Organizers of the Tucson Culinary Festival announced recently that this year's event will feature chances to check out four distinct dining regions within the city. From the press release:

“Dine Around Tucson” a new event this year, will take place on Friday, Oct. 28, and will feature a geographical selection of dining “trails,” giving guests a unique opportunity to explore one of four distinct dining districts of Tucson in one fun evening.

This is a good idea. The Tucson Culinary Festival is a great event, and using it to showcase some of the city's great eateries in their natural habitats only makes it better.

The rest of the press release after the jump.

A new Japanese restaurant specializing in sushi and hibachi dining has opened at 5435 S. Calle Santa Cruz, Suite 185, right next to the Harkins Theater.

I haven’t had a chance to make it over to Tucson’s first Hana Tokyo location yet, but the pictures on its Facebook page are making me crave fish and sake bombs.

There’s more information over here.

Here’s how the annual Pie Party—taking place this year on Sunday, May 1—goes down: Endless pie comes from all corners of Tucson to the Dunbar School (325 W. Second St.) and is laid out on very long tables. Judges convene and sample pies for several hours before the doors are thrown open so a million fork-wielding, pie-loving folks can lay waste to the largest assortment of pies they’ve ever seen.

It’s a spectacle. There are pies made from everything, and the pie artistry knows no bounds. Last year, there was a pie with a crust cut into puzzle pieces, as well as an apple-caramel pie no less than four inches thick. There are hundreds and hundreds of pies, and you buy tickets and walk around pointing at what you want as volunteers do the serving.

It’s fun and sort of crazy, and the proceeds are donated to the winner’s favorite charity. Last year, the money went to the Desert Harvesters.

There’s more information over here.

• Dude was mowing on that burger.

Witness a success story between buns, a tale of turning a food truck into a brick-and-mortar restaurant with hard work and a metric ton of serious spatula skills.

Food truck Eat-a-Burger opened its doors more than a year ago in an old car lot near the corner of Speedway Boulevard and Kolb Road. It relocated to the corner of Stone Avenue and Pennington Street shortly thereafter, and in July, after little more than a year there, the owners will take the restaurant indoors to a sit-down location on the ground floor of the Pioneer Building, right across the street.

Owners Christopher “Jass” Koster, a Tucson local, and Sineenart Wethatham met in her homeland of Thailand. The two ended up on mutual business later in Chicago, where they fell in love and got married before moving to Tucson around the time the recession hit.

There was an intial discussion of opening a mobile Thai-food operation (Wethatham still would; the project is on hold for now) but they decided to sell hamburgers instead, and Eat-a-Burger was born. Their concept: Focus on the meat, treat the customers like kings and carve out a little niche serving the downtown lunch crowd.

It worked, and after a year of selling as many as 100 burgers a day out of an outfit the size of a large broom closet, the couple is opening Eat-A-Burger, the restaurant, at 100 N. Stone Ave., Suite 102.

Koster says each patty contains 15 spices, and it comes on a lightly grilled bun with all the fixings for $3.50. They sell specialty burgers from time to time—including Hawaiian, Thai and Mediterranean hybrids—but all you need is a bite of a regular burger to understand what the buzz is about.

Burgers in this modern age can be so complicated. See: Lindy’s, Monkey Burger, Zinburger. Not that there aren't great burgers to be had, but a simple, good and affordable burger is a rarer commodity than one might think.

At Eat-a-Burger, a juicy, handmade patty is grilled and slapped between two buns with the expected fixings.They wrap it in plain paper and sell it to you for next to nothing. And it is good. Very good.

“Simple seems to have worked well for us,” said Koster. “We keep it simple and really take time and passion to make something that works.”

The new eatery will seat 44 people, and they’re expanding the menu. As we finished our interview, Koster handed a drifter a free soda while his wife continued to serve burgers almost an hour after the posted closing time. One wishes the best for these people, and I personally will be eating a lot more burgers from now on.

There’s more information over here.

Apparently it's still in the testing stage, but Taco Bell has unveiled a taco in several markets (including Toledo, Ohio) where the shell is essentially one giant Dorito chip. You're crazy for this one, Taco Bell!

Tucson Originals, a group that includes some of this city's finest local and independently operated restaurants, has posted this year's list of Easter specials.

Everything from slipper lobster at Bushi—one of the newest members of Tucson Originals—to buffets, brunches and just regular old grub can be found over here.

Reservations are, as you might have guessed, strongly recommended at most places.

47 Scott has done amazing things in its first year in business, drawing in crowds with its modern comfort food, adding the adjoined and very hip Scott and Co., expanding its patio areas and, most recently, getting a nice little nod from the Los Angeles Times.

And now the restaurant is kicking it up another notch with a new chef’s garden that is already putting more local food in the bellies of downtown diners.

Travis Reese, who co-owns the restaurant with Nicole Flowers, says heirloom greens and edible flowers from the garden are already being served, but the summer planting isn’t far off. That crop will yield okra, squash, cucumbers and a big assortment of herbs that will find their way into meals and cocktails alike.

“These local greens just have so much more flavor,” said Reese. “Chard and kale you buy at the store is bitter, and you have to make it palatable. These greens are so good that you can just take a raw leaf and chew on it, and it tastes good.”

Local foods are all the rage these days, but Reese says using his own produce also represents a move toward more financial security for the eatery.

“Dealing with our food vendors, it keeps coming up that prices are going to go up as gas prices continue to rise,” said Reese. “A lot of the time, we absorb those cost increases, so this is a way for us to control some of that.”

“Seeds don’t cost anything, and fertilizer is cheap," said Reese. "We’re actually trying to figure out how to get a piece of land so we can do it even bigger.”

Nice to see something positive about Arizona in out-of-state media, especially when it's the LA Times acknowledging that we have some great restaurants here outside of the realm of Mexican food, writing up May's Counter, the brunch at Ventana Canyon, Vero Amore, Downtown Kitchen and Cocktails and this description of 47 Scott:

Also new to the downtown scene, 47 Scott does popular American comfort food. No matter what the seasonal menu offers, order the mac and cheese, made by someone who knows it all starts with béchamel. When I wouldn't shut up about the sweet-tart grape tomatoes and rocket, the server laughed and said, "Thank him," referring to the local grower as he walked by with another armload of produce. 47 Scott is nearly as righteous for its herb-tinted interpretations of retro cocktails. Designate a driver and have a Basil Collins, or try the Brick House Old Fashioned with bacon-washed rye. 47 N. Scott Ave.; (520) 624-4747, http://www.47scott.com. Lunch Mondays through Fridays, dinner Mondays through Saturdays. Entrees from $9.

Orange County, California's Meringue Bake Shop has combined ice cream treat, the Push Pop, and somewhat played out baking trend, cupcakes, into one magical treat called Pushcakes. I'm not exactly sure how this particular innovation is "better" or "useful", but it's different and sometimes that's good enough.

[Cakespy]

Introducing the world record holder for the most expensive hot dog at $69 a shot. At some point, the food industry will get over throwing truffles on ordinary food to make it wildly more expensive, right?

[Daily What]