Four Corners: Monthly Dining Reviews from all over the Valley

Phoenix

Malegria Café  

Opened: June 2025

First-time restaurateur Melissa Ruan Serrano is doing groundbreaking work at her all-day fusion eatery on Grand Avenue.

The fun begins in the A.M. with a well-tailored espresso menu and elevated, Latin-leaning breakfasts like the Mexi torta ($15.75), featuring Schreiner’s chorizo and scrambled egg slathered in rich crème verde between two slices of talera bread; tres leches pancakes with mixed berries ($14.75); and cinnamon roll French toast with whipped cream cheese ($14.75), all served out of a short-order window in an adorable street corner shoebox, with patio seating in the back.

The lunch and mid-day menu has similar DNA – around a dozen sandwiches, tortas, wraps and small plates, most derived from Mexican and Guatemalan cooking.

Two dishes, in particular, illustrate Ruan Serrano’s insight and mastery of regional cooking – both culinary deep cuts you might not have seen before in the Valley. The first: pambazo ($15.75), a Veracruzian sandwich featuring chorizo, pickled carrots, microgreens and potato tucked into a bolillo roll, then dunked in a spicy consommé and griddled until the soggy bread crisps and caramelizes, and livened up with cream verde. It’s ridiculously good.

I was also electrified by Guatemalan-style enchiladas ($14.75), surprised to find three open-face tostadas piled with shredded chicken, boiled egg slices and various vegetables, including tart-sweet sliced beets. Can’t remember the last time a dish stimulated the full flavor spectrum so deftly.

Ruan Serrano might be the best thing for fusion Mexican cooking in the Valley since Silvana Salcido Esparza. 

Wild Card: Wash it all down with a selection of agua frescas and homemade fruit refreshers ($4.75-$6.75).

1031 Grand Ave., @malegria.cafe

West Valley 

Lao Ma Dumplings

Opened: March 2026

Dumplings are having a moment in the Valley – a trend dramatically illustrated at Din Tai Fung in Scottsdale, with its storied month-long waiting list.

On the less scene-y end of the spectrum: this munchkin of a Chinese dumpling counter, the latest addition to a pan-Asian food court called Niu Mama, set in a Glendale strip mall.

So, alongside Korean bulgogi bowls, Japanese shaved ice and various fast-casual Asian treats, you can order pan-fried crawfish dumplings ($16 for eight), served open-face and creatively bound together on a caramelized, pancake-like sheet of rice paper. You just tear them off like coupons and pop them into your mouth, the chewy-salty crustaceans, garlic chlie sauce and fresh scallions interplaying nicely with the seared dumpling flesh. Just dreamy.

Also terrific: a starter of cigarette-shaped shrimp wontons ($10) served in a bath of chile oil; and the more orthodox pork and cabbage dumplings ($13 for a dozen), available – like most of the dumplings here – in steamed, pan-fried or deep-fried versions.

Less outstanding: xiao long bao ($16 for six), better known as soup dumplings, which cling stubbornly to their baking cups, thus foiling the hoped-for in-mouth soup explosion.

Still, Lao Ma is a great place to have your own dumpling moment.

Wild Card: Invite a vegetable to the carb-and-animal-protein party with the spicy-tangy cucumber salad ($8)  

4339 W. Glendale Ave. Glendale, 602-520-1175, niumamakitchens.com

East Valley

Kwan Mein  

Opened: Opened: February 2026

Gastronomically speaking, the rich get richer with the arrival of this Shaanxi-style Chinese restaurant in Chandler.

Home to Chou’s Kitchen, Old Town Taste and most of the Valley’s other elite purveyors of regional Chinese cooking, the East Valley has yet another resource for hand-drawn biangbiang noodles, cumin-kissed lamb dishes, stir-fried mung bean street eats and dozens of other rare (to Phoenix) delicacies from Northwestern China.

The menu of soups, dry pots, noodles and dumplings is too vast to sketch here with anything more than a thumbnail, but a good starting point is the Signature Kwan Mein ($19), a bowl of wide, chewy biangbiang noodles (actually, just one, very long noodle, which is fun) topped with a salmagundi of spicy braised pork, bok choy, scallions, chlie crisp and a tangy, saucy tomato-egg scramble. It’s salty, rustic and a joy to eat.

Same goes for the prosaically-named braised beef brisket chili oil with pork intestine ($18), a cold dish in which those terrific noodles are matched with tender morsels of beef, gobs of oily chile flakes and strips of chewy tripe.

A pair of Shaanxi street classics stand out: chao liangfen, also known as stir-fried jelly ($13), mung bean paste cubed and wok’d with chile, peanuts and onion until it acquires a delightful crispy-savory coating; and roujiamo ($8.50), flatbread sandwiches filled with a choice of braised pork; chopped, vinegar-y pork; or the classic Shaanxi cumin-lamb combo.

Can’t we get one of these Downtown? 

Wild Card: The wide-ranging menu also includes some Sichuan standards, like spicy dry-fried chicken with mildly numbing peppercorns ($22).

5055 W. Ray Rd., Chandler, 480-718-5088, kwanmein.com

Scottsdale/North Valley

Copper State Barbecue

Opened: April 2026

Has Valley barbecue evolved to the point that we no longer need to tolerate mediocre product?

All the signs point to it – including the recent opening of this Scottsdale Airpark-area brisket slinger, which would have been instantly hailed as the Valley’s premier smokehouse had it opened 15 years ago. Our 2026 assessment: Maybe not the best, but totally awesome.

Owner-pitmaster Derek Dillon offers brisket in both “wet” (i.e. fatty, for people who love barbecue) and “dry” (i.e. non-fatty, for everybody else) versions, and it’s superlative, boasting both a substantial, salty bark and luscious mouthfeel ($12 for a quarter pound or in various combo plates).

Beef tri-tip, a tricky cut not frequently encountered in Arizona smokehouses, is a revelation coming out of Dillon’s smoker – peppery and lean but tender, with a pleasant, beefy minerality ($10/quarter pound).

Sliced turkey ($9/quarter pound) and baby back ribs ($23/half rack) are similarly on-point, but the wipeout pitch in Dillon’s arsenal might be his housemade Hatch chile sausages ($8/link) – supple, mildly spicy and brimming with nuanced flavor.

Enjoy any of the above in a variety of combo plates ($17-$25) alongside molasses-y baked beans, tasty fried okra nubs and other first-rate sides – and give thanks you’re living in the Valley’s barbecue golden age.

Wild Card: Dillon is experimenting with a beef ribs special on Saturdays. 

14884 N. Pima Rd., 480-284-8027, copperstatebarbecueco.com