Food Porn: Arizona

This will be the first in a three-part series showing off all the wonderful food I had the opportunity to eat while on vacation.

About a week into the furlough, I headed out west for a previously scheduled vacation. My first stop was to Arizona where I had grand plans of seeing the Grand Canyon before heading to Scottsdale for the wedding of an old friend from high school. Due to the powers that be in the government, the Grand Canyon portion was not possible, but I did get to spend some more time in Sedona, which was absolutely gorgeous. It was great to get away from the madness of DC, though the conversation often found its way back to what was happening back home, be it from chance encounters with tourists who had recently come back from DC or for the countless numbers of people invading Sedona during the week, since their dreams of a Grand Canyon experience had also been cut short.

While in Sedona, I ate a lot of Southwestern food. And by that, I mean a ton of tacos. This trend continued in San Francisco, but the best were in Sedona. My first night there, I managed to squeeze into a spot at the bar of Elote, a very popular restaurant slightly set apart from the tourist traps of the main drag. It had a pretty solid reputation on TripAdvisor, so I decided to give it a go. I started off with the signature elote, a Mexican corn and cheese dish, which they served as a dip here. I've made something similar to this before on the blog, and have had it at Estadio, but this was by far the best. I of course washed it down with a margarita.

Next up was the pork carnitas. This dish was slow-roasted pork shoulder with a tomato sauce and served with guacamole and rice with beans. While it sounds simple, the flavor was just amazing. The meat was so tender, it just fell through the prongs of the fork. The picture really doesn't do it justice. Looking back, I'm kicking myself for not buying the cookbook from this restaurant...I'm sure it's amazing.

The next day I continued to eat more tacos, but not without lunchtime beer samples from the Oak Creek Brewery. Now that's what I call a power lunch.