How Surprise eats

Ask a Surprise resident where to eat and you will rarely get one answer. This is a city where farmworker families' kitchens, retirees' memories of home and young families' weeknight routines all meet on the same few roads. Surprise's food has no single signature dish. What it has is a mix you can trace back to the town's beginnings, and a growing set of independent kitchens that show how the city eats now.

A farm town's table

Surprise began as a farming community, and in its early decades cotton was king. The families who worked those fields shaped the town's first tables. The city's Women's Heritage Trail remembers Ruth Leon, whose family ran a cotton contracting business that employed most of the town, cooking meals for field workers from a lunch wagon, and Alejandra Lopez, who fed neighbors in need from her own garden and made the piñatas for town festivals. That Mexican and Sonoran thread still runs through the city's food, and the city's Fiesta Grande festival celebrates Surprise's heritage with traditional Mexican food alongside mariachi and folklórico, though this year's October edition was called off because of the weather.

You can taste the thread at two very different places. Rio Mirage Cafe, on Bell Road, describes its cooking as Sonoran-style recipes handed down for generations and has kept that tradition since 1999; it also has a location in neighboring El Mirage. It is a sit-down place for family dinners, with reservations, catering and private parties. Master Taco, on Grand Avenue, is the quick version: a counter for breakfast plates of machaca or chorizo with eggs, burritos, tortas and tacos made from family recipes.

A city of transplants

Surprise grew fast, and much of that growth came from elsewhere. At The Grand, the city's large 55-and-over community, residents come from every state, and the newer family neighborhoods filled with people from across the country. That shows on the plate.

Saigon Kitchen, on Bell Road, brings Vietnamese cooking to the West Valley in a roomy dining room with a lounge: pho in several styles, charbroiled pork and shrimp over rice vermicelli, fresh spring rolls and lemongrass-scented salads. The Irish Wolfhound Pub, on Litchfield Road, keeps to traditional Irish fare made on the premises, pours Irish beers and books live music. And The Toast, on Bell Road, is a modern American kitchen with a strong Mediterranean lean, think pomegranate-glazed salmon or balsamic-marinated hanger steak, plus a patio, cappuccinos and pastries. Its owner, Emily Bromm, started with a sandwich shop in Wickenburg.

Bonfire Craft Kitchen & Tap House, a locally owned sports kitchen on Bell Road with sister locations in Tempe and Scottsdale, cooks from scratch with locally sourced ingredients and Southwestern flavors, from slow-smoked barbecue to burgers. On game days the screens and trivia nights make it a neighborhood living room.

Bakeries and the morning crowd

Mornings in Surprise belong to bakeries. The Boyer Bakery, a West Valley family's shop on Litchfield Road, fills its case each day with rotating house-made pastries and sweets, using local and seasonal ingredients whenever it can, and pours a coffee blend roasted locally just for it. The family has grown the business into a cluster: The Boyer Eatery now serves brunch and lunch next door to the bakery with a new dining lobby, and The Boyer Drive-Thru on Cotton Lane hands out pastries and drinks to neighbors in a hurry.

Markets and local ingredients

The city's main market runs on Sundays. From October through April, The Sunday Market on Elm sets up on Elm Street in the City Center on Sunday mornings, bringing local growers, food makers and artisans together with live music. The organizer plans themed editions around the holidays, including Friendsgiving, Christmas and New Year's markets this season. It is the kind of weekly ritual the city hoped for when it began building a walkable downtown along Elm.

If you would rather grow your own, the Surprise Community Garden, run by Benevilla with the City of Surprise on Benevilla's main campus, rents raised beds to individuals and families and holds workshops on desert planting, composting and healthy eating. Seniors garden alongside visiting preschoolers, and beginners are welcome.

Eating like a local

The best way into Surprise's food is to follow its calendar. Start a fall Sunday at the market on Elm, take a box of pastries home from Litchfield Road, and save a weeknight for pho or a Sonoran-style dinner on Bell Road. When spring training arrives each February, the city fills with visitors, and a good share of them will ask a local where to eat. Now you have a few answers.