These 11 Arizona chefs are the rising stars Phoenix food lovers need to watch in 2023
The restaurant scene in metro Phoenix and elsewhere in Arizona has been garnering a lot of national attention lately.
Christopher's restaurant at Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix received high marks from Gayot. Valentine was on Esquire's top 100 list and New York Times' top 25 dishes and four Phoenix restaurants made it to New York Times' top 50.
While many of the lauded chefs are practically household names, there are plenty of rising stars who should be on every Phoenix food lover's radar. These chefs are shaking things up, from savory to sweet, Sonoran to sushi and fine dining to farmers market.
Here are 11 Arizona chefs to watch in 2023.
Christian Lowe, currently cooking at Shift Kitchen + Bar in Flagstaff
Christian Lowe is the executive chef at Shift Kitchen + Bar in Flagstaff, which opened in 2016 with a concept of shifting from individual dining to family-style and sharable small plates.
Lowe started working at Shift in November 2021. But her experience in the culinary world started long before that, beginning with cooking at her grandmother's side as a child. Before coming to Shift, Lowe was a sous chef at the prestigious Amangiri luxury resort in southern Utah.
Her cooking philosophy is to create new stories with food. Her art is in her fluidity. She adapts to the season and availability of ingredients. For example over the summer she made chaat, an Indian dish usually made with mango, with watermelon and peanuts instead.
Lowe is a chef to watch because of her love of food history and inventive localized takes on global flavors.
Details: 107 N. San Francisco St., Suite 2, Flagstaff. shiftflg.com.
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Nephi Craig, currently cooking at Café Gozhóó in Whiteriver
Nephi Craig celebrates Western Apache foodways at Café Gozhóó, which he opened in October 2021 as part of the Rainbow Treatment Center. According to its website, the center promotes addiction recovery through connecting with food and the land and "activating ancestral knowledge."
Classically trained Craig, who is Navajo and Apache, founded the Native American Culinary Association to create a network for Indigenous chefs and bring research, development and refinement to Native cuisine. In a recent Instagram Live video, he said he plans to bring back his Instagram cook-along videos, Wu-Tang Wednesdays. During the pandemic, he recorded cooking demos while to music by Wu-Tang Clan. He said it started as a self-care project that morphed into a series that lasted for 36 weeks.
Craig is a chef to watch for reconnecting to his heritage, creating dishes with Native ingredients in a modern way and using cooking as a way of healing.
Details: 5624 N. First St., Whiteriver. 928-338-1010, cafegozhoo.com. @nephi_craig on Instagram.
Engin Onural, currently cooking at Sandfish Sushi and Whiskey in Phoenix
Originally from Turkey, Onural fell in love with Japanese culture at age 10. After finishing college in Ankara, Turkey, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Sushi Chef Institute. He also received a certification as a sake sommelier, then opened his original restaurant in Palm Springs.
Onural now has three restaurants and a bar where he gets creative with his flavors, bringing influences from his travels to the plate. For example, his spiced tuna tostada has sprinkles of feta. The Sandfish sushi roll is made of spicy tuna, crab and avocado topped with lightly fried potato threads, spicy aioli, teriyaki sauce, microgreens, green onions and black truffle zest.
Onural is a chef to watch for creating dishes from his three loves: Japanese culture, Turkish heritage and Scandinavia.
Details: 4232 N. Seventh Ave., Phoenix. 602-675-4020, sandfishsushiwhiskey.com/phoenix.
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Cory Oppold, currently preparing to open Course in Scottsdale
OK, so he may not be a rising star in the sense that he's been on the scene for a while, but Cory Oppold is a chef on the move. If you've eaten at Atlas Bistro, where Oppold had been an executive chef, or you have experienced one of his private dinners at your home, you know that this "Chopped" champion creates art on the plate with components like foie gras mousse, glacier lettuce, apricot jam, freeze dried blueberries, verjus gel and pistachios.
He surprises diners with the presentation. One dish looks like a donut decorated with dots of verjus gel, halved grapes and blueberries, pistachios, two delicate leaves of glacier lettuce and a quenelle of apricot jam. Picture the colors of cream, yellow, green, purple and orange on the plate. On his show "Plate and Pour," Mark Tarbell called his dishes "almost too pretty to eat."
At Atlas Bistro, Oppold created a huitlacoche truffle and called it "not truffle." Huitlacoche is a corn smut that he manipulated using molecular gastronomy to look like a black truffle that he could shave onto Latin-inspired dishes. He plans to open his own restaurant, Course, in the spring of 2023.
Oppold is a chef to watch for his complex and layered edible art.
Details: 7366 E. Shea Blvd, Suite 106, Scottsdale. coursedining.com.
Don Maloney, currently cooking at The Wild Chickpea at the Uptown farmers market
Don Maloney, a native of Chicago, decided to become a vegetarian when he was a teenager. Not long after, he switched to veganism. That was in the '90s when he couldn't find good vegetarian food in Chicago, so he decided to learn how to make it.
Maloney moved to Arizona in 2004 after his friend died of cancer. In 2010, he gave up soy and gluten for health reasons. But it took him until 2020 to open his food stand, The Wild Chickpea.
What stands out about Maloney's cooking is how he creates flavorful street food despite having eliminated so many ingredients. His "bacon, egg and cheese" breakfast sandwich is made with scratch-made focaccia, cashew cheese and chickpea eggs. It comes with a side salad and leaves you completely satisfied. You can find him at Uptown farmers market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Maloney is a chef to watch because of his ability to create flavor despite his restrictions.
Details: Uptown farmers market, 5757 N. Central Ave., Phoenix. uptownmarketaz.com. @wildchickpea on Instagram.
Morgan Malzahn, currently baking at Weft & Warp Art Bar + Kitchen in Scottsdale
Inspired by her three sons and the midcentury modern design of Andaz Scottsdale Resort, Malzahn creates playful cakes and deliciously balanced modern desserts at Weft & Warp Art Bar + Kitchen. Her 15 years of experience includes stints at T. Cook's at Royal Palms Resort and Spa, Food Network star Keegan Gerhard's D Bar in Denver, Enchantment Resort in Sedona and luxury resort L'Auberge de Sedona.
She brings her love of desert ingredients into her seasonal desserts at Weft + Warp, where her current menu includes Butter-Nut-Bourbon, which is made of butternut squash mousse, praline crèmeux, smoked sea salt pecans and black pepper mallow cream.
If you see something interesting on the menu, order it, because most likely it won't be there the next time you visit.
Malzahn is a chef to watch for her mastery of flavors, use of local ingredients and vast imagination.
Details: 6114 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale. 480-214-4622, andazscottsdale.com/dining.
Jasmine Smith, currently cooking at Süss Pastry in Phoenix
Smith started Süss (pronounced like Dr. Seuss) Pastry as a side hustle in her Tempe apartment kitchen in 2016. By 2021, she had moved to a commercial kitchen.
Her connection to food started with her grandparents in Germany. But she fell in love with Sonoran Desert ingredients when she worked at Weft & Warp Art Bar + Kitchen for a stint. Now, she incorporates these ingredients into her whimsical pastries, like the raspberry prickly pear fruit pocket — think Pop Tarts with pie dough — and green chile bressane, similar to a Danish but made with brioche dough. Come 2023, she'll add two farmers' markets to her long list of coffee shops: Pinnacle and hopefully Uptown.
She's a chef to watch for creating whimsical desserts from local ingredients.
Details: susspastries.com.
Roberto Centeno, currently cooking at Espiritu in Mesa
The team behind Bacanora and Tacos Chiwas opened Espiritu Cocktails + Comida in downtown Mesa in January. While Andrade is the charismatic front man, Centeno, the behind-the-scenes grill man and Andrade's cousin, has been having quite a year in his own right. According to Centeno, they help each other out but he mostly focuses on Espiritu while Andrade is mostly at Bacanora.
For Centeno, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and recent "Chopped" champion, the goal is to bring national attention to regional Sonoran cooking. His grill mastery won him the TV championship and earned his restaurant a spot on Eater's best in America list. Centeno keeps a small menu at Espiritu, but he rotates between six and nine specials per day, which change weekly.
Centeno is a chef to watch for his mastery of the grill.
Details: 123 W. Main St., Mesa. espiritumesa.com.
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Fernando Sanchez, currently cooking at Miel de Agave in Phoenix
Formerly the executive chef at Call Her Martina in Old Town Scottsdale, Fernando Sanchez has since shifted to the recently opened Miel de Agave downtown. He started as a line cook and worked his way up to his current position overseeing the kitchen with "right hand man" Fernando Genesta.
Originally from Sonora, Mexico, Sanchez wanted to use his 17 years of culinary experience to celebrate southern Mexican cuisine and culture at the new venue where he weaves ingredients from Oaxaca and Yucatan into modern dishes. Examples include empanaditas de huitlacoche made with blue corn masa, Mexican cheese, huitlacoche, roasted corn, epazote, green pepper, jalapeño cilantro cream, avocado cream and queso fresco; and sopes de chicharron prensado made of pressed pork carnitas in a roasted green salsa, crispy onions, pickled onions and habaneros, avocado cream, charro beans and cilantro microgreens.
Sanchez is a chef to watch for his approach to his menu and his thoughtful flavors.
Details: 705 N. First St #110, Phoenix. 602-368-2413, lamieldeagave.com.
Racan Alhoch, Gemini Pizza
You probably know Racan Alhoch from Saint Pasta and have experienced his finger-licking vodka sauce. He also served pizza at Bitter & Twisted before opening the Gemini Pizza ghost kitchen in the Melrose District of Phoenix. Originally from New Jersey, he's adding a modern twist to East Coast-style pizza along with nods to his Middle Eastern heritage with the likes of Moroccan sausage on pizza and a serious fatoush side salad.
Alhoch is a chef to watch for being a forward thinker.
Details: @geminipizzaclub on Instagram.
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Wendy Garcia, currently cooking at Tumerico in Tucson
Originally from Mexico, Garcia was not fond of cooking growing up. It took her moving away from home and living on fast food in Tucson to miss the taste of her dad's farm-to-table food. She started working in restaurant kitchens and after years of making other people's recipes she decided to strike out on her own.
Garcia started making prepackaged vegetarian Mexican food to sell at cafes and farmers market until she could open her brick-and-mortar cafe. She named her business Tumerico because "I put it on almost everything," she told Tucson.com. She opened her first location on Fourth Avenue in 2014 and a second on Sixth Street in 2019. The menu, written on a blackboard, changes daily to reflect what Garcia can find fresh in the market.
She's a chef to watch for her fresh, organic and local Latin-inspired vegetarian and vegan food.
Details: Tumerico Cafe. 2526 E. Sixth St., Tucson. 520-240-6947. And 402 E. Fourth Ave., Tucson. 520-392-0224. tumerico.com.
Reach the reporter at BAnooshahr@azcentral.com. Follow @banooshahr on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona chefs to watch in 2023: Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff
