Restaurants in Phoenix (and Apache Junction)

For each town that we stay in long enough to learn about, we are going to include restaurant reviews and comments about various other retail establishments. We enjoy checking out new places, and maybe others can benefit from our experiences. The ratings here are 1=We probably won’t go back. 2=Good, but not great. 3=Better than average, worth returning. 4=Very tasty, definitely going back there. 5=Food from Heaven.


Restaurants		 Name Comments
Arbys, Burger King, McDonalds, Peter Piper Pizza, Subway, Taco Bell, El Pollo Loco No rating

They are all pretty much standard. HOWEVER, if you have never eaten at an El Pollo Loco, we can recommend it as a pretty fair burrito.
Filibertos SpoerleinsSpoerleinsSpoerleins 1/2
This chain covers Phoenix, Tucson, and some locations in California. They sell the very best burritos and Mexican food in the area. Most of the restaurants have an eat-in area, but a few are strictly drive up. For $2.75 you get a gigantic burrito (almost too much for one meal). For $5.00 you get Super Nachos which comes in square styrofoam clamshell that holds more meat, beans, guacamole, cheese, sour cream, and sauce than you can scoop up with the chips you get. We haven’t eaten anything from there that wasn’t good.
Arizona Joe’s Spoerleins
Just up the street from us at the new location, the parking lot of this place is always full at dinner time. They advertise Broasted Chicken as their specialty. We were curious, so we went. It turns out that broasted (at this restaurant) means deep fried under pressure. (Just like KFC.) It was not especially tasty and the place smelled like an old ashtray. (Smoking is not prohibited.)
Mining Camp Restaurant SpoerleinsSpoerleinsSpoerleins
This restaurant is right across from the Goldfield Mining Town. They serve family-style meals that include all-you-can-eat bbq beef ribs, baked chicken with stuffing and gravy, ham, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, coleslaw and baked beans. For dessert, they serve chocolate chip cookies. The food is pretty good and you get plenty too. Our only complaint is the benches they use for seats don’t have backs so they aren’t very comfortable. But it is worth the visit for $15.00.
Grocery Cart
Groceries		 Frys, Bashas, and Safeway are the closest. As usual, Frys is the biggest store, Safeway has the friendliest people, Albertsons is fairly expensive (but carries some of our important staples), and Bashas has more obscure items. We don’t shop Abco very often so we don’t know much about them. In addition, in the Phoenix area you can find AJ’s which is more of a gourmet specialty store, and Trader Joe’s which carries unique foods.
Wild Oats Wild Oats is the largest health food store we have seen in any state. There is one in Tucson, and several more in Phoenix, as well as a few in other states.
Sam’s and Costco We used to be members at Sam’s, but since we are closer to Costco now, we signed up at Costco.
Other Misc Stores Malls The two largest shopping malls close to us are Superstition Springs and Fiesta. Several miles further on is the Arizona Mills outlet mall which is where we go when we need most things.


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