Mezcal, Phoenix, AZ

Mezcal is touted as one of the "Five new restaurants not to forget about" by The Arizona Republic, Phoenix's main daily newspaper. Mezcal is nestled on the edge of Kierland Commons, a shopping center filled with very expensive stores and other restaurants. The restaurant has a very modern look to it, with sleek lines and darker desert colors. Art on the walls is large, simple, abstract, and limited. Mini-halogen spotlights float around the room on exposed wire tracks. In the center of the room, a huge spiral staircase goes around a series of large, rough-hewn lodge poles to Cobalt, Mezcal's bar. Cobalt targets a younger demographic and features a pianist after restaurant hours. Meanwhile, I noticed that the background music being played on the sound system in the dining room was largely pop hits from the early 1980s.....not exactly targeting a "young" demographic!

Menu items place great emphasis on "eco-friendly" food items, from organic vegetables to line-caught fish to antibiotic-free beef. The waiter seemed a bit annoyed with me when, after his eco-friendly litany of how humanely they killed their animals, I remarked that if I wanted to be truly eco-friendly, I'd be vegan, wouldn't I? The wine list, which was heavy on the California vineyards, also included several lables using organic grapes.

Dinner looked like it was going to be a pricey undertaking (especially on a $47 per day per diem, and on our "travel day," we only get 3/4ths of that!). with most entrees falling in the mid-$20 range and everything a la carte, so I opted for the four course prix fixe "summer tasting menu" and a wine flight with three half-pours, which I let the waiter select.

For the starter, I opted for the Big Sky bruschetta instead of the chicken and brie quesadilla. The bruschetta's toast was surprisingly thick and thoroughly dried before being "rubbed" with a layer of Stilton cheese and topped with diced tomatoes, red onions, garlic, and capers in a balsamic vinegar reduction. The bruschetta was tasty, but very hard to eat due to the thickness of the toast and the quantity of topping made eating with fingers messy. The four bruschette were arranged on a large plate with a huge mound of dressed assorted field greens in the middle. This was curious, as the only available second courses were salads, rather than soups. Wine for this course was a 2003 Bonterra Viognier, from Mendocino County, California. It was a nice, full white with a lot of spiciness that stood up well to the tomatoes and Stilton, and it was probably my favorite wine of the three.

My second course was the salad of baby organic field greens and herbs with pico de gallo, queso fresco, and aged red wine vinaigrette, which I thought would be more interesting than the alternative Arizona version of a Caesar salad. The salad was huge (enough for two!) and was heavily sprinkled with little cubes of freshly made Mexican white cheese. The pico de gallo had quite a kick to it, and its jalapeño content really overpowered the accompanying wine. That wine was a 2002 Markham Merlot from Napa Valley, and it was a classic example of an insubstanial merlot that wasn't even exciting when drunk by itself but, sadly, probably very popular with the masses as a cocktail party beverage.

I was excited about my main course, the highly-talked about Mezcal paella. The alternative choice was a lime-marinated flank steak. The paella was accompanied by a 2003 Wild Horse Pinot Noir from the Central Coast of California. It was a very nice pinot noir, but this particular vintage was not sufficiently acid or tannic to compete with the full flavors and spiciness of the paella. The dish included Florida white shrimp (which were very spicy!), half a dozen Penn Cove blue mussels in the shell, Chinese scallops, Monterray Bay calamari, Maverick Ranch chorizo (also a bit spicy), roasted Maverick Ranch free range chicken, and an unusual quantity of French-style haricots verts, plus the usual herbs, onions, sweet peppers, and saffron with rice. The mound of paella was presented with a large sprig of fresh rosemary stuck in the center like a proud flag. This course was very very good, but I can't say that I was ecstatic about it.

Another thing I should probably mention is the complimentary bread provided with the meal. They served a lovely herbed foccacia that was delicious when warm, but totally nondescript when it got cold (so eat it warm—it's good). It came with an unusual sauce of tomatoes and sweet red peppers whipped into an aioli with just a touch of olive oil.

Dessert was an enormous, quadruple serving of bread pudding topped with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and a slightly Jack Daniels-infused (I actually couldn't taste it) creme anglaise, then dusted with cinnamon. The pudding was mixed with chocolate chips that I couldn't quite tel if they were cooked in or added prior to serving, or both. It had a custardy texture with a few spots that seemed undercooked, and on the whole, I was not impressed with the dessert. I ate less than half of it, and possibly should have opted for the alternative menu dessert, a chocolate gelato.

On the whole, Mezcal is a nice restaurant with a lot of potential, but I have to say that I was just not wowwed by it. The paella was excellent, but the other courses seemed rather ordinary and the dessert was merely mediocre. Similarly, the wine list was interesting, but not terribly fabulous, or even particularly geared to the menu. Out of five stars, I would give Mezcal a 3.5.