from bitter chocolate, crushed red chiles, Spanish peanuts, pumpkin seeds, and cloves. You will always find a tamale pie (pasatel de elote) on the menu as a vegetarian alternative. Even if you are a devoted meat-eater, you must have it, for this tamale pie is creamy comfort food supreme, tender as a soufflé, always dressed up a little differently, topped with vivid green chili purée or a sweet mango sauce.
There is shredded beef (deshebrada) infused with smoky chile flavor; there are seafood dishes and pork, too. Each entree is presented heaped upon a plate along with a bright, fresh salad, so that whatever your main course is, it mixes with the greens and makes a happy mess of things. On the side come small warm corn tortillas, and for dessert, do not neglect the cinnamon-tinged Mexican chocolate mousse or the soft, custardy square of flan, floated on a dish of deliriously sweet burned-sugar syrup.
El Bravo
8338 N. 7th St.
602–943–9753
Phoenix, AZ
LD | $$
Chuck Henrickson recommended we visit El Bravo for the “best tamale in Arizona.” Yes, indeed, the chicken and green