Keon Salehizadeh, left, and Jeremy Pacheco have launched a new Mediterranean-influenced menu at The Genuine in which the property’s wood-fired oven plays a prominent role (photo by Darryl Webb for North Central News).

Good chefs like to play with their food, and for The Genuine’s Jeremy Pacheco and Keon Salehizadeh, it’s all in a day’s work.

The Genuine, remodeled and renamed from The Vig a couple of years ago, is a swank yet welcoming dining spot in a former bank building in the culinary beehive buzzing around 16th Street and Bethany Home Road. The interior boasts a wood-fired oven that plays a role in most of the dishes on the menu, and a huge back bar with a selection of spirits that includes top-rated tequilas among the mix. There’s also an indoor firepit and a patio on 16th Street that’s shielded from the traffic with a thick shrubbery wall.

In addition to the restaurant, the building is headquarters for Genuine Concepts, which has 11 total restaurants, including six Vig locations, The Genuine, The McMillan Bar & Kitchen (in Flagstaff), Campo Italian Eatery & Bar, The Womack and The Little Woody. More Vigs are on the way, with one opening this spring in Mesa.

“The idea when we did the remodel and the rebranding was to use it as our R&D restaurant,” Pacheco said. “I cook in this restaurant the most, and it is our chance to try things out and see if they might make it onto our Vig menu from there.

“What’s cool here is we just have fun.”

Currently, Pacheco is working with Salehizadeh, named executive chef for The Genuine a couple of months ago, on developing new menu offerings that take a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern direction, reflecting Salehizadeh’s roots.

“My dad’s from Iran and my mother’s Mexican,” Salehizadeh said. “My grandfather owned a restaurant in Iran, and he used to cook for the Shah of Iran before the revolution. It’s in our blood.”

His father moved to the States for college and stayed, taking a career direction away from cooking, but for Salehizadeh, cooking has been a lifelong passion.

“I couldn’t get it out of my head,” he said. He graduated from Cordon Bleu here, then worked with Fox Restaurant Concepts for several years before joining the Genuine group.

The new menu includes wood oven-roasted halloumi with tomato chutney and grilled country bread; whipped black pepper feta with house-made pita, spiced carrots and herb salad; meze salad with crispy chickpeas, cucumber, tomato, red onion, herbs, lemon-yogurt and pomegranate vinaigrette; spaghetti alla chitarra with confit tomatoes, garlic, parmesan, basil and parsley; tandoori half chicken with spiced carrots, roasted fingerling potatoes, herb salad and charred lemon butter; and spiced chocolate pudding with vanilla whipped cream and a churro.

The new menu, which launched right before Christmas, includes longtime customer favorites that Pacheco said “we couldn’t take off,” including luscious lamb and beef meatballs with mint, tzatziki, preserved tomatoes, parsley, mint, pickled red onion and black pepper feta from Crow’s Dairy, served with pita. For those who haven’t had them puffy and fresh from the oven, the pitas are a revelation – not like the days-old supermarket versions, which tend to split apart.

Also: red and golden beet salad with whipped feta, arugula, citrus vinaigrette and pistachios; bucatini made in-house, with applewood smoked bacon and peas, topped with a poached egg so the molten yolk acts as a sauce; chicken wings trimmed to lollipops, cured with a dry rub, confited then blistered in the wood oven and served over gorgonzola melted in the individual cast-iron pot and served with shaved carrots and a Calabrian chile hot sauce developed in The Genuine’s kitchen.

Favorite pizzas also will remain, including prosciutto pizza with a white sauce, grilled red onions, arugula, rosemary honey and pistachios.

In addition to the updated menu, guests at The Genuine will find more wine/spirits pairings on the calendar, along with drink specials, Pacheco said.

“It’s a chance to play with flavors and gets us out of the day-to-day – especially for the chefs – where we can bring out dishes we don’t have on the normal menu. It’s exciting when you get pairings that come together so well.”

The Genuine does a pairing dinner the second Wednesday of every month. Pacheco and his teams taste wines, spirits and cocktails and come up with combinations for the dinners. “It’s amazing how different the flavors are,” he said.

Pacheco described a recent pairing of ceviche in a broth spiced with the Peruvian aji amarillo pepper. “It was citrusy and spicy, and we served it with a cocktail that had tropical flavors and a bit of coconut that melded really nicely.”

Past dinners have included premium brands including Diplomático rum and Komos tequila. Check with the restaurant for future events.

A popular summer special, $5 martinis, is being continued, Pacheco said. “On Wednesdays we do $10 pizzas. Saturday and Sunday we’re doing brunch for $25, and you get bottomless mimosas, Modelos and margaritas.”

“Once a month we’ll have Sunday Supper, a family-style dinner with flavors Keon wants to play with,” Pacheco said.

The main thing for Pacheco and his team is that they get to keep playing with new combinations and treatments, like that broiled halloumi, a firm cheese usually made from goat’s and sheep’s milk.

“What’s fun about this restaurant,” he said, “is we can do what we want.”

The Genuine, 6015 N. 16th St., is open 3 to 9 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 3 to 10 p.m., Friday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday. Happy hour is 3 to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. For information, call 602-633-1187 or visit www.thegenuineaz.com.

Author

  • Marjorie Rice is an award-winning journalist, newspaper food editor, travel editor and cookbook editor with more than three decades' experience writing about the culinary industry.

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