Little Rangoon - Scottsdale

I love trying new Asian restaurants. My love of Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese is well-known. I recently saw mention of a new restaurant near Scottsdale and Shea that serves Burmese food. Little Rangoon labels themselves as "Taste of Burma" on their menus. They tout that Burma shares borders with Bangladesh, India, China, Laos, and Thailand and that their cuisine has been influenced by this proximity. Since that sounded really good to me, I put it on my "to-do" list.

A couple weekends ago, Tara suggested we try Samarkand on a Friday night. We got there at 7:30 to find it closed. This would become a recurring theme for the little Uzbeki place. I was in the mood to try something new, so I suggested Little Rangoon. We headed over and found them in the same plaza where Sushi on Shea, Tapino, Claim Jumper, and others call home at 70th St and Shea. We parked underground and took the escalator up to the restaurant.

We entered the restaurant to find only a handful of tables occupied. The space is very pretty, minimally decorated, but enough to convey it's ethnic leanings. A very friendly waitress seated us and we looked over the menu. The descriptions of the menu items made most of them sound very enticing. I love fresh spring rolls and they listed several offerings with either roasted duck, butter dipped prawns, or tofu. They come two per order and you can't mix and match. I wanted to try one duck and one prawn, but the waitress said they had to be the same. We settled on the roasted and shredded duck meat glazed with Hoisin sauce. For entrees, garlicaholic Tara got the Si Gyet Kauswer (Garlic Noodles) - Fresh egg wonton noodles tossed in fried garlic oil and scallions with either roasted chicken (Tara's option) or roasted duck. I opted for the Singapore Noodles - Rice vermicelli stir fried with pork, shrimp, shredded carrots, celery, onions, tumeric, and ginger. Tara got a Coke and I think I stuck with water.

The spring rolls arrived first. They were... boring. Filled mostly with chopped iceberg lettuce with small amounts of the other fillings and thin strips of the duck. Neither of us could discern much flavor from the duck and the lettuce drowned out any other flavors. Pretty much any Vietnamese or Thai place that offers spring rolls offers more flavorful ones. Not a good start.

Our meals came out shortly after we finished the rolls. Tara's noodles looked like they had a lot of garlic, but again, there was no flavor. Her dish also seemed to be more on the lukewarm side of things. She prefers her food to be searing or at least hot. I took a bite and agreed that it was very bland.

My noodles had a strong yellow hue from the turmeric but neither it or the ginger added any flavor. The temperature of dish was fine. Everything seemed cooked well, but there was just no flavor.

Service was fine. The waitress was very helpful when we asked numerous questions about the menu. Drinks were kept filled. No complaints there.

Overall, we hoped for far more bold flavors from a place that says they combine Thai and Indian influences at the very least. Prices aren't bad, as both our entrees were $8, but you can certainly find much better food for the same price elsewhere.

Corbin's Bar & Grill- Phoenix

I'd read favorable reviews recently of Corbin's Bar & Grill on Central just south of Dunlap in Sunnyslope.  Looking for a good lunch nearby, Tara and I stopped in on a Saturday afternoon around 3pm.  The restaurant has a nice modern, stainless steel interior.  A long bar and row of booths are separated from the main dining room by a low wall of pane glass.  We both liked the interior.   We were seated at a booth in the dining room that was, for me, quite snug.  Tara didn't have any problem with it.  The restaurant only had three or four tables of patrons, most of whom appeared to be lingering over the leftovers of their lunch.

After a few minutes, a waitress came by for our drink order, a Coke for each of us.  The restaurant's menu is typical New American.  Tara eventually settled on a Caesar Salad - Chopped Romaine, croutons, eggless Caesar dressing & Parmesan Reggiano with a chicken breast added.  I got the Carolina Burger - Apple-smoked bacon, cheddar cheese, red onion & our own BBQ sauce.  

Service was polite, but our waitress seemed somewhat distant or distracted.  Our drinks were after sitting empty for a few minutes, but not too bad.  During their downtime, the other wait staff would sit at a large table and roll silverware inside napkins.  I figured they were more focused on getting things ready for dinner, which at 3pm, didn't really bug me. 

Our meal arrived after a short wait.  Tara's Caesar was really good.  She loved that it had "copious" (her specifically requested word) amounts of shredded Parmesan Reggiano.  There was plenty of dressing and it had a distinctive flavor that seems to be missing from most Caesar dressing I've had in restaurants.  It was definitely a keeper.

My burger came with seasoned fries, pickled cauliflower, and a quarter of a strawberry in a huge basket.  The hamburger meat had a great flavor.  It was seasoned perfectly or was just really good beef.  I couldn't really taste the BBQ sauce, but the rest was so good I didn't mind.  The bacon was outstanding.  We asked where they sourced it, but despite promising to find out, they never told us.  They did say they smoke their own meats, like the pulled pork and ribs.  The bun was very dense and held up nicely.  The fries were really good.  Tara probably ate as many as I did or more.  She thought it tasted like Lawry's seasoning, but wasn't quite sure.  She just really liked them.  The pickled cauliflower was actually quite good.  It was a very sour pickle, but I ended up wanting more of it.  

Overall, the first visit impressed us with the food, although service wasn't the best.

We made a second visit this past weekend with less favorable results.  We went on Friday or Saturday night, I can't remember.  They were nearly packed around 7:30 or so.  We got the second to last free table.  We sat for several minutes, with every single waitress walking by our table with no one stopping by.  Eventually one of them stopped and asked if we'd been helped yet.  Well, we figured the fact that we still had our menus and no drinks on the table was a tip-off that we hadn't.  We got a pair of Cokes and the waitress departed.

After a pretty long wait, a different waitress with Day-Glo pink hair brought our drinks.  By this time we'd settled on our order.  Tara got the pulled-pork sandwich and I got a half rack of their dry-rubbed ribs.  We were both curious since we were told they were smoked in-house.

As we waited, I finished my soda and it sat empty for a long time.  Eventually our waitress, on one of her many passes by our table, asked if I wanted another one.  I did.  She then vanished for a long time.  I saw her again, but my refill seemed to be forgotten.  She finally brought it but I almost think she forgot at one point.  

At the half hour mark after we ordered, Tara and I began to wonder where our food was.  Pulled pork and ribs are generally slow cooked, so this seemed like a really long wait.  It got worse when we watched a couple who came in well after us received their meal.  Ours finally showed up five or ten minutes later.

This time the food didn't impress us.  Tara pork didn't seem to have much flavor and the BBQ sauce didn't add anything.  My ribs were cooked perfect and were almost fall off the bone, but they, too, seemed to lack any real flavor.  The ribs came with fries and cole slaw, all served on one plate.  So the ribs sat partially on top of the wet cole slaw, and the fries got soggy from the cole slaw dressing on the plate.  It was a very odd plating decision.  There was no room left on the plate, so it was interesting to eat.  I ended up cutting the ribs in half and using an unused appetizer plate to eat them.

Service definitely didn't impress us.  We noticed that the larger parties, between 6 and 8 people, got lots of attention.  Smaller tables were nearly neglected.  It seemed like they were concentrating on making sure the bigger groups would tip well.   Hopefully it worked for them, since I tipped on how well they served us and I'm pretty sure she wasn't pleased when she saw it.

So on two visits, food was great once, and middling the next.  To be fair, we were judging the pulled pork and ribs against our favorite BBQ joint, Joe's Real BBQ, as well as the ribs at Houston's.  While the burger was good, my Carolina burger was almost $13.  Since I couldn't really taste the extras that bump the price up from the base $9.95 burger, there are better deals to be found.  The thing that will probably keep us away was the service.  The waitstaff seemed to be busy for the most part, but our small party of two seemed to only warrant attention when absolutely necessary.  We didn't really feel welcomed, which would seem to be one of the things a local neighborhood hangout would try to project.

Soda or Powder

I always get on Tara's case for not following recipes on the rare occasions she makes something from a recipe. A few days ago, she sent me a link for these Chocolate Malted Whopper Drop cookies. I love chocolate, malt, and Whoppers, so what wasn't to like? We got the ingredients we didn't have during our weekly shopping on Sunday. Since the Whoppers were vanishing quickly (I needed 6 ounces of Whoppers and the 12 ounce box was going fast), I decided to make them tonight. I beat the Whoppers with a meat tenderizer, chilled the Ghiradelli Bittersweet chocolate bars and put them through a food processor. I measured everything, mixed the dry ingredients. The batter tasted really good. The recipe doesn't have a cooking time, so I tried 10 minutes and settled on 13. The first batch came out about 1/8" thick. The picture above, from the web site I got the recipe, certainly showed thicker cookies. I checked the recipe and sure enough, I used baking SODA instead of baking POWDER. I still had half of the batch in the mixing bowl, so I tossed in some baking powder, but it was too late. They still came out like pancakes. They taste OK, but I'm not a fan at this point. Tara mostly likes them, but the bits of Whopper ruin the texture for her. Oh well. There's always next time.

F1 time again

One of the few sports I follow is Formula One racing. I've been to the Canadian Grand Prix twice in Montreal, one of my favorite cities. Tara HATES it and usually whenever I turn it on, she retreats to our bedroom and her Friends DVDs.

This season traction control is banned and it's making for some interesting racing. I can't wait to see how the season unfolds. Tonight is fun since I can actually watch the Australian race live. I usually TiVo it, but I'm enjoying watching the live timing on the Formula1.com web site.

Yeah, I'm a geek.

Mr. Greek - Phoenix

For lunch today, Tara wanted to try Samarkand, the Uzbeki restaurant at Northern and 19th Ave, if it was open. We stopped by last Friday at 8pm, and they were closed. Today was no better, but she had a backup. One of our CH friends, AZHotdish, had mentioned that he really liked the food at a place called Mr. Greek at 40th St and Indian School.

Mr. Greek is in what looks to be a former fast-food restaurant. They offer counter service and have both Greek and Chicago items on the menu. Tara order the chicken souvlaki sandwich combo, I had a gyro sandwich combo, and we got an order of hummus. We grabbed our drinks from the soda fountain and took a seat.

After a few minutes, our order was up. The hummus came in a shallow styrofoam plate with eight ripping hot pita quarters lining the rim of the basket it all came in. The hummus was fantastic. The pitas were soft and puffy, and were perfect with the hummus. We both loved the hummus. The more we had, the more we liked it. We agreed that it was at least the equal of our favorite hummus from Shish Kebab House. We especially liked that the pita was oven-warmed and so hot it was burning our fingers.

Tara also really enjoyed her souvlaki. She commented that she normally doesn't like tsatziki but really liked this. She said the chicken was very tender and had great flavor. I wasn't able to try it as he all but inhaled it. My gyro was excellent as well. I was struggling to finish it. It was deceptively filling. Our combos came with fries or a Greek salad and we both got fries. While a bit pale, they were still quite good. They had a little seasoned salt sprinkled on them. An extra minute or two would have browned them a bit and added a bit more crunch.

We ended up completely stuffed and very satisfied. We are very happy to find another place with hummus that we love. They also offer hamburgers and hot dogs for those who want something a tad less exotic.

Do not adjust your set...

Ok, it sucks, but you get an idea of what the Vosges displays looks like. The last visible bar is the Mo's Bacon Bar on the right. There are two more bars to the right of that that aren't in the picture. It's definitely the largest number of Vosges I've seen anywhere in the Valley. I've never seen anything besides candy bars and their cocoa (seen at AJ's) before. The boxes on the bottom are caramels and even a peanut butter chocolate thing on the far bottom right.

Again, I apologize for the blurriness, but the lady forbade me just as I took the picture.

Whole Foods N. Scottsdale Rd/101 now open

For those of us who don't live near the fairly awesome new Whole Foods Market on Ray Road in Chandler, this is great news. The new store in the Scottsdale 101 shopping center is open. I stopped by today and it's nearly a carbon copy of the Ray Road store. Some things are in slightly different places, but for the most part, all the goodness is there. One big exception for us, though, is they don't currently seem to carry Queen Creek Olive Oil like the other store does. While very disappointing, Tara and I happened to stumble across a place in N. Scottsdale that DOES have it, the Sweet Basil cooking store at Scottsdale and Shea, next to the Safeway or whatever supermarket is there in the NE corner.

One thing I did notice and tried to take a picture of but was yelled at by a store employee ("Sir, no pictures are allowed!") was a nice display of Vosges Chocolate bars and other Vosges products near the bread and gelato displays. They had the Bacon bar, Barcelona, Oaxaca, Red Fire(?), Sugarfree Red Fire, Naga, and I think some others. They also have the mini-bars of some of them too. The large bars are $6.99 each. We didn't notice a Vosges display in the Ray store.

Something that annoyed me was that a lot of the bars that had hot ready-made foods (the soup bar, salad bar, latino and global food bars) had nearly nothing labeled, so you didn't know exactly what you were looking at. Some had a few labels, but for the most part, they were absent. This could just be a start-up glitch. It does lead to a somewhat funny conversation I heard. I guy asked a blond girl who was refilling the rice at the latin bar if both the tamales were the same, since one was labeled, the other wasn't. She said they were both "ma-CHA-ca". I thought it was pronounced "ma-ha-ca" from my visits to Chino Bandito.

Still, given that they have 99% of what Ray Road has, it'll certainly save us a long drive.

Tara wasn't with me today. I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth to find her sitting on the couch, her laptop in her lap, completely asleep. Since she just paid good money for it, I had her put it aside and just go to bed. I'm pretty sure she's still sleeping.