Congratulations to Janos Wilder, one of twenty semifinalists for the highly prestigious Outstanding Chef award presented by the James Beard foundation, last year won by Tom Colicchio of Craft and Top Chef fame. Janos has been a semifinalist for the award before, and won the foundation's award for top chef in the southwest in 2000.

Another nominee with a distinct Tucson connection is Sam Fox, who is up for Outstanding Restaurateur for his company Fox Restaurant Concepts, which has eight Tucson outlets.

Update: Also worth noting that City Week listings guru/"calendar girl"/oldest living female rock critic Linda Ray's cousin once removed, Erik Anderson of Sea Change restaurant in Minneapolis is a semifinalist for Best Midwest Chef. Congratulations to Erik (and his extended family).

[James Beard Foundation]

Veg•an (vee-guhn): A vegan is someone who doesn’t eat animal products: meat, fish, milk products, eggs, or honey. Many vegans also avoid fur, leather, and wool as these products generally result in the confinement, abuse, or slaughter of animals.

True that, my friends.

At the suggestion of web producer Dan Gibson, I am going to start writing “Being Vegan in Tucson” blogs here on The Range. I’d like to include things in the posts like restaurant reviews, recipes, accidental vegan goodies, etc.

Also ... if you’re a vegan, you’ve probably had to deal with a lot of conflicting answers about what is and what isn’t vegan. One person might tell you the rice at Taco Shop is cooked vegan, and others might not. I seek to put an end to these disputes, and write the answers to some of these burning questions here on the Range.

That said, if you have anything you’d like me to look into, please let me know!

Before I begin, however, I think it might be important for some of those readers with conflicting viewpoints. I attempted to write my own FAQ, but it ended up being rather long, so I found some other resources for you, which cover many of the most asked inquiries. You can check those out here and here.

If you have any other questions, or if you’d like to discuss the topic with me, I am more than willing to engage in some civil conversation about my dietary decisions.

El Gorrion Burrito is an outlier in a business that feeds off passing traffic, but it does a swift lunch business for those who work along the stretch of South Nogales Highway just south of the Desert Diamond Casino. It serves fast and sincere Mexican food, and you can feed a family there for what you'd lose in minutes playing slots less than a mile away.

And when I say fast, I mean fast. My taco salad was ready before I could snap a few pictures and choose a table. It was so fast that I figured the people before me had also ordered a taco salad. I was wrong. It was rather unreal.

The truck is the satellite location of El Gorrion Restaurant at 3459 S. 12th Ave. Hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and on Wednesdays, you can get a Mexican-style steak with beans, rice and veggies for $5.50. The rest of the menu’s chile rellenos, burritos and tostadas run between $3 and $6, and an ice cold can of soda is only 75 cents.

• Cheap, fast and tasty.

Pasco Kitchen and Lounge opened last night! There’s a lot to say about Chef Ramiro Scavo’s first restaurant, but for now, I’m just going to observe a moment of silence and let the restaurant’s menu do the talking.

All right, the moment’s over. Did you see that they serve chicken-and-waffles, gourmet tater-tots and spiced pumpkin soup made from pumpkins grown at River Road Gardens? Did you know that Scavo has the meat raised for him down in Arivaca and sources as many vegetables from local gardeners as possible? Is my heart going to explode if I don’t calm down? Probably!

The cocktail list looks nice, too, and Scavo has told us that Pasco could eventually boast a rooftop garden and maybe even a bit of rooftop dining.

This flan was made by the people at Milagro’s Café, which opened about a month ago at 3156 E. Fort Lowell Road. I was compelled to stop in after I’d heard the place would be the first restaurant in town to serve coffee by Café Aqui, a small microroastery on South Sixth Avenue that turns out some really killer java.

Milagro's Cafe serves Sonoran-style Mexican food, and our lunch was very good. But I’ll be stopping in on a regular basis, because the owners are some of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time. The place's mission statement includes a sentence about working with nonprofits to make Tucson a better place to live. The owners are currently ironing out plans to help Karin Elliott continue with her mission to feed the homeless.

The place’s hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday; and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday. There are daily lunch specials for $4.95, and sometimes you can get a breakfast burrito for less than $2.

Call 881-0048 for more information.

• Small trailer, big crepes.

Way east. As in Tanque Verde Road and Camino Principal, where Planet of the Crepes spends its days serving an array of sweet and savory crepes. The food trailer is run by Jessica Kraus, the former pastry chef at Harvest Restaurant, the Grill at Hacienda del Sol and both Zona 78 locations. She makes incredible crepes. You should go try one.

The crepes themselves are golden-brown slices of heaven. The fillings are gourmet and plentiful. It’s all layered and folded so each bite is all light crispiness and flavor. One is a meal, but your brain tells you to eat more. I began planning a return trip halfway through my butter-basted potato, prosciutto and Manchego-cheese crepe this afternoon. Then I chewed really, really slow to make the rest last.

Planet of the Crepes will be posted up next to the main stage at Second Saturdays Downtown this weekend. It also heads down to Green Valley on Wednesdays for the farmers’ market. The rest of the time it’s open out on Tanque Verde Road from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursday through Sunday. It will be heading up to the top of Mount Lemmon in May.

Check it out on Facebook here.

• How it starts.

• The finished product.

I'm not going to lie, I wish I would have thought of making taco shells out of bacon.

If you like meat, ice cream and/or beer, the grand opening of HUB Restaurant and Ice Creamery at 266 E. Congress St. this weekend is the place to be. There’s more information here.

The opening day menu includes honey-basil, oatmeal-and-cream, bourbon-syrup and nine other flavors of ice cream. The restaurant will eventually boast a 30-flavor arsenal of frozen, creamy goodness.

You can also check out the Tucson Weekly's video about the restaurant here.

Tucson’s second Monkey Burger restaurant is set to open this Saturday in the former Burger City location at 47 N. Sixth Ave.

The new location is said to have more bar seating than the Monkey Burger at 5350 E. Broadway Blvd. The menu is also expected to be a bit more expansive, although fans of the restaurant can rest assured that both fried pickles and sweet potato fries will be available.

Hours will be 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Wednesday; and 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Thursday through Saturday. Live music will be featured on weekends.

The owner of the local Risky Business restaurants says the chain restaurants that have been popping up along Oracle Road have made it necessary for him to close his Oro Valley location.

From the press release:

“The closing is a direct result of a substantial decrease in sales at this location due to the opening of a wave of chain restaurants up and down Oracle Road over the past several years. As a member of Tucson Originals, comprised of locally owned and operated restaurants, it is sad to see the disappearance of over 75 great restaurants in Tucson in just the past 18 months.”

The whole press release is after the jump.