Believe us, we’d love to say that Belvedere’s three, new, fruit-soaked flavors are simply an exercise in good marketing, but damn, the stuff’s better than any flavored vodka we’ve tasted.

Here’s how it happens: Quadruple-distilled Belvedere vodka is shipped to a separate facility in France where it undergoes a process called “maceration,” the soaking of dried and frozen citrus fruit peels. Since Belvedere can’t say it, we will: “maceration” rhymes with “masturbation” and “masturbation” rhymes with eye-catching marketing.

Running ads with phrases like “Maceration is perfectly natural,” and “Maceration should never be rushed,” “Maceration is not a sin,” and “taking your time is half the fun,” Belvedere is able to add a slight twist to the flavored vodka market.

The Maceration Process is unique in that it’s not rushed, like most “infused” flavors, letting the fruit soak for weeks at a time. And, not a single artificial sweetener or sugar is added. Another distillation happens after soaking, this time at a low temperature to maintain the aromas, and then filtered for debris.

The result is an orange vodka that tastes like orange juice … and vodka; a Black Raspberry that’s begging to be poured over pancakes … or something; and Citrus that fun and refreshing.

And mom said maceration would make you blind. Whatever, ma.

Available for $27.99 at BevMo or at by the pool at the W Scottsdale. Check out the Thursday Acqua pool parties hosted by W’s GM Leon Young and event promoter Steve LeVine when macerated cocktails are available for $6 each.

www.macerationisnatural.com

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Seems every holiday, local baking phenom, Tammi Coe, releases another theme cake, cookie or cupcake. Not withstanding, this Independence Day comes with a few new ones. Cake selections include a red, white, and blue striped Zebra Cake, a red and blue polka dot Strawberry Shortcake, and a blue Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Cake with white stars.

LOCATIONS:

4410 N. 40th street, Phoenix | T 602.840.3644 F 602.840.6765

610 E. Roosevelt, #145, Phoenix | T 602.253.0829 F 602.253.9360

TammieCoeCakes.com

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With the 4th of July around the corner, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has partnered up with grilling expert Neil Strawder, a.k.a “Bigmista” to share his award-winning barbecue secrets to a successful grilling party. There’s also a Mrs. Mista (really that’s her A.K.A.) She is the Mac & Cheese Queen of the group.

“Anyone can put a piece a meat on a grill,” says Bigmista. “But if you want that tender, melt in your mouth flavor, there are a few simple techniques that will guarantee a delicious barbecue.”

Grill – Buying an expensive grill will not make your barbecued food taste better. Find a kettle grill at a local supply or hardware store for less than $50. This classic grill distributes heat more evenly and when the lid is on, it holds in the flavor-enhancing smoke from the grease or smoking wood added to the charcoal fire.

Fire Management – You don’t need a big fire to barbecue. Use 15 coals for chicken and 20 coals for steaks and burgers. Never use lighter fluid as it leaves a chemical taste on the meat. The secret to a great barbecue is a chimney grill starter, which is a tool to heat the coals that is also available at supply or hardware stores. Place the coals on the top chamber and place newspaper on the bottom chamber. Light the newspaper with a match and in fifteen minutes the coals are ready to use.

Coal Placement – Place all coals on one side of the grill. Slow cook the meat with the indirect heat on the opposite side of the grill. Then crisp the skin with the direct heat. This allows for meat to cook thoroughly, preventing a burnt outside and a raw inside.

Wood Chips – Add hickory, apple-wood, cherry-wood or mesquite-wood chips to the coals to infuse flavors into the meat. Wrap a hand-full of wood chips in foil, poke holes through the tent and place it on top of the coals.

Brine – To get chicken as tender and juicy as possible, Bigmista recommends soaking it in brine which is made up of:
1/2 cup salt
1/2cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon allspice
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1/2 gallon of water

Put all ingredients in a large plastic bag or a 16-quart pot and soak chicken for up to four hours in the refrigerator.  Discard the brine and then rinse the chicken, pat dry with paper towels, and rub it with a flavorful marinade.

Savory Rub – A basic rub that can be used on any type of meat with great results is created by combining the following ingredients:

4 parts kosher salt
4 parts garlic powder
2 parts black pepper
1 part cayenne

Pineapple Coleslaw – Big Mista is sharing the recipe to his very popular side dish that compliments any barbecued meat. This pineapple coleslaw is a guaranteed hit at cookouts.

1 bag pre-shredded cabbage
1 can crushed pineapple
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup brown sugar

Pour the juice from pineapple into a bowl. Add the vinegar, salt, pepper and sugar. Mix and set aside. This is the dressing. Put the pineapple in a large bowl with the cabbage. Pour in the dressing and toss well.

Fresh & Easy of course has special deals on all the ingredients for the recipes above.

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Put the sifter down for a second Betty Crocker, Four Seasons Scottsdale Pastry Chef Lance Whipple is the new master baker. Chef Whipple competed in the third annual National Association of Catering Executives Confectionary Competition this week and took Best in Show. Whipple and team won with a seven-tier, towering confection of chocolate praline hazelnut crunch cake with a multi-colored fondant icing. The cake was designed with stencil work, hand work on the fondant carnival masks, angled tiers, pulled sugar, cast sugar “feathers,” and airbrushing. The Rio-themed pastry beat out about 20 other entries from bakers at Tammie Coe Cakes, Let Them Eat Cake, The Phoenician, and JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa, among others.

This is what Whipple and his winning cake looked like:

And just because, this is what they don’t look like:

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It looks like Sam “The Sly” Fox is trying to further his monopoly of the Scottsdale Waterfront, by taking another run at the now defunct Pink Taco space.

Naturally upon the Pink Taco’s demise, every player in town was interested in trying to cut a deal there, but nothing stuck.

Now we hear that Fox is at it again looking at it for his gastro pub concept Culinary Dropout.

The menu might include classic pub items like; fish & chips, and fried chicken — YES! As far as we’re concerned, there can never be too much fried food.

Culinary Dropout would also offer great beers on tap.

Black & Tans, fish & chips? Hello? Sounds like another winner to us.

CD would open the first quarter of 2010 and possibly earlier if they took the space over sooner.

Fingers crossed Sam.

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Many already know, but Mark Tarbell has not been resting on his local laurels the past several years. He has quietly been opening and operating restaurants such as The Oven Pizza E Vino in Denver, which has consistently been named “Best of Denver” for 5 years. The pizzas are made in huge wood burning ovens, and the menu also offers appetizers, salads, and sandwiches. The dough, sauces, mozzarella cheese, and desserts are all made in house. There is a small wine bar; wine is also available by the glass, and a selection of draft and bottled beers.

In January of this year, he also opened mark & isabella, an American-Italian restaurant.  The menu includes soups, salads, sandwiches, classic dishes, and of course pasta. Everything is prepared by hand here as well, including the sausages.  There is a large selection of wine, available by bottle or glass, and classic spirits such as Campari and Grappa. mark & isabella also makes its own fizzy sodas with Italian syrups.

Both restaurants revolve around local, natural, seasonal and, when possible, organic ingredients. They are open for lunch and dinner 7 days a week at the Belmar Center in Lakewood.

BUT WAIT — THERE’S MORE!!

He is currently in development on another The Oven. It will open at the Streets of Southglenn Project in Centennial in late summer or early fall.

Both Tarbell and long time consigliere Jim Gallen, have been putting miles on their rewards programs going back and forth over the years getting these gems open and making sure they deliver the goods.

Check out their sites listed below.

www.theovenpizzaaevino.com

http://www.markandisabella.com

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There’s a new burger joint at City North in Scottsdale called 25 Degrees and it’s a tragicomic themocracy.

Please allow me to explain.

It’s a tragedy. And a comedy. Which makes it tragicomic. It’s also themocratic, meaning I can’t tell if it wants to be Johnny Rockets or Johnny Depp. It seems like every theme has its chance here—a little bordello, a little 1950s diner, a little shabby chic, a little gentrified refinement—making it a democracy of themes.

Get it?

But here’s how we landed on that conclusion. Looking at the menu for the first time is a bit like learning a new language. Remember that feeling you got when you first learned to run through the conjugation of voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van, in Spanish class? Once you figure out what’s an actual ingredient and what’s a description, or how you can put the burger-building combinations together, you feel like a ha! I can now speak Spanish … or order a burger.

But you may just wanna vamos after waiting to be served, because with a half-full restaurant this weekend, our waiter seemed to be running to and fro for God knows what (“God knows what” meaning “not my friggin’ order”).

While saving you a Seftelesque rundown of our entire order, we’ll highlight the good and the bad from what we ate:

The Sirloin Burger: Seriously? The cow parts at Fuddruckers are more exciting, and half the price. You’d think this would be the deal-sealer for 25, but it was the weakest part of our meal. Shame.

The Jalapeño Bacon we added to the burger: I’d rather be 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon than the jalapeño bacon. It was fatty and tasted like a spicy version of Jack in the Box’s swine.

The Tuna Burger: A++. If you go to 25, order this or get one for the table to share. One of the best tuna burgers we’ve had anywhere.

The Hot Dog: It’s a big ‘ole tasty hot dog. What’s not to love?

The Mixed Fries: They don’t come with any dipping sauces besides ketchup because they want to suggest a couple and then charge you about a buck each, per sauce. What a rip-off. The fries themselves were totally uninspired.

The Tuna on Grilled Eggplant: Solid, really solid. But it felt out of place. Which brings us back to that theme issue.

There were wine chilling buckets at every booth (which every customer would hilariously bump into getting out of the booths) yet the ketchup and mustard came in diner-like squeeze bottles. The burgers come half-wrapped in brown paper, yet the menu includes appetizers that haven’t been reimagined to fit that casual-eating theme. Wine is served in a heavy-lipped jug which is then poured into a modern, stemless wine glass – so are we funky and casual or sleek and trendy? There’s a sexy, back-lit wall of wine bottles, yet there’s chunky, vintage mirrors everywhere.

Maybe the music would tie it all together. I had been wondering what kind of music 25 Degrees would play but the Cave Creek Cowboy Crew (that’s really their name, I don’t make this stuff up) were playing so loud right outside the restaurant, we couldn’t hear the playlist. Wanna hear what it sounded like from our table? Click below:

I have one question after all this: What kind of world do we live in where a couple burgers and Pabsts cost 70 freaking dollars? Apparently, a very expensive world. Oh, wait, this is City North. Reality doesn’t touch City North. Maybe I actually love it here. Maybe I should make up my mind, like 25 Degrees.

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No calories, no sugar or sweeteners and no preservatives? Then what’s the point of a “flavored” water?

Well that is the point of hint owners Kara and Theo Goldin. Kara an ex-AOL exec and Theo an ex-intellectual property attorney for Netscape, took their stocks and ran (how prescient.)

This San Francisco based couple launched hint, a naturally flavored bottled water in May 2005 and have not looked back.

hint (lowercase h) comes in 13 flavors; Hibiscus Vanilla, Watermelon, Honeydew Hibiscus & Blackberry, Mango-Grapefruit, Pomegranate-Tangerine, Lime, Rasberry-Lime, Peppermint, Pear, Tropical Punch, Cucumber and Strawberry Kiwi.

They sent us all the flavors and so far, the Pear and the Lime are the most sublime from what we have sampled.

hint is priced at $1.79 a bottle, and available at high-end groceries like Dean & Deluca. Check the website for all the available locations in your area.

www.drinkhint.com

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We love it when the circus comes to town, especially when they bring their cougars. Look out Scottsdale, because for 90 days, starting at the end of next week, the cities’ most voracious cougar lair is closing for hibernation. But when they open back up, it will be feline madness.

On June 28, Barcelona North Scottsdale is going to close for about 90 days to reveal an entirely new concept. Here’s the news: bigtime LA-based designer/would be Mountain Shadows accomplice — Dodd Mitchell — who’s designed some major stuff like the remodels the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and Le Dôme not to mention all three Sushi Roku spots, is going to handle the design. The press release said you can make a reservation to be one of the first in the new space. So if you see a rabid cougar between now and then, write 480.603.0370 on a cocktail napkin and throw it at them. Then run.

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It’s one thing to send emails loaded with hateful comments about restaurants. We get those a lot, and normally just hit delete-delete-delete.

But it’s another to send an email decorated with an animated icon of, well, a crazy ejaculating penis. Now that, friends, spells real hate.

Yet leaping-phallic-level hatred apparently is what creative correspondent Frank Nordby feels for Scottsdale’s Kitchen, which took over the former Dish space in Gainey Village five months ago. Even as we choke back our bile of disgust for the little anime character he bestowed upon us, we’ve got to give him props for some mighty fine computer work. As one of our industry friends commented, when we forwarded the masterpiece to him: “Very odd, but the spouting wien has a really cool afro!”

What’s got Nordby’s balls so bunched? Well, we’re not so sure, except that he’s got some pretty great anger for restaurant owner Mike Teel, saying, “How is Good Eats doing there in Scottsdale?  Mike Teel isn’t selling anything edible.  I know he tries to pass himself off as some savvy businessman, but in reality, he will always be the son of a thief….” (Good Eats Grocer was the operating name for the Kitchen, and also the name of a proposed location for the same concept in Teel’s hometown of Sacramento, Calif.).

We’re not going to get into the gory details here, but you can check out Nordby’s rant yourself, on his web site www.raleysexposed.com.

For the record, Teel is the former CEO of the Sacramento-based supermarket chain Raley’s, and is also the only grandson of Tom Raley, founder of the family-owned grocery empire. He was planning to debut Good Eats in Sacramento before the Scottsdale opportunity er, came up.

As Nordby proudly writes, “Here is my clever unfinished image of the soon coming ‘Big Eats’ here in Sacramento….”

But wait, there’s more! As responsible reporters, we wouldn’t torment Teel without multiple sources.

Nordby isn’t the only Teel-hater out there. We got another email back before the Kitchen’s February opening, accusing restaurant owner Teel of many things, including “a true and incredible story about his family’s fortune all being built by a fraud against one man with nine children.”

This from Leann Lopez, a self-proclaimed journalist with The Sacramento Reporter, who wrote: “I have been watching Mike Teel and the Good Eats adventure for quite some time. In my opinion his antics and failures in business are fit for the circus. He must have really felt the heat in Sacramento to move his business to Scottsdale, Arizona.”

She, too, found time to put together a juicy website (sadly, though, without any flocking body part art). You can read it for yourself at www.hungry4justice.com.

Says Lopez,  “I would write this story if I could find anyone to print it, and then find a body guard who could protect my life.”

Well, Lopez, consider it printed.

As for the protection, you’re on your own. We’re not weighing in on this mess – it’s all just a little too, um, sticky, for our comfort.

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