Hide and Seek

We finally decided to get out of the apartment this weekend. It's weird, but I think our bodies and minds have been trained to seek shelter in the winter months--to get inside, huddle down, and sleep until winter slips into spring. But in Phoenix the "winter" months are just arbitrary names on a calendar. December, January, February. Warm. Warmer. Hot.

Long story short, it was 80+ degrees again today and there was no way we could justify lazing around in the apartment surfing the internet and wearing our fat pants all day. We got in the car and just started driving (technically we stopped at Costco first to order a carrot cake for ANOTHER office party next week. See "fat pants" above). We eventually meandered all the way into Olde Scottsdale which was a HUGE mistake. I've heard very scary rumors of the infamous "snow birds" flocking into Phoenix during the winter to escape the frozen north. But until today I hadn't really noticed any unusual crowding or heightened chaos around town. Apparently that's because the snow birds don't flock to Phoenix, they descend on SCOTTSDALE. We sat in bumper to bumper traffic on Scottsdale Road before I decided to peel off to the west.

That's when we realized that we might not be too far from a place we had heard about a long time ago, but never tried because it was fairly far away. Dick's Hideaway. I know. Strange name but not a single bad review. With our trusty iPhones we were able to pinpoint it's location. The restaurant, however, certainly lived up to its name. It was very hidden. I thought I had passed it completely and so turned into a random parking lot to turn around and check the map. As luck would have it, I parked directly in front of the entrance without even realizing it. The restaurant itself is no more than three tables and a bar. Very small but VERY good. Kendra had a BBQ chicken pizza with gouda cheese and I had the New Mexico platter: pork tamale, chile relleno, and chicken enchilada with green chile sauce covering the whole thing. Kendra's pizza was good, but the platter took center stage. We both ate on that and took most of the pizza home.

All in all, a pretty good trip today. Kendra put together a little "Dick's Hideaway" collage. Make sure you take notice of the picture of the soup menu on the left-hand side. Sound familiar? (click the pic to make larger)