carolina's - phx ranch market - lux coffeebar

carolina's
today we were able to hit a few spots (with my memory being jogged & learning new spots from my recent excellent find - the chowhound southwest board http://www.chowhound.com/boards/6/ )

we hit carolina's on 12th & mohave which i hadn't been to in 7+ years. was wonderful. the tortillas are truly amazing. huge & light & thin...amazing.

we ordered the chorizo combo plate, the green chile combo plate, the 2 machaca taco combo plate, a machaca taco withough cheese (for my dairy allergic daughter), 2 fountain drinks (horchata though we sampled the pina & the orange bang), a red beef tamale and a bag of chips for around $23.

the food was great. the tortillas were the highlight. having brought some home they are still great but they were divine there. the hot sauce was very tasty. the chorizo was great - would have loved to have had eggs with it but had to go burrito for that & wanted the rice & beans. rice & beans were also great. heather's green chile was very tasty. really happy with everything.

phoenix ranch market
after that, we stopped by phoenix ranch market on 16th & roosevelt. it was very cool. it reminded us of a mexican take on ranch 99. big supermarket totally boned out ethnic style. some very cool stuff. my favorite part was the outside edges. going counter clockwise, started with very good looking meat including some interesting stuff: multiple tripe bins, huge tongues, a whole cow's head, chorizo of course. then the seafood section. also looked good. had a ceviche bar that looked yummy. then a homemade cheese section. then when you get to the far left side, it's basically a huge food court. some great looking stuff there. huge sheets of pork rind. a very cool agua fresca bar with horchata & all other kinds of fruit juices. the produce looked great as well. ended with a very interesting very sizeable mexican pastry section. very cool over all.

lux
to wrap up the day trip, we went & found lux coffee bar. it's basically across the street from central high. heard about it on the chowhound board. it turns out that pane bianco is right next door, though it was closed. very cool. the place itself was very, very cool. some great art on the walls. built kind of funky industrial. very, very non-chain independent cool. the one knock that i'd read is that some of the staff had attitude. it was 180 degrees from that. my main interaction was with a heavily tatooed, pierced fellow named sammy. he was very, very cool. talked to us a good deal. poured a mean, mean latte & mocha. did it with the cool pro-barrista milk design. the coffee was awesome too. best we've had in az. heather didn't feel hers was quite up to kean coffee (in ca - costa mesa) but close. the owners were out having a baby so sammy said their roasting has been thin lately & they were short on beans to sell. we will definitely be back to get some decaf beans. right before i left, stopped to talk to sammy - he was in the roasting room - and he gave us a free bag of coffee beans. how cool is that! was a great experience overall.