If you didn’t already know, Park Plaza does roughly monthly dinner-and-drink pairings with local brewers, wine-makers, and other alcohol-makers, featuring a generous one-night-only set menu caringly paired with drinks for each dish.
Tonight I went to the Plaza—no not that Plaza, the other Plaza: Park Plaza Liquor and Deli (PPLD). Before you get excited that I’m going to spill the beans on their ridiculously delicious Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich and other regular menu items: sorry, I’m not. This review is a write-up of their exclusive, one-night only dinner pairing they did with Perch Brewery on June 9th, 2023. If you didn’t already know, Park Plaza Liquor & Deli does roughly monthly dinner-and-drink pairings with local brewers, wine-makers, and other alcohol-makers, featuring a generous one-night-only set menu caringly paired with drinks for each dish.
I attended the dinner with Perch, which also happened to be the first time PPLD featured a guest chef—Rene Vargas—alongside their in-house masters Rick Garcia and Bobby Bauer. The tldr is, I now have foodie crushes on all three of them.
How the night unfolded, I couldn’t have predicted, but I was very grateful for it all. The first thing I noticed was we weren’t being seated at normal tables; instead, we were seated at German ale-house style long planks, dining with all the other strangers in the place. As a solo diner I was intimidated by this arrangement, having planned to hide in a corner with my notebook silently scrutinizing the scrumptuousness. I found myself foisted to the head of one these ships, forced to forge new friendships or perish. Or at least that’s how a bit of social anxiety in me framed the scene.
Photo by: Zach Hollander
We were seated in a room where the nuns are lighting up—a wink to readers who have seen the artwork on the walls—and our first drink, the reception drink, was a raspberry Gose, pronounced “go-zuh,” and had strong fermented raspberries on the nose. This Hungry Javelina is not a thirsty Javelina, so I won’t get too in-depth on the beverages, but I will mention that this Gose was a beautiful opaque raspberry color that would make your mom’s Casual Corners catalogs from the 90’s blush.
The staff had an excited, eager energy that made me feel welcome and, despite the nearness of new strangers, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be. The staff clearly cared, and that made the anticipation for the upcoming dishes more bubbly. A man came out to let us know the first dish would be out in 15 minutes, a kind move for us minglers looking forward to beginning the comestibles. I felt my belly gurgle with Gose and I realized I made a huge mistake: I wore tight, belted, unforgiving jeans to this multi-course, beer-paired meal.
Then out it came, to my surprise, one of very, very few things I almost never choose to eat: octopus. As a true foodie fanatic, however, you bet I chomped down every bit of it. What I immediately noticed was that the chef plating the dish drew a lovely long thin ladle of the sauce across the edge of the bowl: a tentacle of sauce reaching out, inviting us seafood-wary desert-dwellers to try it. I am an absolute sucker—pun intended—for that kind of layered artistry.
I was afraid of getting that rubbery, bitter octo-bite in the first piece I cut, but I found tender, welcoming, buttery flesh. The chef’s genius move was to pair this relatively exotic feature with familiar classic flavors and ingredients: fingerling potato and pork belly. The dish was the most well-balanced dish of the night, with ingredients like air-fried parsley, a lemon-oregano aioli, and orange-pickled onion. With not too much of any one of these, it was a playful acidity party accompanying the tentacle-tendril and comforting potato. The end tip of the octopus tentacle was perfectly charred, smokey and ash while still giving flavor—it was like eating your favorite seaside campfire, in the best kind of way. I knew I was in for a great night.
Our next dish was paired with Reynold’s Irish Red Ale, a solid choice I thought for the bit of cabbage that would be accompanying the feature meat. This dish was a duck confit cured for 24 hours then slow cooked for another 4-5. Anyone who has been spoiled by the duck meat in Asia will be thrilled to know that someone in America can indeed do it right, and they’re right here in Arizona. The crisp-skinned duck came with a beet puree that had been distilled into a concentrated portion, and you could taste all of that beety brightness without the more dull dirt flavors that come with a straight (also delicious) cooked beet. For my Julia Childs fans, you’ll be vicariously delighted to know that these maniacs mixed that beet puree with butter—God bless them. The cooked cabbage it came with was a light enough serving that it featured as a taste rather than a trudge. Like all the dishes on the menu, there were multiple secret ingredients, one of which was anise.
By this time, the fermented yeasties were in full effect and our end of the table was smoothly chatting and chuckling, sharing our respective stories of how we arrived to Prescott. I was lucky enough to be seated with a Prescott-native couple, an increasing rarity in this apparently 80:20 transplants-to-locals town. I was moved by their impassioned plea to transplants that we just slow down and enjoy and take time to be nice to one another and to appreciate the beauty that is here. One native likened the manner of transplants to an American tourist being arrogant enough to expect the local country’s culture to simply adapt to what the American is used to. She said, “You just don’t do that. You go to a new country or a new culture and you adapt to their language and their ways. But I don’t see the transplants adapting.” What I took away from our conversation, is that it’s not some quaint cultural artifact that you look at through a zoo cage or like some anthropology exhibit in a museum. Prescott is a way of life, it’s a way of community and it’s here in front of you right now, and it’s up to you to participate in it and contribute to it in order for it to continue.
A transplant myself, I am humbled to shut up and pause and truly take in the delicious moments in front of us, and appreciate where I am. And the timing of the evening sets you up to do this: an absolute haven for sincere food-lovers, the Park Plaza dinner pairings take a full 3 hours for just 4 dishes. I could not be more grateful to have found a foodie community that lets their diners slow down, and enjoy, and take time to be nice to one another. This is a community meal.
With unanimous agreement that the duck confit—which was a full entree’s serving—was our favorite so far, we can’t believe that the 72-hour short rib that came out next still looked and smelled so enticing when it arrived. I found it a bit too intensely salty, but still delicious—and anyway, it’s these chefs’ creative use of elemental salt that has me loving them. The strong rub was hefty enough in flavor to handle the milk stout pairing Perch gave us, a remarkably sweet brew that had another diner agreeing we could drink it for dessert. The short ribs came with handmade ravioli pouches of edamame and ricotta. I swear you could taste the love in them. The edges on mine were undercooked, but come on, who cares when you are eating the blessing that is handmade pasta doused in yuzu butter? Seeing “crab and ginger” on the menu, I looked for the crab and found it, gobstoppingly, in another absurdly delicious pureed sauce on the plate. I am so excited to find dishes of this complexity in our sweet town, and can’t believe how lucky we all are sometimes.
Our final dish, having to face already full and overly satisfied bellies, was a basil panna cotta fit for even picky urban eaters. I think this dish could hold its own in a major metropolis. There is a stunning, noticeable silence across the entire dining room as everyone wondered what the heck they just took a bite of. “Basil? But sweet? With balsamic strawberries? …Do I like it?” I imagine they were all thinking. And the answer was a resounding, “Yes!” There were multiple people who joyfully muttered, “oh my gosh”—or perhaps I was just hearing myself in surround-sound for an ecstatic moment. This was my favorite dish for its combined simplicity and creativity: so few ingredients, but firmly creative in each. I am glad I couldn’t finish it tonight, because that means I get to eat it again in the morning. A short plug for the Tangereenie Weenie that Perch paired this dessert with: it tasted like actually fresh from-a-tree-out-back tangerines, not like factory-pumped, mystery “tangerine natural flavor.” They’re doing something right.
In a reversal of the adage, you need to be the change you wish to see in the world, for Prescott: you need to be the non-change you wish you see in your Prescott world. What I mean is, do you love the lack of road rage and general lack of haste and hustle? Then you need to calm down when you drive, and leave the haste and hustle behind. As the natives at my table revealed the shady building practices purported to be going on in some of the newer developments, I wonder how much greed plays into all the changes they see. Is Prescott here only for us to make money off of, or is it for us to make community out of? Because one of those has to come to the top of your list, and it’s up to each of us to choose which. Park Plaza Liquor and Deli, with their slow-dining, curated, and creative community approach to culinary events, is making a clear case for the latter, and as a transplant who wants to adapt to the local culture, I am honored to support their endeavor.
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