Phoenix: Country Dancing and Dining

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, and included a very quick trip to Phoenix, AZ. After four trips scattered over 5 years, I finally started to get a sense of how the area is laid out, especially with regard to two of my interests: food and country dancing.


The Phoenix Metropolitan Area
The Phoenix region is surprisingly large, filling a valley ("The Valley of the Sun") of about 500 square miles with over 4 million people. I never made it out to the West Valley, but have only been to the new downtown and communities in the central and eastern areas.

Moving from west to east:

• What is now Phoenix's downtown has glittering high-rises and sports stadiums, but is oddly sterile. When I visited 4 years ago no one seemed to live there and it was hard to even find a place to eat after the workday.
• The older part of central Phoenix has more of a 1950's feel to it, and is the area just north and west of the airport. This is where The Fry Bread House is situated.
• Scottsdale is a very upscale town running north-south for about 20 miles along Scottsdale Road. Historic Old Town Scottsdale has a lot of nice restaurants, hotels, and art galleries. Scottsdale is where the most interesting restaurants are located.
• Just south of Scottsdale is Tempe, the home of Arizona State University, which is a cleaned-up college town and makes for a nice stroll.
• Finally, Chandler (south and east of Tempe) was formerly an ostrich-ranching center but now is the home of a lot of high-tech companies with a lot of new suburban buildings. It's dominated by national shopping and restaurant chains.

The Quest for Food
Some eating establishments worth mentioning:

1. Cowboy Ciao (Scottsdale) was by far the most interesting restaurant I tried. Located just north of Old Town, they had a creative take on almost every dish, and while the results were mixed I appreciated the effort.


We shared small portions of their signature dish, a pan of sauteed mushrooms; braised pork belly; buffalo carpaccio; blue cheese cheesecake; and chocolate chip cookies with bacon.


The pickled cucumber salad that accompanied the pork belly was excellent, and one of the mushrooms was really good, tasting like shitake that had been placed in a tangy marinade. The cheesecake wasn't quite so successful, as the blue cheese was simply too strong, but the homemade five-spice ice cream it came with was terrific with a delicate blend of spice and sweetness.


The rhubarb soda was also...different. Very dry and slightly bitter.

It's worth going back to this restaurant just to see what they've done with other dishes; the Stetson salad with smoked salmon comes highly recommended.

2. The Fry Bread House (Phoenix) is run by the Tohono O’oadham Indian tribe. Fry Bread is basically just flour and lard, and has been blamed for obesity and other health problems on the reservations where at one time they couldn't afford much else.

But I wanted to try something distinctive to the area so I had one drizzled with honey and another with chocolate. They were interesting but not necessarily decadently good.

3. Patsy Grimaldi's (Chandler) was a slight disappointment. This is an outpost of the New York City chain that claims to have been the first pizzeria in NYC. The toppings were decent, but the crust was a little too dry and reminiscent of flatbread or crackers.


I'm probably a little spoiled after having one of Two Amy's pizzas in Washington DC last month, but Grimaldi's also wasn't too similar to the good pizzas I've had in New York.

4. My Big Fat Greek Restaurant (Chandler) was bland. This local chain has a gleaming modern building and they serve flaming saganaki cheese, but the Greek food they serve in large quantities is somewhat pedestrian.

Country Dancing in Phoenix
Unfortunately, the only night I was free to go dancing was Thursday night, which I would find is a slow night in the area. But I did talk to a couple of locals who gave me the rundown on when and where to dance.

1. Graham Central Station (Tempe) is really the only place to dance if you want to do the Texas Two-Step. Like all of the GCS locations they have several varied clubs under one roof, but the country portion, called Rocking Rodeo, features a huge wooden dance floor (about 60 x 90 feet).


There weren't too many people there that night, but I talked to a guy named Steve who kept doing the Tush Push and he said that they're much more crowded on Wednesday (Ladies Night), Friday, and Saturday. Steve also told me that Rocking Rodeo once occupied the entire club, with a dance floor about 3 times the current size.

A couple of girls warned me that they were "terrible" dancers, but after dancing a waltz and two-step with one I could see she has the potential to be very good. It's a shame that many guys leave a girl with the impression that mistakes are her fault, when 90% of the time it's all dependent on the male lead.

My experience with GCS in other locations has been pretty hit-or-miss (the alternate-format clubs take the focus off the country dancing), but it doesn't appear there's any other real option in Phoenix so I'll give it another shot the next time I'm in town.

2. Earlier that evening I went to Whiskey River Saloon (Phoenix), which is on the north side of town. The dance floor there was tiny, but there were a lot of older couples (mostly 50's and 60's) dancing there.


An older gentleman named Rich seemed to be very knowledgeable and explained some things that had been puzzling me.

Apparently, unique to the Phoenix area is a dance that they call the Arizona Two-Step, which is an adaptation of the Two-Step to very small dance floors. It has a similar rhythm, but is more of a hand dance that moves side-to-side in place.

In practice, the Arizona Two-Step looks like a cross between an East Coast Swing and what I think of as the "real" Two-Step, which in Arizona is called the Progressive (or Texas) Two-Step. (A Texas Two-Step "progresses" in a counter-clockwise circle around the dance floor, and is danced in the "closed" position, where the man cradles the lady in his right arm.)

According to Rich, the only place to do a Texas Two-Step is GCS, which is also the best place for singles. He said all of the other clubs are small like Whiskey River, mentioning a place called Roman's in Phoenix and a couple of places in Chandler.

Future Trips
So the next time I'm in Phoenix, I'll have to set aside a Wednesday or weekend night to go dancing at Graham Central Station, and go back to Cowboy Ciao for dinner.

I've also thought about going to Cafe Forte or Medizona in Scottsdale for lunch or dinner. I'd like to try Binkley's in Cave Creek but not only does it sound very expensive but reservations might be impossible to get on short notice. The Horny Toad Barbecue Restaurant in Cave Creek was also recommended to me, but it sounds like a tourist trap.

I'd also like to explore some other areas, perhaps Glendale in the West Valley or Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in Scottsdale.