Attention Wildcats, et al: The UA Student Unions—The Student Union Memorial Center and Park Student Union—both have some new restaurants, opening on or before August 22. From Sabor, a Mexican restaurant, to the The Mesa Room, dubbed as UA's only upscale restaurant, there are plenty of places over at The Student Union Memorial Center that are sure to tantalize your tongue. Over at the Park Student Union, there will be smaller shops like Park Avenue Market, a convenience store, and also a cute cafe called La Petite, with French-inspired fare, including made-to-order crepes, pastries, smoothies and coffee.

Zinburger wants to give its cow icon a name, and needs your help. If they pick your suggestion, you could win free lunch for a year. From Valerie Vinyard, the former Arizona Daily Star writer who now handles public relations for Zinburger and other local eateries:

Zinburger Wine and Burger Bar just opened its second location on Grant near Wilmot and needs a name for The Zinburger Cow. You could win free lunch for a year at the new location. Text “BURGER” and your Zinburger cow name to 68683 or visit KIIM FM and type in keyword “BURGER”!

In similar news, Brushfire BBQ is also holding a contest to name its new private meeting room. You could win $100 worth of gift certificates if they choose your suggestion. More on that over on their Facebook page.

• Breakfast from midnight to noon baby.

A breakfast restaurant called Bacon and Craeggs is opening at 601 N. Fourth Ave., right next to Magpie's Gourmet Pizza.

Anais Weeks, who owns the restaurant with Leonard Kisto, says the restaurant is relocating from its current spot on Stone Avenue. Up until now, it has only offered delivery. The new spot will offer sit-down dining.

The best thing are the hours: Midnight to noon. During that time you will be able to dig into big plates of pancakes, French toast, breakfast burritos and all sorts of other breakfast plates.

It is expected to open in the first week of September.

The Hog Pit Smokehouse Bar and Grill brought home a first-place trophy this month for their brisket, which was sort of a high point in a period that’s included some big changes for the restaurant.

Chef and kitchen manager Charles Kidd says he and the crew earned the trophy at the Golden Acorn Barbecue competition near San Diego. The restaurant was also named ninth best overall, quite an accolade considering top competitors from across the country attended.

Kidd attributes a good portion of that success to the restaurant’s new pit master, Mark Smith. With him came new recipes, a new approach to barbecue and, apparently, some award-winning grub.

“I’ve worked with Albert Hall and I worked under the tutelage of Emeril Lagasse, but I had my wings clipped from gourmet to blue-collar when I came here,” says Kidd, adding that Smith was instrumental in that transformation.

“This is a barbeque house, this is a smokehouse. We don’t have to worry about seven kinds of cheese on our macaroni. People want a cold beverage and good barbeque for under $10, and that’s what they get.”

Stopping short of divulging any recipes, Kidd says they use a dry rub on ribs, brisket and other meats and slow-smoke them over pecan wood for 12 to 17 hours. He’s sort of a barbeque historian as well, and one can tell quickly that he takes his job very seriously.

“A lot of people like to add things to their meat like phosphates, we don’t do that,” says Kidd. “I say, ‘Throw some wood on a fire, put your meat in the smoker and put some seasonings on it that you like, and it’s yours.”

Kidd says the bar has also been spruced inside and out, and now has a full NFL package, karaoke and live music on some nights. You can check in over here for more information.

• Cardboard Shell stalking her prey.

She surfaced again when she finished the Sugar O.D. Challenge at Something Sweet Dessert Lounge, and she had a salad beforehand. This put the girl, who goes by the cryptic moniker “Cardboard Shell,” in the league of gods or superhumans in my book.

Then she went and dominated a Nathan's Hot Dog's qualifier, but failed to win the main competition in Coney Island, which you can read about on her blog. It's under the heading "Gobbling Wieners." The Shell, it could be said, is not without a sense of humor.

The only other thing that has taken her down was a ridiculous eating challenge at Boca that included eating like 17 tacos and a one-pound loaded baked potato.

And now, it appears she has also demolished the Hog Trough Challenge at the Hog Pit Smokehouse out on Tanque Verde. This challenge has decimated many, many diners. From the account on the Hog Pit’s Facebook page:

It finally happened. Yesterday a petite female came in to try the HOG TROUGH CHALLENGE and astonished everyone in the place. Not only is she the ONLY one to complete the task, she completed the task in a record time of 12:40, thats right just over the half way mark of the alloted time of 25 minutes required. Congrats MICHELLE CLESCO!!! Your fame will be remembered at the HOG PIT!!

They spelled her name wrong, but we all know who they’re talking about. Cardboard Shell is unstoppable.

• This area of town could use a good local pizza shop.

This sign outside this building on West Congress Street just east of Grande Avenue says a pizza place named The Olive is opening here soon. I did my usual serious investigative work — i.e., looking in the windows — and it looks like a fresh coat of paint has been applied and that several power tools have been in use recently. Most of the kitchen gear appears to be in place, too.

The place next door, at 921 W. Congress St., which I’m pretty sure used to be called Taqueria del Valle Pascua, is now Sonoran Delights. It’s got a nice selection of tacos and burritos; affordable sno-cones, raspados and milkshakes; and a fruit salad covered in granola, cinnamon and condensed milk that I’m heading back to try as soon as time allows.

(Thanks to reader Sue Mullory Hansen for the tip.)

Nancy Dudney of Allen’s Organics says the best day to visit the store at 741 S. Campbell Ave. is Sunday. That’s when her brother busts out the Weber to grill up samples of the huge variety of local vegetables the store specializes in.

The operation started last November with the goal of making more local vegetables available to people in the greater Tucson area. Dudley says they scraped by through the winter due to a rough growing season, but the business has taken off with gusto ever since.

“We started out with the goal to be a distribution hub for local growers, so they can get their products packed a little more professionally and distributed to local stores and restaurants,” Dudley said this morning. “But it’s really taken off. It seems like everyone in Tucson is behind this.”

Allen’s Organics has forged partnerships with farms throughout Southern Arizona, including the massive San Xavier farm operated by the Tohono O’odham Nation. The farm put in 30 acres of vegetables for Allen’s Organics this season, but demand for their produce has been so great that they’re increasing that to 120 acres next season.

“We deliver to five Whole Foods up in the Phoenix area and we cannot get them enough watermelon from (the San Xavier Farm)," said Dudney, adding that the farm has a capacity of 1,500 acres. “They were just growing alfalfa before this. We’ve also had people come over from the Pascua Yaqui tribe and other groups to see what we’re up to over there.”

Dudney says the company has also partnered with groups in Bisbee, Sierra Vista and other cities. The produce is collected, prepared for distribution and sold at a number of local farmers’ markets. They also open up the distribution center to the public three days a week.

It’s not just about retail, though. Dudney also sits on a council administered by the Arizona Board of Education that is looking at instituting farm-to-school programs across the state. The council has the backing of the Arizona Department of Agriculture, and Dudney says she’s optimistic about the progress the council is making.

Actually, Dudney is pretty optimistic about everything that’s happening right now.

“It’s exciting to watch the farms come alive because they have more opportunity,” she says. “We’re delivering to Janos, Omni Resorts want to get on board. It’s amazing to see all the support behind this.”

Allen’s Organics is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesday; 4 to 8 p.m., Friday; and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday. They can also be found at a number of farmers’ markets around town.

This is the first in a new blog series about bar food and the people who cook it. It is another attempt to look at aspects of food culture that slip through the cracks. God help us all.

• Dave Carroll is tough. His cheese steaks are not.

The Surly Wench Pub is a bar at 424 N. Fourth Avenue. I’ve been hearing about the food there for some time, but mainly about the cheese steaks and burgers. When I started hearing about deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos, among other eclectic takes on standard pub grub, it was time for a visit.

I arrived to find kitchen manager Dave “Tacklebox” Carroll in the middle of a frustrating day that included workers accidentally blowing drywall dust into his kitchen. You wouldn’t have known it: The place was cleaned to a high sheen. Even the pictures of nude women plastered everywhere were neatly placed and wrinkle-free.

Carroll worked at a number of local eateries, including No Anchovies,Trident Grill and the Cup Café at Hotel Congress, before making the move to the Surly Wench. He also plays in the local band Inoculara, and has been a regular in the downtown scene - where I first met him some ten years ago - for quite some time.

TW: What makes good bar food?

DC: Good bar food, man, is a lot about how quick you can get it out and whether or not you can make a drunk person remember that they ate some fucking good food. Like, our appetizers are mostly deep fried, because what you want at a bar is to keep people buzzed, not drunk, so whatever helps with the absorption of that alcohol. We’ve got burgers and cheese steaks and all that for people with larger appetites, too.

TW: Tell me about your menu.

DC: Well, we’ve got all sorts of stuff. We’ve got potato tacos and hummus plates and vegetarian sandwiches like the Scooby Don’t, because Tucson has a large number of vegetarians and we cater to them, and vegetarians love to drink. We do the fried Oreos and Twinkies for people who’ve got that sweet tooth. We do the standard stuff and some more interesting things, like deep-fried pancake batter served with a side of maple syrup.

TW: What do people mention as memorable about the food?

DC: Really it’s the weekly specials I’ve been doing. We bring the staff in and let them try it first so they can brag about it. We just did one called the Hesher, which was a burger with peanut butter, cream cheese and jalapeno jelly. This week it’s the Beast, a sandwich with chopped chicken, steak and bacon, lettuce and tomato, provolone, and fire-roasted poblano aioli.

TW: What’s on your menu that you don't find other places?

DC: There's the Black and Bleu Derby Burger, because we’re a hangout for the Tucson Roller Derby, which we also sponsor. The Jeff Thomas burger, a veggie burger with bacon and swiss, is named after the dude who got killed in the Fourth Avenue underpass on the Spooky Tooth bike. It was his favorite burger. There’s also the Cooter burger. I mean, do I need to explain that? What do you think of when you hear the word “Cooter?”

TW: I think of the Dukes of Hazzard.

DC: Most people think of something else.

TW: What makes eating at this bar different than eating at a regular restaurant?

DC: The difference between here and a fast-casual place, like the Cup at Hotel Congress, is that this is pretty much a one-man operation. You come to the window and the same guy who takes your order cooks it and delivers it. There isn’t like a hostess, a busser and six people in the back all involved. Here it’s a little more personal.

TW: Any benefit to pub grub over other kinds of food?

DC: The first thing is that you don’t have to interrupt your drinking to go eat. Work smarter not harder, you know, the convenience factor brother. Also, if you eat at the bar you drink at you usually know everyone, from the door guy to the cook, and everyone can tell you what’s good that day.

You can check out more on Surly Wench Pub here. Click on the kitchen tab for a look at the menu. The place also runs some killer happy hour specials from 5 to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday; and 2 to 6 p.m., weekends.

A chef recently told me he got bawled out by somebody who couldn’t believe his Thai restaurant didn’t offer take-out. “She was like, ‘You don’t deliver? You don’t do take-out?’ I told her that we didn’t even have take-out containers. It’s very ethnocentric,” he said.

What many Americans — myself included - are accustomed to when it comes to Asian food, Chinese cuisine especially, comes in cardboard boxes with wire handles. There's always sushi — which is typically made well and ornately arranged —but the finer side of Asian cuisine often gets overshadowed by that which comes with sauce packets and disposable chopsticks.

An upcoming series of meals at Harvest Moon Chinese Cuisine - which itself is an exception to fast Chinese food - will showcase the finer side of Chinese cuisine. It’s called the Man Han Imperial Feast and each meal is three-hours long with a total of 11 wine-paired courses crafted by master noodle chef YongDong "Tony" Wu. Wu is known for his knowledge of ancient hand-pulled noodle-making techniques.

The dinners aren’t cheap — $80 to $100 per person — but I did mention there are 11 wine-paired courses, right? They take place between Tuesday, Sept. 6, and Monday, Sept. 12. Reservations are required; 825-5351.

And if you really want to see some gourmet Chinese cooking, the restaurant is offering a $150-a-plate dinner by author and chef Martin Yan of the show Yan Can Cook on Saturday, Sept. 10. $100 is tax-deductible, and reservations are required; 292-6900.

Also, just in case you have like 10 minutes to waste watching a guy swing dough around, here's a video of Chef Wu doing his noodle magic. It gets pretty amazing around the eight-minute mark.

Chef Tony Wu's pulled noodles, with Chef Martin Yan from C J Phillips on Vimeo.

The ladies at the Monsoon Kitchen really opened my eyes to true popsicle creativity. Ever since I tried their crazy and inventive frozen treats I find it impossible to drink anything without wondering if it might be better frozen.

With this in mind I began my search for other frozen things to be had around Tucson, stumbling upon the fantastic company Prickly Pops a short time later. They are frozen. They are made with cool things like prickly pears and yellow Tohono O’odham watermelon. They are available at several farmers’ markets around town, and they sound delicious.

I’m trying to get in touch with the owner for a list of current flavors, but no luck yet. I might just have to head over to the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market on Thursday and experience them first-hand instead.