Arizona Food

It wouldn't be a complete telling of a trip without mention of some of the excellent food we had.  Yes, this was one of our food trips (although the scenery was pretty great, too!).

I will just talk about two of our favorite places to eat, one in Phoenix, one in Sedona.  I think we may have liked Rice Paper the most since we went there twice.  This sweet little place was conceived of as a sushi bar, but then the owner changed her mind and made it into a Vietnamese spring roll bar.  I tried both the Spider Spring Roll (similar to the sushi by that name with tempura crab inside) and the Vegetable Tempura Spring Roll (with asparagus, mango and avocado).  I do like my tempura.... We also shared a bowl of Vegetarian Pho (the picture shows how large one half of a bowl is) both times we went.  The first time we were too full for dessert, so that's why we went back the second time.  We just had to try the ginger creme brûlée.  It was definitely worth the return trip for that.

Our favorite place in Sedona was recommended to us - the Elote Cafe.  This hopping place does not take reservations, and we arrived at what we thought was opening time - 5:00.  There was already a line and a 45-minute wait for a table.  We chose to shorten the wait and sit at the bar which ended up being part of the fun experience.  We enjoyed chatting up the bartender as she made prickly pear margaritas as fast as she could.  This place is pretty pricy, so we decided to try three appetizers for our dinner, and that was a pretty good call.

The signature appetizer is the elote (Mexican name for corn on the cob).  After roasting the ear of corn, it is seasoned with whatever they use to make it completely delicious.  This version takes the corn off of the cob and you eat it with a spoon, or dip it with the chips provided.  I suppose I could buy the cookbook to try it at home, but I am sure that it would come up short in my kitchen.  We also had the seafood tacos (nothing like fish tacos in Ensenada) which were just the right kind of spicy and delicious, as well as the roasted beet salad (with pumpkin seed-encrusted goat cheese balls).