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(funky jazz music) - I'm Chef Mark Tarbell, and welcome to 'Check, Please!

Arizona', the show where people dine then dish.

This is how it works, we ask three guests to each recommend their favorite restaurants, they go to each one, eat, drink separately, of course, and then join us here to share their dining experiences.

First, meet Nina Cardinal.

She's a registered nurse and an expectant mom who says she's discovered a hidden gem in Scottsdale.

Attorney, Aleshia Fessel, she's a Midwest transplant and a beer lover.

Her pick, a downtown restaurant where she sure you will find a beer you love.

And now, account manager, Jim Scott.

He's a runner and when he slows down, he stops by Saigon Kitchen on West Bell Road, just west of North Litchfield Road in Surprise.

- The experience I want the customer is coming to the door is they feel like at home, comfortable, relaxed, that they feel like they dining at their own home.

They get to see the whole entire restaurant.

I want wide open so people can see all kind of view and get to enjoy the theme of the restaurant, how the joy of all the clientele when it's busy, full house.

Our food is very unique, it's fresh made.

Basically, it's healthy stuff.

And the whole entire team that we put together, all the employee that we hire, we get them in, they become like a big family, you belong to a family in Saigon Kitchen.

I think the number one dish is we serve shaken beef filet mignon, that's the number one.

Mushroom, shrimp, and caramelized onion, and with the filet mignon beef and we toss in the wok, is very popular.

(food sizzling) When I cook, it give me the passion, the energy, and when I touch something in the wok and the flame go up and when the customer try and they love it, it feels so good.

I don't know how to explain, to describe, but I feel great that someone say, "I love your food."

That's all I wanna hear.

- So, Jim, why do you bring your family to Saigon Kitchen?

- It's just a nice, warm and inviting place.

They recently redid their restaurant and upgraded it last year.

They expanded it into a space next door to them and completely redid the interior.

- The decor was just, the ambiance was just very rich, it was cozy, but at the same time, modern, very sleek.

That was a great start for me.

- So, speaking of start, what did you start with?

- The lemon grass wings.

They were perfectly crispy and they had a lemon grass sauce.

So it was like an Asian version of wings.

- Yeah, lemon grass has sort of a lemony tart herbal sort of quality to it, really nice.

- Great.

- Sounds good.

- Great.

And what did you start with?

What did you two start with?

- Well, we started- - If I can refer to you two.

(chuckles) - Absolutely.

We started with, I'm a big fan of spring rolls, they were wrapped in rice paper fresh, they had, I believe both pork and shrimp in them and little vermicelli noodles had a kind of a spicy peanut-y sauce on the side.

They were fresh and delicious.

I love to eat an appetizer, but I don't want it to fill me up, and it was the perfect size.

And my husband tried that coconut shrimp.

And oftentimes coconut shrimp in restaurants is too heavy for me, and I'm not a big fan.

I tried one and it was delicious.

It's probably the best coconut shrimp in town, I would say.

And a little sweet sauce to dip it in, but it was flaky and perfectly brown, but not heavy, heavy breaded, it was great.

- Yeah, there was a sweetness to some of the sauces I noticed there.

And to balance that out, you know what I dumped on it?

There were two of those jars, one's the red, which is like a match and the other one's darker and it's like fire.

I mean like, kaboom.

- Watch out.

(all laughing) - Jim, what'd you start with?

- So, we did two appetizers.

I had my wife and myself, and my daughter, and my son, and we started with the crispy calamari and the Dennis spring rolls.

So the Dennis spring rolls have the sweet pork on the inside, so, we kind of, amongst the three of us, shared that.

And then my son, his favorite protein of all proteins is calamari and Saigon Kitchen, kind of, is where he found that.

And so you give him an option of a chicken nugget and a calamari from Saigon Kitchen, he's gonna choose that every time.

- That's a cool kid.

- That is so cool.

- It's kind of neat.

We all kind of sample a little bit of the Kalahari, but he ends up finishing the whole rest of the plate.

- And then what did you go on to to entrees?

- Yeah, so, for my entree, I had the garlic noodles with the sweet pork.

The garlic noodles are just kind of like a fine smaller noodle, has a real hint of garlic in it, and just with the sweet pork layered on top.

And then usually, they'll look garnish that with some cilantro as well, and I love cilantro, so it's- - Especially when it's fresh.

Clean, fresh cilantro, can't go wrong.

Aleshia, where'd you go next?

- I had a sizzling salmon platter and my husband actually referred to it as Vietnamese fajitas because it really kind of, as it comes to the restaurant, you can smell it.

And it was this great hot plate that had just some onions underneath that were kind of caramelized and the salmon in this sauce, just kind of a little coating on it that was a little bit sweet and definitely not too sweet 'cause I don't tend to like that, and just a very fresh flavor, and it was outstanding.

- Very good.

Any specialty drinks that you had?

- Oh, I had a Lychee Tini.

- Ooh, Lychee Tini.

- Mm-hmm.

- I coulda, I would have ordered that.

- Oh, I'm sure.

- If you could have, you would have, but you can't, so you did.

- It was so good, too.

It was just in a tall rocks glass and it was almost like a mojito, it's very fresh flavor, but with the Lychee fruit.

- And you were with your baby.

- I was with my baby.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit of a water snob, it's sort of a running joke in my house and this restaurant's water was so clean and fresh and delicious.

I probably drank five to eight glasses of it.

It was delicious.

- Wow, that's intense.

I love it.

So entrees for you?

- Well, it's funny you mentioned- - After your bucket of water.

- After my bucket of water and visiting the ladies room, which was very clean, I really enjoyed the pho.

If I'm gonna go to a Vietnamese restaurant or anything that claims to be, that is my baseline.

If you make good pho, then the rest of the food's very good.

So that's what I ordered.

Pho is generally about the broth and the broth was intense, and flavorful, and complex.

You could taste anise in it and head slices of, I believe sirloin in it and fresh bok choy and lots of noodles.

I got the big bowl, I probably should have gotten the half size.

Three meals later, after I had taken it home, it was a huge portion that was just delicious.

- I go the small one, it's huge, huge, really crazy.

- Yeah.

- It was great.

- So did you have any sweets after that?

You gotta have a few sweets, you got something goin on.

- Of course we had to have the, I believe it was like a house specialty and it was bananas deep fried, you had your options of ice cream, we just went with vanilla, I was kind of in a plain mood that night.

And I didn't expect much, but it was perfect.

The bananas were firm, not really kinda mushy, and it had, I wanna say had a caramel-y sweet sauce on top of it, but it wasn't overly sweet.

- You've had that too, Jim?

- Yeah, I have, I have.

This time I had something different, I tried something new.

They had a brownie, I think it was coffee-flavored ice cream on the top and it had that same kind of drizzle like throughout.

And it was fantastic.

- Aleshia.

- I have to tell you- - The best.

- I'm not a huge dessert person.

I probably wouldn't have gotten it if I hadn't been kind of trying to get a sense of this restaurant.

And this dessert was one of the best I've had.

It was a sweet potato cheesecake.

The cheesecake itself had a great sweet potato pumpkin flavor, and then there was like a layer of spice cake in there, or like a carrot cake in this delicious maple frosting and the whole plate was drizzled with just a little bit of honey.

- It sounds divine.

- Perfect.

- That, and a glass of water, we're good.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - If you would like to try Saigon Kitchen, reservations are accepted, and the average tab for dinner is $25 without drinks.

(gentle music) And now Aleshia's recommendation, it's Angels Trumpet Ale House on North Second Street, just south of east Roosevelt Street in Downtown Phoenix.

(upbeat rock music) - My husband, Matt, he's the one who picks the beer.

Every week, he goes through numerous beer lists from all the vendors that we have.

There are so many flavors, so he really tries to hone down on what everybody's trying to drink while still being very passionate to beers that have been around for years and years.

Breweries put so much time and so much care into what they're brewing.

We feel it's important that we need to put all of our time and focus into how we pour it.

We do direct draw, so, our lines are five feet, clean glass where proper pours and just making sure the whole experience is the best for them.

Though we both love beer, I've definitely taken the food side of it.

I wanted to find something that would be fun on a slower night of the week to bring in regulars in the neighborhood.

I grew up in the '70s and the biggest thing that I loved when mom and dad were going out, I got to pick up my own TV dinner.

A lot of the staff here, because they're much younger, had no clue what a TV dinner was.

So I had the fine pleasure of being the old person in house who had to educate them on how wonderful a TV dinner is.

So one of my favorites is our chicken fried chicken.

We do this decadent country gravy, fried green beans, a house biscuit, and then a peanut butter chocolate swirl brownie.

My favorite in the '70s was, I don't even know what Salisbury steak was, but I loved it with the macaroni and cheese and the little piece of chocolate cake.

(laughs heartily) - So, is it just about the beer?

Should we start with beer first here, or is it beer and food?

- Well, I always start with the beer first.

They have about, I think, 30-some beers on draft.

Even if you're not a beer drinker, they will find something there that you will like.

- And some of them are quite rare.

Some of the kegs that they're getting are unique, or rare to them, or special to them.

So, what's the atmosphere like?

- It's a place you could go on a first date, it's a place you could go with your grandmother, you could take kids, you can take dogs even.

They have an outdoor patio for the dogs.

- [Mark] Yeah, the patio faces the west and I think all those doors fully open, so it's like an indoor-outdoor situation, big bar.

- It's very industrial kind of cool, you feel, even if you're not very hip, you feel hip in this restaurant, like, "I'm a cool kid now."

I would say it was a little noisy for my husband and I and our friend who went to have a conversation, that was my only complaint.

But it looks like they recently put in some panels in the ceiling trying to decrease that, so, that's great.

And it's energetic, and fun, and young, and you just, like I said, you feel hip.

- I noticed those panels first.

And what's so nice about this show is we always pick independent operators that really care and you can sense that caring, and I looked above and I was like, "Yeah, all right.

They put them in there and they're nice tan they were kinda blending with the wood, knocking down the noise."

What did you start with?

- Well, we started with the, I believe there were like a spicy taquito kind of wrap.

First of all, there were three of them and they were enormous.

This was all of the food.

I shouldn't have ordered a meal that was so filling.

- We had the same appetizer.

- Really?

- Yeah, it was really good.

- Good, right?

- The spice- - So, what are they filled with, Jim?

- It's filled with a sweet potato puree and then they have a combination of, there's some cheese in there, and some green chilies that are in there.

- And some corn, too.

- [Jim] And some corn, and yeah, and she's absolutely right, like, it was huge, it was just so much to eat.

It was great.

It's nice to see.

- And it came with like a salsa verde on the side you dipped in, and I actually asked for more of that with my entree, 'cause it was so good.

I really loved it.

- So, it's sort of talk, not really ee-toh.

- Yeah, exactly.

(all laughing) - Aleshia, what did you start with?

- Well, I started with beer.

(chuckles) They have a- - All right, I love the honesty at the table.

- I always do a flight, which is one of the great things that I like about this place, so I can try all the different beers.

I often want more than will fit on the flight.

- How many fit on the flight?

- Six.

- It's always six, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Is the flight the board they bring out with the beers in it?

- Yeah, it's actually a muffin tin.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah, it's a muffin tin.

- Which is cool.

It's a very retro, the whole restaurant has kind of a retro feel, so, I like the little muffin tins as well.

- And what did you pick?

I mean, what's your favorites?

- I like all kinds of beer.

There's usually like a cider that I'll get, I'll get a Belgian, I get like a stout, or a porter.

So they have such a wide variety.

- I was making my list of to-do's after you have the baby.

I want that one, and that one, and that one, absolutely.

- Well, actually, can I be honest with you all?

I had 14 tastes.

- [Aleshia] Well done.

- Yeah, I thought that was pretty good and I wasn't driving, I want you to know that, but yeah, so it was really amazing.

I mean, there was breakfast for dinner stouts, I don't know all the names, but it had coffee and it was amazing.

- How many do they have?

Have how many options are there?

- 30?

- 31 or 33, something.

- I felt like they were really like passionately curated.

So, what did you have to eat?

- I had the brulee burger, kind of their take, I think using the beers in the name of a brulee burger.

So this burger had a really nice brioche bun, really fluffy, they basically did a caramelized sugar.

So they did the torching.

- The brulee-ing, sure.

- Like you get in a creme brulee and that was on the top of the bun.

The burger itself had a nice thick patty of beef, there was some bacon in there, there was an egg on the top done over-easy, and I think there was some avocado in there, too, that was really good.

It was fantastic.

- [Mark] It sounds like a pile of deliciousness.

- It was awesome, it was so good.

- Aleshia, where did you go to?

- Well, so, I have to say, the reason we started going to this restaurant is because of their Tuesday special called the TV dinner.

You get a little tray and it's just like the classic TV dinner, but upscale.

I decided, just to be different, I would actually try something new that I hadn't tried.

So, I tried the vava verde, which was two different types of tacos.

It was like a brisket taco is what one of them was, and chicken.

And I have to mention, they do smoke a lot of their own meats here, outside in the back.

So, I mean, the brisket was just outstanding.

- Tender, moist.

I had that, too.

- Great.

Just the great smoky char- - [Mark] It's long cooked, I gotta love that.

- So good.

- I was also in a taco mood, but I did the, I think it's called the Big Guppy.

- My wife got that.

- The Big Guppy.

- Oh, my gracious!

That- - Those poor guppies.

- Those poor guppies.

- There must have been 1,000 of them, there really were.

It was their version of kind of a Baja-style fish taco, soft-sided, little kind of slaw on the inside.

I wanted to eat more and more and I kept getting so full and then going back and having another bite, and that, "Okay, I'm done.

Wait, just one more bite," 'cause it was so good.

So, it was lightly battered and fried in I think it was a beer batter, which makes sense being the restaurant.

It was absolutely delicious.

- Did you have any dessert?

- We did.

So we had, they are known for their pop tarts, I guess, homemade pop tarts.

- Yes, yeah.

- They had some chocolate melts in the middle, that puff pastry was good.

I pretty much felt decadent, the most decadent pop tart I've ever seen.

- I feel like we almost had the same meal, like- - No way.

- Yeah, Jim keeps nodding over there.

- I had the exact same thing, my wife and I shared it.

It was just this great layered puff pastry.

It had a pudding consistency on the inside and then this really rich glaze on the top.

And I know they change it regularly, so it's one of those things that, "Okay, I gotta see what else they do with pop tarts," and other times of the year I gotta go back.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- But you're a regular, so tell us what we should have.

- I tried something that they have just recently introduced, a waffle cookie sandwich, like a frozen ice cream sandwich, but it was enclosed in waffles instead of cookies, with this great vanilla ice cream in between and they're drizzled with some great chocolate and almonds on top.

- Wow.

- Ooh.

- I'm gonna get that next time.

- Nice sweet finish, waffles for dessert.

I love it.

Why not, really?

If you would like to try Angels Trumpet Ale House, reservations are not accepted, and the average tab for dinner is $16 without drinks.

(gentle music) And finally, Nina's hidden gem, it's Merci French Cafe on East Indian School Road, just east of North Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale.

- I used to do fashion photography, mainly in Paris, but I used to travel in New York, or Milan, and Spain, and of course, London, I've been traveling a lot in the U.S. when I used to do pictures and it is a nicer place, strangely, the only place that in everywhere I've been, that I can find that we can stay and we can be something, reinvent, be challenged again.

This is the only place.

We opened Merci because my dreams is to bring something, like in Paris, a simple place where people can reach, go and have a good time.

We just want to share with the people everything that we appreciate the most.

In the United States, we have such amazing like beef, like incredibly amazing beef.

I turned the rib eye into (speaks in foreign language) with a creamy white wine sauce that is reductions of chicken stock.

60 to 70% of your dishes, the sauce.

When you sit outside and then you can see the blue sky that exists almost like 350 days in the year, and then you can drink the coffee from Italy, and then you can eat that pastries from France, it's pretty amazing that you know things can been moved so far, but without affecting anything else around, just because it's free.

This is the, I think, the world that we are in now.

- So, how did you find Merci.

- It's in a strip mall next to a fast food restaurant, next to an electronic store, you would never expect.

So I work at the hospital that's nearby, stopped in one day and said to myself, "What a beautiful restaurant?

Where did this come from?

Who are these people?"

It's romantic, but it's modern, and it's clean, and it's fun, and you're drawn in by the pastry case.

And then once you've had the food, you'll go back again and again.

- And again and again.

So what did you start with?

This is your go-to place.

- This is my go-to place.

It's great for lunch, but also for dinner.

They're only open certain days for dinner, so that is something to be known, you kinda get sad if you really want it and they're not open.

But I started out with the goat cheese and spinach quiche, and it was delicious.

The crust to the quiche wasn't soggy, the pastry was perfect and it comes with a little side salad and they do a homemade ranch dressing.

- That salad was something that was special, like, I did enjoy that.

And the dressing that was on that, and like you said, it's kind of a ranch-y feel to it, but it's better than that.

And you could tell it's definitely not something that's just poured on it from the refrigerator, like, they made that in house and it was fantastic.

But I had the creamy mushroom soup to kind of start off.

Every single spoon I pulled out had mushroom in it.

It was just dense with mushroom, and it was very rich-tasting, very creamy, and very good.

- And it's classic French, creamy mushroom soup, really awesome.

- Well, I went with another French tradition, I went with the French onion soup and I had kind of mixed feelings about it.

The cheese had mostly kind of melted to the bottom and the crouton was a little more soggy than I would like.

I will say the broth was probably the best broth I've ever had.

So I was just wowed by that and just wanted to drink it out of the bowl.

- Well, it can happen.

I've made that soup 100 times, and just sometimes between the perfect in the kitchen and by the time it gets to your table, it can drop.

And because the cheese is so tight and so gummy, it will stick, but it can happen.

At least the broth was delish, right?

- Oh, it was.

- Yeah.

What did you have for entree?

- So my husband and I kinda split a burger and I also had- - I think it's called (speaks in foreign language).

(Nina speaks in foreign language) - And I also had a little kind of open-faced Bri Walnut sandwich.

They don't skimp on ingredients.

The Bri was sick, melted, a little bit of Walnut, I think it had a little bit of honey on it.

It was so much food.

We couldn't finish it all.

It all was delicious.

My husband's burger was, it's simple.

The beef has all of the flavor.

It's well-seasoned, it's- - [Mark] Anything on it that's special?

- [Nina] No, he's a very simple guy- - Oh, so we go straight up.

- Very straight up, don't mess around with the burger.

And the fries, I don't know if anybody tried any of their French fries.

- I didn't, though.

- [Nina] They have a little bit of, I wanna say herb, almost like a pesto just on the top, and they are almost shoestring style and you can't stop eating them.

- Well, that style, that shoestring is (speaks in foreign language).

- That's absolutely.

- So, it's actual French fries, right?

The real stuff.

- Mm-hmm.

- What else did you do?

- Well, I was kind of torn.

I thought I might wanna do something a little more traditional French, like a croque monsieur, or something like that, but instead I decided to go with a special, which was a lobster seafood sandwich.

And it came on this great baguette which was just chockfull of seafood, and it was a very light, like mayonnaise-based sauce that was on it.

So it wasn't a heavy, it wasn't too creamy.

I did notice a little bit of melted butter in the baguette, which just made it perfect.

I mean, it reminded me, just that bread reminded me of being in Paris.

- And Jim, what did you have for entree?

- I had an open-face sandwich.

The bread was fantastic.

I mean, it had that crispy rim on the outside, really soft on the inside, and then layered on that was a pesto.

Then they layered sliced chicken on top of that, there was avocado, cheese, and bacon, and it was just magnificent, it was tasty in every way I looked at it.

- All good things.

- It was, and it also came with that sweet little side salad, too, with the ranch, again.

So I had two little side salads that I ate throughout the meal.

- So, Aleshia, for something sweet, I mean, it's a French cafe, what did you go for?

- Well, that pastry case was just amazing.

I wanted every one and I couldn't decide which, so I completely went the other direction and I got a package of macaroni to go.

And they were the seasonal.

So it was like a red velvet, a pumpkin, maybe a mocha.

- Ooh, I've never had that.

- Oh, and they were delicious.

They were just perfect.

- I had the chef's special.

It was like a puff pastry swan that was very elegant-looking and it was filled with like a beautiful sick pastry cream, but it was lighter, like it had been whipped, and there was like a swan that was all made out of puff pastry and it had a lot of flavor to it.

- Well, it sounds great.

And they make that creme patissiere a little lighter by folding a little whipped cream in it.

You can do that at home, unsweetened whipped cream.

Try it, it works.

If you would like to try Merci, reservations are accepted and the average tab for dinner is $28 without drinks.

Thanks to Nina, Aleshia, and Jim, for sharing their restaurant recommendations.

And don't forget, you can share yours, too.

Go to azpbs.org/checkplease, and nominate your favorite spot.

We may just invite you to be on the show.

You can also be part of the foodie conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, #CheckPleaseAZ.

Join us next time when three new guests will bring us three new restaurants right here on 'Check, Please Arizona'.

I'm Chef Mark Tarbell.

Have a delicious life.

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Outsmarting cancer one patient at a time.

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