Zest, Phoenix, AZ

After a long, long day of non-stop meetings, three of the solicitors from the D.C. office and I ventured out to dinner at a place called Zest Spirited Dining, another of the highly recommended new restaurants from the Arizona Republic review. Our young environmental lawyer even dressed "up" for the occasion, throwing a long-sleeved dress shirt over his t-shirt and jeans, and wearing black dress shoes to replace his highly decrepit Birkenstocks.

Zest is a dark but very open restaurant with the kitchen fully open to the main dining room and a bar by the main entry. The walls were covered by a temporary display of striking neo-Dadaistic art by a local painter. The menu is surprisingly simple, with just one page of appetizers and one page of entrees, and that was it.

Two of us ended up ordering appetizers, but everyone shared. One of the dishes was the house specialty, an eggplant cheesecake, a tender, cheesy, custardy dish served on a pool of roasted garlic tomato sauce. The other dish was the grilled scallops, with the scallops dusted in Jamaican "jerk" seasonings before being seared on the grill. While I like seared seafood, those who prefer their food thoroughly cooked may wish to specify that to the kitchen ahead of time. The scallops came with a tomatillo chipotle tartar sauce (tasty!) and a cilantro cabbage slaw with red chili oil and avocado. We washed all of these down with some very interesting beers. Mine was an "orange blossom ale" with a distinct, but delicate, orange water taste that made the beer seem almost sweet, and it had a pleasant orangy aftertaste that wasn't cloying or overpowering at all.

While we waited for our entrees, a pleasant young woman was bright magenta hair surprised us when she rolled a cart up to the table an announced she was there to make our salads. Turns out the salad course came with the entrees. She started with a base of assorted young greens in a citrusy vinaigrette (a salute to the restaurant's name??), then asked if we wanted any gorgonzola crumbles, dried cranberries, pecans, or orange wedges. The combination of all made quite a nice salad.

There were so many intriging entrees it had been hard for us to choose just four. Our vegetarian almost got the eggplant ratatouille, but chose the angel hair pasta instead. He seemed to like it, but I noted that it came with a rather thin garlicky balsamic vinegar sauce in great quantity which I'm not so sure I personally would have liked. One guy got the panko-breaded pork chop, another of the house specialties. "Panko" is the word for a special kind of Japanese bread crumbs. That dish came with mashed potatoes and a cranberry-orange chutney, and when queried about the entree, his considered analysis of the dish was that it was "good." I love verbose attorneys. The other guy selected the ahi tuna, which was seared on the grill with fresh cilantro, then served on a bed of lime-scented pearl couscous and topped with quite a lot of the tomato-pineapple pico de gallo. He said the tuna itself was very good, but it was rather overpowered by the pico de gallo.

I had a harder time picking a main course. There was a filet mignon topped with gorgonzola cheese with roasted sweet potatoes that looked yummy at another table. Osso bucco--one of my favorites--was also on the menu. I finally decided upon the domestic lamb shank. After all, the Navajo Indian Reservation takes up a huge block of the northeastern corner of Arizona, and sheep is what the Navajos herd. It was a fabulous choice. An absolutely enormous lamb shank had been wrapped in grape leaves and braised in a Syrah wine and tomato sauce. The lamb was fork-tender, juicy, and full of flavor, and clearly it was lamb rather than the "young sheep" that so many places try to sneak in. The lamb rested on a plate full of fusilli (corkscrew) pasta cooked to a perfect al dente that had been tossed in a delicious cream sauce with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, fennel (adding an interesting crunch and a faint anise taste), and artichoke hearts with a grape and feta cheese relish on top. I was totally stuffed, but the pasta was so good, I forced myself to eat every last piece.

Regretfully, none of us ordered dessert. I thought maybe we'd get one single dessert to split four ways, but everyone was too full to commit to the decision. I think all of us were still a bit jet-lagged, too (at this point, our bodies thought it was after midnight).

Everyone said Zest is a place they'll try again on future trips to Phoenix. I'll give Zest four stars.