As its name implies, the menu at Valentine, an understated mix of comfy cocktail lounge, innovative restaurant and urban hip bar located near the Melrose Curve, is something of a love letter – this one to the culinary roots that run deep in the Arizona soil.
Valentine restaurant owners Blaise Faber, left, and Chadwick Price, and in the background, chef Donald Hawk, left, with Brenton Cassey and Michael Swift, serve up Arizona-infused creations including a little gem salad, tagliarini with elote and ribeye steak with tepary beans, along with a negroni cocktail with yellow Hopi watermelon (photo by Marjorie Rice).
It’s also a reference to Arizona’s birthday as a state, which was on Valentine’s Day in 1914. In fact, owners Blaise Faber and Chadwick Price, both native Arizonans, originally thought about calling it 1914.
The building houses an intriguing blend of retail and restaurant under one roof. Patrons of the Modern Manor furniture store in the back have to traverse the lounge area to enter.
Modern Manor’s owners began renovating the 60-year-old dry cleaner’s store in 2017 and opened the furniture store a year later. It took another two years to finish Valentine.
Price and Faber worked more than two decades at various Valley and California restaurants before striking out on their own.
“Originally we thought we’d just use part of the space, as a bar,” Price said, “but we decided to take the plunge and take it all.”
On a recent midweek afternoon, several patrons were scattered about, some peering into laptops and sipping cappuccinos as others dawdled over drinks and chatted with friends. It’s that kind of place – made for lingering.
“We wanted to have it fit the neighborhood,” Price said, “a place where people can hang out and relax.”
It’s also a place where Price and Faber can indulge their passion for creating a dining and drinks menu that reflects their fascination with the state’s cultural, culinary and cultivation history.
Cocktails and an extensive wine and spirits list (14 agave tequilas alone) have pride of place, especially in The Vault, a second bar housed behind a thick steel door in the original storage vault for furs owned by the luxe ladies of Phoenix. The Vault is open only on Friday and Saturday nights. The drinks menu includes libations based on the 5 C’s of Arizona’s economy that every schoolchild learned back in the day: citrus, copper, cattle, climate and cotton (pistachio, Oloroso sherry, lemon and egg white in the latter cocktail); and the state’s six ecosystems: desert, chaparral, forest, tundra, woodland and grassland. The mixtures blend spirits with Arizona-grown flavorings – think negroni made with gin and a base of Hopi yellow watermelon and you get the picture.
But don’t miss a chance to dine from a menu that constantly changes with the seasons and the owners’ latest discoveries. Chef Donald Hawk leads a team that is encouraged to express themselves and create new offerings, with help from Price and Faber. The result could be called Modern Southwest, including indigenous ingredients that were cultivated here centuries ago, some of them happily coming back after nearly disappearing.
“Look how special tepary beans and Hopi watermelon are, when they were essentially bred out several years ago,” Faber said. “They have so much more character and flavor and sense of place.”
Price said the Southwest is a “gastronomical empire.”
“We had the first cultivated crops in North America,” he said.
Arizona’s diverse combination of climate and soils has inspired unending possibilities for experimentation.
The fare stretches from coffees and pastries starting at 7 a.m.; to a brunch and dinner menu with such Arizonainfused dishes as a standout housemade tagliarini tossed with butter, elote, pecorino, crispy charred corn and flaked chile arbol.
Recently, the offerings included a Valentine take on good old steak and ranch beans: Niman Ranch ribeye with tepary beans simmered with housecured pork belly, served with flour tortillas and a compound butter with huitlacoche. The latter, pronounced weetla-coh-cheh, is a fungus that grows on corn and also is called corn smut, or, more appetizingly, Mexican truffle. It adds a wonderful mushroomy/umami flavor and richness.
Amid all these delectable forays are more familiar favorites such as burgers and roast chicken, “but done on our terms,” Price said. For instance, it’s a three-day process to get the chicken from butcher to plate. The little gem salad is a customer favorite, a simple blend of heritage greens, sunflower dressing, crisp sunchokes and cotija cheese.
They also make many of their own tinctures and extracts for the cocktails, Faber said, and jars of the multicolored concoctions are on display in the restaurant.
“For summer we’re working on cold drinks for the coffee menu and serving summer drinks like that Hopi yellow watermelon cocktail,” Faber said.
Valentine opened the day after Thanksgiving last year, smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Price and Faber and their team soldiered on, obtaining permission from the city to put tables in the spacious drive-through area in front of the restaurant. It won’t be a surprise if outdoor dining there reappears as a permanent fixture.
Valentine is open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays at 4130 N. Seventh Ave. To learn more, call 602-612-2961 or visit www.valentinephx.com.
