​In a place as hot as Phoenix, you just need good drinks. The city’s top brewers, mixologists, and baristas have been quietly turning heads for a decade, the best channeling the unique energy and creative spirits of the desert. Recently, a new crop of maestros has emerged.. The best spots can be elusive. Phoenix spreads over a whopping 517 square miles, and that’s not even including adjacent towns like Scottsdale and Tempe. To taste the drink landscape to its last wonky drop, you need to plot a course beyond downtown hubs.. Brewheads know that the Valley of the Sun’s beer scene has been a powerhouse for a decade. Two of the biggest stalwarts—Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company and Wren House Brewing Company—have opened new outposts expanding their visions.. Meanwhile, the coffee scene is becoming more fun. Consider the island vibes and shakerato riffs of Wonderift Coffee in Ahwatukee, while on Grand Avenue, Malegría Cafe blends Salvadorian horchata lattes, reflecting how local coffee culture is embracing Latin influences.. Cocktails have been the beverage ecosystem’s keystone for the past decade, and a new crop of maestros is pushing into new directions. With thoughtful emerging bars like the produce-forward, high-tech Legends Never Die and the Indian-inflected cocktails of Indibar, the Valley’s cocktail scene continues to expand into a bold, multi-sensory frontier.. Whatever your preference, here are eight top new places to drink in Metro Phoenix.. Photograph by Ivory Rose. Malegría Cafe. 1031 Grand Avenue, Phoenix. instagram.com/malegria.cafe/. On Grand Avenue, a dusty thoroughfare of art galleries and gritty, excellent eateries, uncompromising storefronts burst with life: artisan piñatas, retro neon signs. Newcomer Malegía Cafe fits right in, with a mural depicting the national birds of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala, broadcasting its roots and style. The birds represent owner Melina Ruano Serrano’s heritage as well as the coffee cultures she braids together.. Don’t Miss: Serrano makes café de olla, fragrant with cloves, cinnamon, and star anise, while her Salvadorian lattes, particularly the horchata version, are real gems. She blends a Salvi horchata using toasted rice, cinnamon, peanuts, and a mix of seeds, which gives a sweet, spellbinding foundation for power to a latte made with beans from small-batch roaster Condor Coffee.. Photograph by Lauren Topor  

​Green Chef, owned by Hello Fresh, offers (mostly) organic, seasonal produce, with an emphasis on sustainably sourced protein, whole grains, whole fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, and low to no-added sugars. It’s the kit to try if buying organic is important to you, and/or if you want to incorporate recipes that meet the criteria for certain diets (keto, Mediterranean, high-protein, etc.). To streamline prep, Green Chef ships all sauces, stocks, and herb blends premixed, with some vegetables precut. Add-ons are plentiful too, from meat and seafood sampler packs to smoothie kits, frozen desserts, packaged ramen, and dumplings.. Senior service editor Kelsey Jane Youngman found the meals easy to cook. Each labeled bag comes with a full-color recipe card with clear instructions and photos of every major step. Green Chef is upfront about what’s not included (salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and oil), but everything else you need is in the box. Youngman felt confident a beginner cook could follow along, though cook times may vary by experience. Most meals required at least two pans and leaned into smart, simultaneous cooking techniques: boiling bulgur while squash roasts, and a pork fillet sears on the stovetop. These are not one-pan meals.. “The food was, in general, good,” says Youngman. Her favorite was the Italian Turkey Stuffed Squash Boats, well-seasoned ground turkey bulked up with nutty bulgur and tender kale, spooned over golden-brown roasted zucchini and topped with a creamy pesto riff. The geometry was a little off (one zucchini was tiny, one enormous), but the taste more than made up for it. Her least favorite, the Spiced Salmon with Mango Salsa, came down to ratios and personal preference rather than any fundamental flaw. The salmon itself was fresh, well-seasoned, and perfectly cooked, but the accompanying hash skewed heavily toward purple sweet potato with barely any bell pepper, and the Cotija felt like an odd pairing with the fish. Overall, the recipes were reliable if occasionally repetitive, and the ingredients were consistently fresh, making it a solid pick for people who want to cook without spending hours in the kitchen or at the grocery store.. What was the ordering experience like? Signing up is simple, and new customers are typically offered a first-time discount. After entering payment information, you’ll select a dietary preference (options include Protein Packed, Plant-Based, Mediterranean, Gluten-Free, Keto, Calorie Smart, Quick & Easy, and Gut & Brain Health), which filters your top recipe picks, though you can browse all 80-plus weekly options regardless. Skipping a week or adjusting a delivery date is easy and won’t disrupt your subscription.. How was the unboxing experience? Everything arrived properly packaged and cold, with each meal’s ingredients grouped together in a labeled brown paper bag. Individual items, down to half a bell pepper or a single diced onion, came in their own plastic bags, and premade sauces  

​What I’ll say is this. In general, I’ve found that cookware enthusiasts online profess a blanket preference for thicker, heavy cookware. As a cookware tester, I feel that ease of use and maneuverability are just as important when evaluating a pan, so I think lighter cookware shouldn’t be discounted, and I think this experiment demonstrated this well.. 2. If you want that mythical copper performance, learn to love a tin-lined pan.. For that quick, responsive, and even-heating performance, an old school tin-lined pan is pretty unmatched. As a nonreactive metal coating, tin is lighter, more responsive, and more thermally efficient than stainless-steel.. Once the standard lining for copper cookware, most modern manufacturers of copper cookware have phased out tin in favor of stainless steel because it’s far more durable. Tin starts to melt between 450–475°F, which means that you can damage the lining of the pan by overheating it. Because copper pans are so thermally efficient, using high heat isn’t necessary (remember, professional French kitchens have used pans like these for a long time without issue), but it’s something anyone considering copper cookware should bear in mind, especially if they share kitchen equipment with less careful people. Being a softer metal, tin linings can also wear away over time, requiring occasional re-tinning.. Defenders of tin-lined pans will argue that these concerns are generally overblown, and that with proper care, a tin-lined pan can put in a decade or more of work before it’s worn down to the point where relining is required. But comparing that to stainless steel that can last a lifetime, it’s hard to say they are equal.. Photo by Travis Rainey, Prop Styling by Tim Ferro. Again, we must return to the reason why you want copper cookware. If it’s for the look, go for what you think is beautiful. The worst case scenario is probably that you end up with something that performs a lot like a nice stainless steel-clad pan, only is better looking. But if you want performance, go the old-school route and choose a tin-lined pan. The only cookware I’d really steer clear from would be predominantly stainless-steel cookware that has a layer of copper or a copper core: To quote the immortal words of Freckle, “Sometimes, things that are expensive…are worse.”. Ruffoni. Historia Hammered Copper 7-Piece Cookware Set with Acorn Knobs. $1,715 $1,200 (30% off). Williams Sonoma  

​It’s not new to call New Orleans one of the best food cities in the country. We’ve been planning trips to eat powdered-sugar-dusted beignets at Café du Monde and the iconic pecan-crusted gulf fish at Commander’s Palace for over 60 years. But in addition to Cajun, Creole, and soul food institutions, the city continues to welcome new spots serving inventive contemporary Mexican, West African, and Indian cuisines—all which play into the diverse, lively vibe of New Orleans.. Here, we break down the main neighborhoods, where to eat within them, and where to stay so that you don’t miss a single place to eat (and drink).. Start with grab-and-go pastries to savor while you stroll the quiet residential neighborhood of Marigny. A little walk to Ayu Bakehouse, especially in the early morning while most of the neighborhood is still dozing, is a great start to the day. Try the soft and savory Parmesan-and-chive biscuit with butter and the slightly sweet kaya bun (trust us and get some chili oil on the side) with whatever seasonal drink is available.. Loretta’s Pralines is a great place to go for your next pastry fix. Beyond traditional beignets and some of the best pralines in the city, it has beignets stuffed with pralines (a natural marriage), cheeseburger, and crabmeat. Speaking of beignets, there are quite a few Cafe du Monde locations across greater New Orleans, but the outpost in City Park is something of a hidden gem: Indoor seating keeps you from melting while you wait for your treats—which shouldn’t be long because this location is never mobbed the way the more famous spot off of Jackson Square can be. Order a hot cafe au lait, frozen cafe au lait, or hot cocoa to wash down your beignets.. Walking along the Mississippi River or cruising the mall with a frozen cocktail from Fat Tuesday is a simple, affordable joy. In addition to the classic flavors like 190 Octane, piña colada, and margarita, you can also get off-menu daiquiri specials.. Courtesy of Hotel Peter & Paul. See Availability at Booking.comSee Availability at Expedia. At Hotel Peter and Paul, you might find yourself taking a photo of every last charming corner. The property was once a 19th-century Catholic school and church campus, complete with a rectory and nunnery, and each room has a rotary phone and other touches of the not-so-distant past. The stellar team at Ash NYC is behind the property’s revival in late 2018 and didn’t miss a beat—service is warm and welcoming, the hotel’s own map of the neighborhood comes handily marked with the staff’s favorite bars and restaurants, and even the custom-blended toiletries are a real treat.  

​Yes, you read that right. My kids wanted to clean the house.. What I didn’t like about the Dyson PencilVac. A cool feature of my larger Dyson vacuum is that it senses when it’s on hard floors or carpet and adjusts its suction accordingly. I didn’t expect the PencilVac to unearth anything new from the carpet fibers, and it sufficed as a surface sweeper on rugs, but I have a pair of textured Waterhog doormats at the entrances to my home and found that even with the more powerful turbo mode activated, the PencilVac left debris in the recesses.. And though it’s slim, I wish the PencilVac had a wall-mounted charger like other Dyson’s. The freestanding base takes up floor real estate, and it almost seems as though Dyson wants you to display it as a freestanding sculpture in your home. Space is at a premium in my kitchen, and the rest of my crowded, kid-ravaged home isn’t much better.. The syringe-like emptying mechanism works well, but, as this is a small vacuum, it fills up pretty fast. I found I would give the floors a once-over and then need to empty (and charge) the vacuum to be ready for the next use.. Also worth noting: The pads that seal the chamber would get caked with dust and hair a bit, making the sliding action sticky. And, after a while, the dust would even impede the clicking latch that holds the chamber in place from fully closing. This could be solved by removing the whole bin chamber and cleaning off the pads, but it’s not as slick as the Dyson instructional videos made it seem.. Speaking of instructions, the printed ones provided are minimal as Dyson relies on its app to show you to use features.. Should you buy the Dyson PencilVac?. For homes and apartments with wood, tile, or other hard floors, the PencilVac might be the only vacuum you need. It’s versatile enough to clean in a variety of situations while handy enough for daily use.. If you’ve got wall-to-well carpets and you’re buying a vacuum cold, as in you don’t have one at all, I think your first buy should be a larger, more powerful Dyson or Shark stick-style vacuum. With the right attachments, larger bin, and more robust motor performance, you’re going to find it does just about everything you’ll need it to do, plus pull all the dirt and hair from your carpets.. However, if you have one of those already and, like me, you’re finding it sits in the corner or hanging on the charging dock most days, you might appreciate having a sleek little stick vacuum sweeper at the ready for those all those in-between maintenance chores that make your deep-cleaning days a little less frequent or intense. Just make sure you have a place to put it.. Get a skinny vacuum for your small spaces. Other cleaning tools that make our lives easier