Coffee Shops
May First Friday | The MAP
Posted on 5/04/12 by DPJ Staff » No Comments
Hi Phoenix! Here is a map of arts and biz destinations that will make your First Friday a bit more fun.
These are the spaces that participated in the recent Art Detour 24, so you may find a few that are closed this evening – and then there a few that have popped up since Detour:
• Pedal Craft PHX – if you missed this the first time around now is the time to check it out in person. Kitchen Sink Studios, 828 N. 3rd St.
• bIGGY Art Sale – First Studio will be filled with iggyart paintings and artwork from the last 7+ years. First Studio, 631 N. 1st Ave.
• Fenix PCG – an open house at the Westminster Apartments on the corner of 2nd Ave. and Roosevelt St. (BTW, we’re calling it…2nd Avenue is the next big thing to hit Downtown. Keep your eyes/ears peeled.)
Check out the map below or download the First Friday Map here
Click to enlarge.
Eat My Words | Green New American Vegetarian
Posted on 11/23/11 by Justin Lee » No Comments
Green is a cool little place.
Echoing an adapted carport with its hulky, sterile white walls, floor-to-ceiling rolling glass doorway and polished concrete flooring, Green embodies a youthful, transitional urban quality.
Depending on who you ask, opinions on vegetarian dining―in particular the type that intently plays to mirror more carnivorous experiences―can be polarizing. For enthusiastic food lovers of all stripes, this rings especially loudly.
Without delving too deeply, Green feels like it’s trying to strike middle-ground. It also feels successful at doing so. It’s a tenacious, animal-free eatery that aims to be accessible to all.
Serving bites influenced Asian to Italian, Californian to Southern American, the menu exists without the easy assistance of animal fats, meats or the like―mock proteins dominate.
Of the many sandwiches on Green’s menu, their infamous Secret BBQ Chicken Sandwich ($8) is one of their proudest. Thin medallions of faux chicken, tender as the poultry it mimics can be, sit on a toasted roll with charred onions and mild peppers, lacquered in a sweet crimson espresso barbeque sauce that faintly teases Asian undertones. A dollop of vegan mayonnaise helps add body.
The No Harm Chicken Parm sandwich ($8) is even more successful, with the mock meat cutlets deep-fried, perfectly flaky, bathed in a sweet marinara sauce and glued together with a satisfying, molten mound of vegan mozzarella. If there was ever a carnivorous deception that didn’t matter, it existed with this sandwich.
Sides like the hardy tahini coleslaw ($3), addictive samosas ($4.50), and the terribly good thyme-flavored French fries ($3), all continue to indicate that unlike similar vegetarian outposts of yore, where befuddling flavor inadequacies dominated, Green represents a fresh brand of animal-abstaining ethos – a generation where the sentiments remain, but its creativity and craft have been encouraged to evolve.
Green New American Vegetarian and its neighboring sibling Nami, the pint-sized coffee, ice cream and bakeshop (read: all vegan) that sits immediately across its tight parking lot, both live along 7th Street, just north of Palm Lane―a vibrant stretch of asphalt that keeps bearing fruit.
If you go
Where: Green New American Vegetarian (Visit Nami here)
Address: 2022 N 7th St, Phoenix, AZ 85004 (Map)
From the Wire | Corner Bakery Cafe Hosts Job Fair Today
Posted on 10/05/11 by DPJ Staff » No Comments
(From the Wire is a new feature for DPJ. These include press releases received from reliable sources and help tell the story of the many happenings in Greater Downtown Phoenix. Yep, they are ripped from our inbox.)
Corner Bakery Cafe is opening a new bakery cafe location in Downtown Phoenix and seeking motivated employees to fill a variety of positions.
Anyone with a passion for food and the desire to work for a company that rewards great work with career advancement should attend the Corner Bakery Cafe career fair on Wednesday, October 5 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 455 North 3rd Street #1525 (Arizona Center). Corner Bakery Cafe will fill 60 open positions, both full and part-time staff, to be line cooks, customer service representatives, cashiers and bakers.
“We’re looking for people with a real passion for food,” said Jamie Rogers, Corner Bakery Cafe general manager. “Our employees care about giving great customer service and are active and engaged in the community. We offer a lot of room for internal growth.”
This location will be the second Phoenix-area Corner Bakery Cafe, and will open its doors on October 24 at 7 a.m. Along with a variety of breakfast, lunch and dinner menu favorites, Corner Bakery Cafe will offer a great new catering option to local businesses. The first one hundred people to arrive on opening day will receive a free Panini meal for a year.
Known for its innovative menu featuring a wide variety of egg scramblers and oatmeals for breakfast, flavorful sandwiches and signature paninis, hot soups, salads, fresh baked goods and an extensive catering menu, Corner Bakery Cafe has been delighting guests nationwide with fresh, made-to-order meals in a welcoming and cozy atmosphere for over 19 years. Guests can also stay connected with free Wi-Fi while enjoying a bottomless cup of hand-roasted coffee.
From a small bread bakery on a corner in downtown Chicago to a national cornerstone of fast casual dining, Corner Bakery Cafe opened its first location in 1991 and now operates over 120 locations across the country.
If you go
What: Corner Bakery Cafe Career Fair
When: Wednesday, October 5th from 11am to 4pm
Where: 455 North 3rd Street #1525
Public Market Shoppers: Use Central Avenue this Week
Posted on 10/01/11 by DPJ Staff » No Comments
While 1st Street is under construction, we encourage our readers’ ongoing support of businesses there, including The Breadfruit, Sens Asian Tapas & Sake Bar and Turf Irish Pub.
The City of Phoenix will be repairing the concrete in the alley located between Central Ave. and 1st St. at McKinley St. from Monday, Oct. 3 through Friday, Oct. 7.
The alley serves as the driveway access to the Phoenix Public Market and Royal Coffee Bar. Access will blocked for the week, but both businesses will be open as usual.
Drivers accessing the Market’s parking lot will have to enter from Central Ave. – a one-way street heading north in that area – and Pierce St.
Our opinion? It’s worth the detour.
If you go
Royal Coffee Bar hours: Monday – Friday, 7 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Saturday 7 a.m. – 4 p.m.; Wednesday nights till 8 p.m.
Phoenix Public Market hours:
Urban Grocery and Wine Bar, Tuesday – Saturday, 7 a.m. – 8 p.m.; First Friday, Oct. 7, 7 a.m. – 11 p.m.
Open-Air Market Wednesday 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.; Saturday 8 a.m. – Noon.
Phoenix Public Market is a program of the local non-profit Community Food Connections. Community Food Connections is committed to improving access to healthy food in underserved areas. Its programs expand outlets for and production of local food, create jobs and build family self-sufficiency. Through the Phoenix Public Market, Community Food Connections is helping keep farmers on the land while building a thriving community gathering place around local food production, distribution and consumption.
Royal Coffee Bar and Roastery is owned and operated by Hayes McNeil and has two locations: inside the Market and at the Arizona Biltmore Shopping Center, next to the Capital Grille.
Live Locally | Mini Wheats & Local Foods
Posted on 9/16/11 by Chris Wharton » No Comments
(Chris and the Chow Locally gang will write a bi-weekly column on eating, living, playing and everything else local. Be sure to say hi to them on Saturdays at the market.)
I have a particular obsession with Mini-Wheats. Tasty though they are, it’s not the flavor that transfixes me. Rather, the variety of flavors available in grocery stores is what astounds. There are no fewer than ten types of Mini-Wheats available to those who wonder just how many ways a little wheat biscuit can be creatively sweetened.
If you don’t find this all that amazing, there’s more. Mini-Wheats, as their eponymous name suggests, should be of a certain size: mini. This, however, is not entirely the case. In fact, if you weren’t entirely happy with the mini-ness of your Mini-Wheats, you can buy “Little Bites” Mini-Wheats. And don’t feel excluded, those of you with mouths of greater capacity, because Kellogg’s also offers, quite oxymoronically, “Big Bite” Mini-Wheats.
So now we have lots of flavors of Mini-Wheats, and oddly enough we have a few different sizes, too. I have to ask: do we really need this much variety in our Mini-Wheats offerings? I would say no. I don’t believe the market for tasty cereals would be all that affected if we’d limited our ‘Wheats offerings to five, say, or even three. I feel fairly certain there isn’t anyone out there now thinking, “How is it possible, in this day and age, that we don’t have Raspberry Truffle-Vanilla Creme-Almond Mini-Wheats? What is it with this limited choice??”
Why the great variety? The fact is, the food industry makes much of its money on innovation. If companies aren’t pumping out new food products at a constant rate, they have a pretty hard time remaining fresh in the minds of consumers. That makes it harder to maintain their margins and bring in revenue.
Unfortunately, this means our food environment is constantly inundated with new food products–the vast majority of which are processed. Now I’ll admit, it’s nice to have variety, and it’s exciting to try new flavors of things. But, lost in the flood of food novelty are the healthiest whole foods that, from a marketing perspective, are quite unexciting. And as companies constantly drive consumer interest to their newest, processed, packaged goodies, it becomes ever easier for consumers to build a diet based almost entirely on processed foods. Most of the time, that happens at the exclusion of unprocessed fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
This isn’t the recipe for healthy eating. Every bit of nutrition science, conducted here and abroad, suggests maintaining a diet high in unprocessed or minimally processed whole foods. Our food “innovations” don’t reflect that sound, time-honored, advice.
Enter the newfound interest in local foods, a movement that makes fruits and vegetables interesting again. If you wonder why so many public health advocates, researchers, and recently, politicians, have been so supportive of the movement, it’s because the excitement about local foods is really excitement about whole, healthy foods.
There are lots of other good reasons to be excited, as well. It’s not just local produce you’re buying; it’s produce from a farmer you get to meet, or at least learn about. It’s not just nutritious food you’re buying; it’s a purchase that helps support local agriculture, your local economy, and a diversified food system. And if you’re buying locally, you’re probably buying foods that supplant processed products you might otherwise have bought at the grocery store.
Fruits and vegetables, quite excitingly, are back on the food scene. And the movement to ‘go local’ is helping propel them there. This column, new for the Downtown Phoenix Journal, will explore this and other aspects of the local food movement. You’ll find articles on what local foods can mean for health, for the environment, and for the economy. You’ll get a chance to learn about some of the nutrition science behind food and health. And, you’ll get a chance to learn about who is involved in producing and selling local foods, and how and why they do it.
