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| - This is not a review but a love letter. There are so many reasons to love centurion I have a hard time knowing where to start, so I guess I will just start at the beginning. THEY HAVE A LIQUOR LICENSE AND WINE SELECTION WITH A SELECTION OF BEERS AND LIQUORS COMING SOON.
We walk up to a small restaurant within walking distance of the Central and Roosevelt Lightrail stop. There are about 4 or 5 tables on the patio and about 10 tables inside with the tiniest open kitchen you have ever seen. Seriously, the guy has 4 burners and a brick oven. Not a whole lot to work with if you're a chef in my opinion. The restaurant has a good neighborhood kind of feel. It's not a kitschy overly modern place. Now I'll get to the best part of the restaurant, the food.
We started with a Baked Brie with raspberry jam in a phylo pastry. It was insanely inexpensive as an app that two could share for 7 bucks and the grapes that came with it were seriously some of the tastiest grapes I've ever had. The Brie was had a nice strong flavor and was extremely tasty.
Next I had the Taglioni with pulled duck, artichoke hearts, and leeks in garlic cream sauce. The price for entrée was 14 bucks and was an insane for the amount and quality food you get. The flavors were incredible and here is my one wish for the meal. I would have loved a nice thick noodle to hold up to the sauce a bit better. The Taglioni is tasty and does well but I think something like a Pappardelle would have held up a bit better texturally. The duck was cooked extremely well and was insanely tasty and the sauce was ridiculously good. When I say ridiculously good, I mean ridiculously good. I could sit with large bowls of that sauce and some bread and sop it up for a day and a half. When our server Sean checked up on us I mentioned how I loved him for bringing me some crispy dusk skin with the meal and he comes back with even more. This is about the point I fell in love with this restaurant.
Tiffany B had the Salami and Artichoke Pizza and I cannot describe how tasty it was. This is my new pizza place hands down. Forget Cibo, forget Pizzeria Bianco, go to Centurion for pizza. They make pizza exactly like I like it. The dough was delicious, not too salty like most doughs, and was airy and fluffy. The sauce was sweet without being too sweet and all around flavorful. It is extremely reasonably priced at 13 bucks for the pizza which makes me love the place even more.
At this point we are late for our movie and are so in love with this place that a second bottle of wine and some dessert are in order. The chef Eric Osbourn comes out and talks to us for a while and lets us know a bit about himself and the restaurant. His goal is to bring gourmet foods in at an affordable price. You can tell in talking to him that he serves things that he personally loves and that he loves food. You don't get the feeling of a menu put together to maximize profit or to impress but to be as tasty as possible. He is C.I.A. trained primarily as a pastry chef. Ok seriously? The rest of the food was so good and his specialty is desserts? Sign me up. After we talk to him for a while I tell him bring out whichever desserts we should have and a second bottle of wine. He selects a sparkling wine for us and tells us he will be bringing out a trio of desserts for us to try.
The first is a freshly baked Marscapone and Strawberry Phylo Pastry with Chocolate and Chili "Soup". I am not a fan of chocolate but when the pastry was gone and there was chocolate left I started looking around the table for more things to dip in it. The chilies were not overpowering at all but left a nice hint of spice. Next we had a lemon sorbet, and a quince grenata with a raspberry puree, and a blueberry puree. Both were good but the quince grenata with the blueberry puree was delicious beyond words. Finally we had a chocolate flourless torte with, crème fresh, raspberry puree, and candied wine soaked quince. The candied quince were sooo good. I could eat a bowl of them with some crème fresh and be happy but add the chocolate torte and I was even happier.
The entire meal (appetizer, pasta, pizza, 3 full desserts, and 2 bottles of wine) came in at a hundred bucks. I got fast attentive service, from both Sean, who was an incredibly knowledgeable server, and Eric Osbourn, who is a fantastic chef. I cannot recommend this place highly enough. This will absolutely be a regular haunt for me as it is by far the best restaurant value I have found in Phoenix. The restaurant is open til 2 on the weekends which will also make this a late night post boozin it up spot.
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