Author: sharper

Visually impressive, the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown is worth a visit.  Sleek and chic, the hotel boasts 31 floors of meeting spaces and guest rooms, amazing city views, and tons of amenities.

Unfortunately, we didn’t find that their signature restaurant, The District, to be one of their bragging points.

It is unfortunate because the restaurant is stunning in its appointments.   This is a place where you should want to host your most important lunch meetings, tie up loose ends of business agreements over cocktails and appetizers, or have lingering cocktails, lunches or dinners with great family and friends.

I’ve visited the hotel for a few conferences, and have to say the place is a great meeting place. While this blog isn’t about conferences or meeting spaces, I offer this note because the food and service at the conferences I’ve attended were solid – hot meals delivered on time, with great service, and pretty delicious at that.

So, how the Sheraton couldn’t get the good-food-and-great-service bit down to a science in their signature restaurant was a complete conundrum when we lunched at the place.

When we arrived at The District, there was more than ample seating space available.  In fact, the restaurant was probably only about 30 percent full.  Yet, the hostess told us we might be better off sitting in the bar area for quicker service.  Still, we wanted to sit by a large window area in the restaurant–proper to watch the Downtown foot traffic–and so were seated where we liked.

That was the best part of the service we received at The District.  It went downhill from there.

The hotel promotes the restaurant as an “American kitchen” with a “delicious seasonal menu showcasing artisan products and sustainably farmed produce from local growers and merchants.” 

Helen starts the lunch off with an odd comment. 

“What’s up with these placemats?” Helen asks.  “These rubbery placemats look like tangled hair pulled from a bathroom drain,” she added.

Ann and I laugh out loud.

“I mean really, how on earth can these hairy looking things be cleaned once people have eaten their food served over them,” she continued.  Interesting point. (I should note our placemats were clean, and the entire restaurant sparkles.)

As far as the menu goes, The District offers American fare – which seems like staid and true “bar food” fare – but here, trumped-up with fancy extras.

Helen orders a salad that sounds yummy, with fabulous basil vinaigrette.  Ann orders a burger, medium-well.  I order the fish and chips.

Here is what ruined our lunch experience – it took a total of 40 minutes from the time we placed our order to the time it arrived.  Mind you, the place was not packed with diners, it was not over-burdened by large tables – it was NOT BUSY.  We complained at least two times about the lag in our service, with promises that our food was just about to be served, yet to no avail.

When the food finally arrives, it comes in a ton of dishes.  There are so many dishes on our table, it makes eating a navigating experience.

Beyond the architecture of dishes housed on our table, Helen’s salad is mediocre, at best, she says. The dressing has little basil flavor, if at all.  Ann’s burger is pretty good.  The fish and chips are not worthy of ever ordering again.  The batter has a burnt flavor and the fish is completely ‘mush’ on the inside.

While we complained to our waitress about the slow service, there seems to be a real lack of empathy.  Yet, we are met with a manager at the end of our lunch who offers us a free dessert. Pressed for time to get on with our other appointments of the day, we can’t indulge.  In the end, they offer a small discount on our tab.

Our experience may have been a singular, unfortunate situation.  Maybe their service is generally efficient, the basil vinaigrette rocks, and the fish and chips have an amazing golden, crispy batter encasing fresh, delicious and flakey fish inside.

But first impressions hit hard.  The Crazies and I have decided that we will make a visit again soon just to give it a second chance.  “I’m not holding my breath,” says Ann. 

This place has all the trappings of a great place to hang, dine, and drink, if they could only up the ante on service and quality. Kind of like they do for the huge conferences…

Since my initial blogs on Crazy Good Phoenix Food, posted when this new site was launched several months ago, the “Crazies” and I haven’t lunched as regularly as we are oft inclined.  The holidays kept us busy with menu planning for our own tables. 

If you are not up to speed on the “Crazies” you can check out our older postings under the “blog” section in this Web site [Editor’s Note: Here and Here, for instance].  There, you can get a brief history on the “Crazies” and a little glimpse into their personas.

We did manage a few lunches over the holiday season, including a visit to Tom’s Restaurant and Tavern, a great joint in downtown Phoenix that has been serving since 1929. 

Over lunch, we enjoyed some fun discussion about the early days of the Arizona Club.

Consider yourself served…

Tom’s Restaurant and Tavern

This longtime Phoenix standby has had a few locations since it originally started in the late 1920’s. It exists to this day, serving many of the mainstay recipes that it has offered from its humble beginnings.

The restaurant was opened in 1929 by Tom Higley at 136 W. Adams St, which had previously housed the city morgue.  By the late 1980’s, the restaurant was located to One Renaissance Square. 

From the beginning, Tom’s has attracted Arizona politicians, attorneys and dealmakers. Now celebrating its 80th anniversary, it is a place worth checking out, if not for the food, then to take in all the photographs of decades’ worth of leaders, lawmakers and mover-and-shakers that have graced the restaurant.

The service here has always been solid. This day is no different. Our server is friendly, prompt, helpful and polite. 

Tom’s fare is mostly diner and comfort food – the standard burgers, melts, Rueben’s, and more – with “vanilla” salads and sandwiches, plus some requisite health-conscientious food for good measure.

At our lunch visit, the Crazies and I enjoy one of the old standbys – Tom’s Spaghetti Red, a concoction of angel hair pasta topped with red chili and a garlic toast on the side.  It is good enough, but nothing to come back for, these days, anyway. 

We also shared the fish and chips on our visit.  This serving is not what it used to be – not crisp at all and not much flavor.  The tartar sauce works overtime on this dish to give it some kick. Malt vinegar and lemon are put to hard labor to make the dish more palatable.

“Daddy was a fan of the Spaghetti Red, but it was the burger with pickled onions that he raved about,” said Helen.  “The pickled onions have been off the menu forever, but I think they should bring them back.”

Anyway, the somewhat-par-food -withstanding, we enjoy a nice chat while we lunch.  From the restaurant, you can see the original Arizona Club, which had its origins atop the Luhrs Building, located at 11 West Jefferson.

The Luhrs Building was built at a cost of $553,000 by local businessman George Luhrs and opened on April 1, 1924. The building’s four upper floors housed the facilities of the Arizona Club, including dining rooms, lounges, a library, and bedrooms for club members. The ground floors were leased as office space. When the Arizona Club moved out of the Luhrs Building in 1971, the upper floors were also converted to offices.

The Luhrs Building is faced with brown brick, with elaborate marble ornamentation on the uppermost two floors.  The Luhrs Tower, adjacent to the Luhrs Building, was built five years later.  A magnificent tribute to Art Deco architeture, located at First Avenue and Jefferson Street, it was considered a “skyscraper” in its day, with 11 floors and a height of 185 feet.  The Crazies’ father [see photo] officed his insurance business in this building for several years.

Back to the Arizona Club.

“All the men of establishment in town went to the Arizona Club,” says Ann.  “At that time, the Phoenix Country Club was considered more of a ‘family’ place, but the Arizona Club was where the men congregated.”

According to the Crazies, in its earliest days, the top floor of the Arizona Club housed a dining room. “It was a great big place with huge picture windows looking on the east and west – it was very elegant,” said Helen.  “It had a big ‘round’ table that the men joined each other for lunch — sort of the ‘old guard table’.  It was considered prestigious to sit at the table and I remember Daddy always sat there with lots of other old-timers,” Helen added.

“We celebrated more than a few family events at the Arizona Club,” said Ann.  “We had great fun at my son’s 13th birthday party at the Club,” she said.  “And we had a huge family reunion at the club the Thanksgiving before I was married,” said Helen.

Another floor of the original Arizona Club were the “men’s quarters” explains Helen. “It was a place for men to live and ONLY men were allowed there,” she says. “It was mostly bachelors or men who had been recently divorced.  Plenty of movers and shakers lived there.”

“Yes, and lots of men-of-position would live there during the summer when their families moved to cooler locations to escape the heat,” says Ann.

“You have to remember in those days, most homes didn’t have refrigeration, or air-conditioning as you might call it, so many families essentially closed up their homes for the summer,” Helen said. “Women and children would leave for cooler climates in June and return when school started in September.  The men would take up living at the men’s quarters at Arizona Club.  It was much like a fraternity house – plenty of camaraderie, card games, and drinking,” she added.

“When Daddy was older and not well, we would still drive him almost daily to the Arizona Club to enjoy a meal, but by then it had moved to the First National Bank (now the Wells Fargo Building),” Helen said.  “He still ate at the round table with some of the old-timers and some of the younger members at the table kindly looked after him,” she said.  “Fond times for our dad and great memories for us.”

The great conversation this day rounds out the average food for a nice lunch experience.

Next week, we visit The District at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel.