Author: Jess Harter

🎲 Forks & Boards – a large restaurant and bar attached to Gamers Guild, one of the country’s largest gaming stores – has opened on the northeast corner of Bell Road and 19th Avenue in north Phoenix. The menu features salads,

🍨 Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream, a Youngstown, Ohio-based chain, opens its ninth Valley store today next to AJ’s Fine Foods on the southeast corner of Scottsdale and Lone Mountain roads in Cave Creek. Approximately four dozen flavors – such as blueberry

🌮 Blanco Cocina & Cantina, the Sonoran-style Mexican concept from restaurateur Sam Fox, opens its fifth Valley location – and the first in the West Valley – today at The Park at 83 near the southeast corner of the Loop

🍦 Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, a Columbus, Ohio-based chain that made its Arizona debut last year in Old Town Scottsdale, celebrates the opening of its second Valley scoop shop at the Scottsdale Quarter from 7-11 p.m. today with free scoops

🍩 Randy’s Donuts, a famed Los Angeles doughnut shop that has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, has opened its third Valley shop – all in the past six months – near the southeast corner of Queen Creek

🌮 Fire & Braids, which has done Mexican food pop-ups at Pinnacle Brewing for several months, has set up a semi-permanent trailer next to the north Scottsdale brewery’s biergarten. The seasonal menu currently features corn masa sopes topped with Michoacán-style

🇰🇷 Central BBQ House, a five-year-old Korean barbecue restaurant in south Phoenix, has opened a second location at The Lakes in south Tempe. It takes over the lakeside building formerly home to The Watershed (and, before that, Charlie Brown’s) on

🍔 After nine months of construction delays, Badlands Bar & Grill finally has opened in Queen Creek. The American elevated comfort food restaurant closed its original Tempe location in January and planned to reopen that same month in the former

💐 Eighteen-year-old entrepreneur Dylan Capshaw has opened a third Valley location of Stemistry, his unique concept that’s part coffee shop and part flower bouquet bar. It’s located in the Road Runner apartments near the southwest corner of McDowell Road and 68th

🍝 North Italia, the upscale-casual Italian restaurant that Fox Restaurant Concepts launched in 2002 in Tucson, opens its fourth Valley location today at The Park at 83 near the southeast corner of  the Loop 101 and Bell Road in Peoria.

🍺 Mother Tucker’s Tavern, a vintage dive bar-style hangout, has opened in the former Bevvy space on the northwest corner of Saddlebag Trail and Shoeman Lane in Old Town Scottsdale. A streamlined menu offers burgers, sandwiches, tacos, and salads. Like

🍩 Creampuff Donuts, a pastry and coffee shop from Pretty Decent Concepts (Wren & Wolf, Chico Malo, Trophy Room), has opened on the southeast corner of Buchanan and First streets in downtown Phoenix. Chef Lucia Alferez’s menu features a rotating