Foodies eat up at Devoured
SOME OF THE VALLEY’S BEST CHEFS SPEND DAYS PREPARING FOR ARIZONA’S PREMIER FOOD FEST
Republic restaurant critic Howard Seftel eats his way through this weekend’s Devoured Culinary Classic and awards participants medals. Go to dining.azcentral.com for results, slide shows and videos. Read more about Devoured on E1.
One weekend a year, the dignified Great Hall and subdued sculpture garden at the Phoenix Art Museum are transformed into a celebration of food, complete with an ad hoc dining hall and beer garden.
When Devoured Culinary Classic takes over the museum in March, the stars of the show are not the artists or masterpieces on the walls, but the chefs and dishes outdoors under rows of white tents.
On this weekend, visitors have hats and sunglasses rather than programs and reading glasses. While sitting on the sculpture garden’s steps, they balance small plates on their laps rather than sketch pads. And they’re more worried about wearing clothes with a forgiving waistline than elegant blouses and slacks.
Devoured, the Valley’s premier culinary festival, is an invitation-only showcase of the state’s independent restaurants, food purveyors, wineries and breweries, big and small.
It has now sold out of its 3,600 tickets for three years in a row. This year, with 75 restaurants represented over two days, it sold out in record time — more than three weeks before the festival, which began Saturday and continues Sunday, March 10, with a largely different lineup of restaurants and chefs.
Ticket sales have averaged more than $100,000 each year and are split between the museum and festival presenter Local First Arizona. This year, first-time organizer Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance will get a share, too. All organizations are non-profits. is a sponsor.
“This is the most important thing we could do because it hits on all aspects of our mission,” says Kimber Lanning, director of Local First Arizona, which promotes local businesses.
More than a festival, Devoured plays a key role as a barometer of the metro Phoenix culinary climate. Valley foodies, who have paid $60 to $70 for one-day admission, are the ones taking the temperature, gauging new and returning talent.
There are several new participants this year. Chefs Keenan Bosworth and Joshua Riesner, both formerly of Atlas Bistro, are touting their new Scottsdale venture, Pig & Pickle.
Last year, chef Johnny Chu served green papaya salad and shrimp from Sens Asian Tapas. This year, after closing Sens, he is running the booth for Sochu House, which he opened in central Phoenix last summer.
A few old names — Phoenix Public Market, Lola Tapa’s and Pasta Bar — are gone.
For the past few years, three show stealers have consistently been Tuck Shop, Kai at Sheraton Wild Horse Pass and Hana Japanese Eatery.
From Kai’s elaborate finedining dishes and display to Hana’s sensational uni and quail-egg shooters to Tuck Shop’s down-home crawfish boil, they’ve all found a way to wow, even among a sea of talent. All three were recognized as 2012 gold-medal participants by restaurant critic Howard Seftel.
Although the festival is sold out this year, these restaurants serve inspired food yearround. We spent time in their kitchens in the days leading up to Devoured to see how they planned to outdo themselves again this year.
Tuck Shop
Four days before the festival, DJ Fernandes sits in a mustard-colored chair in his Midcentury Modern office at Astor House restaurant in central Phoenix.
In front of him is a table covered with more than a hundred tiny bottles, half of which have labels. One by one, he peels small, home-printed “Mornin’ Moonshine” labels from a sticker sheet and applies them to 2-ounce bottles filled with coffee. This is a process that will be repeated at least 1,000 times.
Fernandes, 42, owns central Phoenix restaurants Tuck Shop, Astor House and Vovomeena with his fiancee, Jessica Ruiz.
Mornin’ Moonshine is his new brand of Japanese coldbrewed coffee, and he’s bringing it to Devoured for the first time. True to his fun-loving form, he’s serving it “straight up” (without cream, milk or sugar) in what he describes as “those little airplane shot bottles.”
The bottles are filled using a hand pump. Fernandes can fill 200 bottles an hour.
“This is the grass-roots method,” he says. “It contributes to the homemade-ness of it.”
Tuck Shop has been at every Devoured since it began four years ago.
The first year, Fernandes and crew played it safe. They served chorizo-stuffed dates, which were on the regular menu. The next year, Fer- nandes, who is from Rhode Island and studied architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans, wanted to be more creative. He made a Kentucky burgoo squirrel stew.
Last year was his most inspired appearance and the one that created the longest line at his booth. He had a N’awlins- style crawfish and shrimp boil. Wearing blue pants embroidered with dozens of red lobsters, Fernandes stood over a boiling pot, stirring the waters with a long wooden spoon to create a whirlpool of crustaceans. He served the seafood with red potato, corn-on-thecob and halved lemons and dumped it all on newspaper.
This year, the TuckRib sandwich is on the menu. It’s an artisan version of the McRib, he says.
While Fernandes fills coffee shooters, cook Adolfo Heredia is next door in the Tuck Shop kitchen pulling the skinlike membrane off 15 pounds of braised cow tongue. Like the tongue, 15 pounds of cow cheek are braised for 12 hours, then shredded. The two “beef cuts” are combined to make a house patty, which is dipped in barbecue sauce and topped with spicy pickled vegetables and served on a King’s Hawaiian sweet dinner roll.
“I’m a fan of the McRib,” Fernandes says. “It takes on a life of its own and has an iconicness. The idea of the TuckRib is let’s make our own iconic thing since this is a once-ayear thing.”
Kai at Sheraton Wild Horse Pass
At 6 a.m. on the day of Devoured, the chefs at Kai at Sheraton Wild Horse Pass will start packing trucks with smaller versions of their award-winning plates.
This year, they’re bringing five dishes, including saguaroseed popovers topped with wild-game machaca and currygoji berry sauce, Chumeithbread taco filled with smoked trout, and 60 Day Corn (an heirloom variety) cheesecakes with popped corn, caramel candy corn and saguaro syrup.
The world-class food leaves the luxurious resort on the Gila River Reservation once a year — Devoured is the only off-site festival in which Kai participates.
Once the food is loaded, it will ride for five minutes along the winding Wild Horse Pass Boulevard to get to the Interstate 10 and another 30 to get to the art museum. The food will travel past ground squirrels and quail, paloverde and saguaro and then thousands of homes and businesses in Chandler, Tempe and Phoenix.
Kai is one of the crown jewels of Arizona restaurants.
Showcasing Native American and regional cuisine, it’s the only restaurant in the state with Five Diamonds and Five Stars. And it seems to be celebrating a new accolade every few months, with recognition from retail guides such as Zagat’s and OpenTable.
This year’s festival menu was a collaboration between new executive chef Conor Favre and six-year chef de cuisine Joshua Johnson. The chefs are young — 34 and 31, respectively — but experienced. Favre, previously with the Arizona Biltmore, took over the southeast Valley resort’s culinary operations last fall, after longtime chef Michael O’Dowd left for the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel.
Devoured is Favre’s first public appearance in the lead role.
“We’re representing Kai on different scale; it’s a little more causal to be out in sun,” he explains. “We want to make sure people walk away happy, saying, ‘Wow, we just ate awesome food, just like always from Kai.’ ”
As with its fine-dining experience at the restaurant, the Kai team excels in presentation, service and execution at its booth.
Last year, Kai roasted suckling pig on the spit for Devoured. This year, guests will be able to watch as popovers, a staple in the Native American community, are fried in 325degree canola oil until the dough turns from white to golden brown, puffs up and loses density. Knowing when it’s done isn’t a timed process, but a learned skill using sight and touch. The fried dough is then topped with wild game (venison, buffalo, wild boar and elk) machaca, made by braising meat in duck fat and Coca-Cola for 12 hours.
Kai’s booth is covered in green grass, garlic bulbs, woven baskets and gourds. Resort representatives greet festivalgoers standing in line and chat about food.
“We say this is the Super Bowl of food festivals in Arizona,” Johnson says.
Hana Japanese Eatery
Last year, the dishes that Hana Japanese Eatery served at Devoured rivaled the artistry of the museum sculptures surrounding Hana’s booth.
The uni (sea urchin) and quail egg yolk shooter in yuzu sauce had the look of an abstract painting. It was all textured round shapes, contrasting colors and balanced composition. Besides the aesthetic appeal, the buzz around the uni came from showcasing an unfamiliar and expensive menu item. After swallowing the tiny masterpieces, guests’ facial expressions changed from uncertain to delighted.
“Japanese food is meant to be as beautiful artistically as it tastes,” says Lori Hashimoto, co-owner and sushi chef. “We brought back the dishes Mom makes.”
Food service at Devoured is the same as it is at Hana — a family affair.
The north-central Phoenix restaurant is closed today as 21 staffers are at the festival to help execute the ambitious menu.
Hashimoto’s mother, Kinue Kishino, and stepfather, Kazuto Kishino, run Hana’s kitchen. Kinue was a culinary-school teacher in Tokyo, and Kazuto has worked in the kitchen for 40 years. They oversee every dish that leaves their kitchen.
“See my stepdad bobbing his head over (a cook’s) shoulder?” asks Hashimoto, 39. “He does that all the time to check what you’re doing. We say it’s like you have a double head.”
For Devoured, sushi master Rick Hashimoto, Lori’s brother, is preparing ankimo (monkfish liver) sushi sliders.
Using chopsticks for precision, he will assemble 1,000 sliders. Each one has 10 ingredient layers: a lemon slice for the base, ankimo, fried quail egg, daikon, green onion, togarashi (a dry spice), sea salt, dot of Sriracha, ponzu sauce and kizami nori (seaweed).
“My brother is the very last of the old-school guys,” Lori Hashimoto says. “He learned the traditional ways.”
This year, along with the ankimo, Hana will serve yakitori skewers, chawanmushi (steamed-egg custard cup), nimono (chilled vegetable
medley) and yuzu lemonade. The group, which includes co-owner Lynn Becker, starts prepping for the festival about two weeks before and doesn’t finish until it closes Sunday afternoon.
Six pounds of shio koji (fermented rice) starts to soak 10 days in advance. Forty pounds of monkfish liver starts to marinate two days before the festival. Fifty pounds of Japanese pumpkin, lotus root and gobo root are steamed and then chilled the night before.
Throughout the day of the festival, 80 pounds of top-sirloin beef will be skewered and grilled over Japanese charcoal inside a ceramic-sided yaki grill. The meat takes just a few minutes to grill; the grill takes 21⁄ hours to start. Lori Hashimoto also cracks and fries 1,500 quail eggs at the festival.
“It’s all execution, execution, execution,” Hashimoto says. “We try to serve everyone the same thing.”
Expect unexpected
The Devoured crowd embraces bold chefs.
Sure, some dishes taste familiar. In previous years, showcasing what they do best, Grateful Spoon served bloodorange gelato, Postino Winecafe brought bruschetta and Essence Bakery gave out macarons.
But what gets the most buzz is the unfamiliar.
Chef James Porter last year brought head cheese (which is jellied meat, not cheese) with Seacat Garden vegetable medley called jardinière to represent his Scottsdale restaurant, Petite Maison. In 2011, while between restaurants and operating under the Guerilla Gourmet name, chef Payton Curry served bee-pollen-topped rutabaga and potato vichyssoise (a thick chilled soup).
Last year, James Beard Award-nominated chef-owner Silvana Salcido Esparza delighted with cochinita pibil pork from Barrio Queen and elote vasito corn from Barrio Cafe. Tempe’s House of Tricks dazzled with barbecued Mongolian shrimp with lemongrass grits and housemade kimchi. The team from the Breadfruit, a Caribbean restaurant in Phoenix, managed to execute two exquisite dishes: savory truffleand-rum mussels and sweet chocolate-rum truffles.
Some chefs create sparks independently of their food.
In 2012, Justin Beckett of Beckett’s Table was nominated for
magazine’s award for the people’s best new chef — Southwest. He used the festival to drum up votes by making a pitch to every person who came to his booth.
This year, T. Cook’s at the Royal Palms, a firsttime Devoured participant but longtime resortdining destination, gave away a hotel stay. Salt Public Relations, which represents several res- taurants, plans to hide $800 in dining gift cards around the festival and reveal the locations to Twitter followers. Citizen Public House operators chef Bernie Kantak, Andrew Fritz and mixologist Richie Moe plan to announce the details of their new restaurant.
That’s why organizers feel they’re on the right track with Devoured.
“We’re not flying in chefs to show us how it’s done,” Local First’s Lanning says. “We have five (James) Beard-winning chefs in the Valley. We don’t need to be shown how it’s done.”