Offbeat Eats

My visits to Arizona’s Valley of the Sun always involve a combination of trying to find the new and exciting places to dine, while occasionally indulging in an old favorite. In this case, we headed over to Tempe, AZ, where there, in a fairly nondescript strip mall a block east of Rural Road, sits Delhi Palace. Back in my undergraduate and graduate school days, Delhi Palace was the standard gathering place of not only my own friends, but my brother’s as well; a typical Christmas visit to Arizona could see as many as ten people gathering for the lunch buffet. But as folks age, move away, start families, etc, the annual gathering at Delhi Palace started to fade away, with my last visit with friends happening in 2015 (although a few of us migrated to a similar periodic gather at Haji Baba a few blocks away. This trip, however, I decided to call up my old friend Karla (a veteran of many previous Delhi Palace gatherings) and see how our old haunt was doing.

May was a landmark month for us. After 15 months of pandemic isolation, we finally had a chance to flex our fully-vaccinated wings and go on a trip to Washington DC to meet up with friends to revisit some DC area favorites, like Port City Brewing in Alexandria, VA. But this was also a chance to do something that we hadn’t had much opportunity to indulge in during the pandemic in New Hampshire: have a good, old-fashioned, excessive brunch! I’ve always had a favorite for this sort of meal when in DC: Founding Farmers, and this time I wanted to try their sister restaurant, Farmers and Distillers.