World Sports Grille, the sports-themed, game-packed, restaurant at the corner of the Foothills Mall closed yesterday.

Their main number has been disconnected and when I called the alternate sales number, I was informed they closed yesterday and that was all. Looking at the restaurant's website they seem to have recently opened a location in Seattle and plan to open one in New Hampshire. My question: What they are going to do with the pinball machines?

As mentioned here, the mother-son team of Emma Vera and JorDan Fuller opened Calle Tepa, Mexican Street Grill today.

Located at 6151 E. Broadway, Vera's longtime and successful Mexican restaurant Guadalajara Grill is the inspiration for the Mexican street food menu.

Vera owns the original grill on East Prince Road and has no ties to the eastside location. Fuller has been involved in the restaurant business for some time but this is his first time in the leadership role.

Calle Tepa is open daily from 6:30am to 10pm.

The Arizona Restaurant Association is running a new food event, the Foodist Awards, with the prizes handed out at an expensive dinner on April 25th. The idea seems solid, honoring "industry players [who] embody the pursuit - the achievement - of excellence" (although that sort of phrasing does remind me a bit of the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence). Plus, the nominees span the food spectrum, from an excellent Phoenix hot dog cart to French Laundry-trained Kevin Binkley. Plus there are Tucsonans nominated: booze master Aaron DeFeo from Casino del Sol, El Charro, and Kade Mislinski and Jenny Rice's Playground.

I just can't figure out whether they're nominated for a specific category, which there are nine of, from Restaurant Concept to Good Neighbor, or if they're just giving awards away for general awesomeness. Either way, it's nice that we're included at all and best of luck to our three in the running.

From a very strange (but brilliant) Facebook thread on Tucson concert booker/DJ Dan Hernandez's page referencing Mexican food and popular rap songs of the moment, I present this wonderful image with text by Matthew Baquet. Enjoy:

Patricia Schwabe was raised in Monterrey, Mexico and moved to the states to finish college in the early ‘90s. Schwabe, owner of both Tooley’s Café in the Lost Barrio and Peach Properties, Inc., opened a restaurant, Penca, Tuesday, March 5, 2013. The restaurant is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and offers authentic Mexican dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as a full bar. Penca is located at 50 E. Broadway Blvd. For more information call 203-7681.

Where did the name Penca come from?

Penca is the rib of the agave and an agave for me is something that represents the Mexican farm and the Mexican, kind of, traditions. And we’re trying to do something very organic … rooted in the traditional Mexican culture. So for me the agave was a good thing to start with and then the Penca is the rib that comes out of the agave.

Why did you choose to open a restaurant?

I’ve had Tooley’s Café in the Lost Barrio since also the early ‘90s and my husband and I are also owners of Peach Properties and we’re involved downtown and when this space became available I just felt like there was a good opportunity to bring a different concept of Mexican food to downtown.

What do you do around the restaurant?

I just kind of try to keep an eye on everything. I help in the kitchen … I work very closely with the chef in creating the food and the recipes and I’m pretty involved with the front of the house making sure things run well. I’m probably very intimately involved with almost every area of the restaurant right now.

Has your previous experience helped prepare you to become a restaurant owner?

I hope so. I guess we’re going to discover right? As this restaurant takes off and finds its own identity. I’m hoping that experience and age and other things that we’ve done in our lives has given us some tools at least … to create this restaurant.

Have you noticed any significant differences between owning a restaurant and your previous experience?

This is just a little more involved because it’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’ve never had a place that served dinner. And … I’ve never had a bar before. I’ve never had a restaurant that had a bar so I did hire a couple very experienced bartenders and I have a very talented bar manager or beverage director that has really helped create the concept of the bar. So he has really been instrumental in setting the tone for the bar.

What do you hope people get out of their experience when they visit the restaurant?

Oh my gosh, I hope they can be transported to central Mexico with the food. And I hope they can enjoy the space, the décor, the food and just the fabulous international bar that we have.

Who inspired the menu items?

Probably just my upbringing with my mother cooking and aunts cooking. And just like a deep love for traditional Mexican food.

What’s your favorite dish on the menu?

I guess that’s like asking who’s your favorite child, right? I mean there’s something different and distinct of every dish. I like the fact that we have a good selection of vegetarian dishes … I’m very proud of that

If a tourist is visiting Tucson for the first time, and they come here and they ask for a recommendation, what would you recommend?

Well I don’t know because I usually ask people ‘are you a vegetarian?’ ‘Do you like spicy food?’ ‘Do you want to try something light?’ and then I go from there right? I think we have good options for different palettes and different
appetites.

Anything else you’d like to add?

That we’re very happy to be downtown. We have great breakfast items too that I’m very proud of. In the morning, yes, probably my favorite in the morning are the chilaquiles … salda verde chilaquiles.

In a move that's sure to fuel fires similar to that of the Chick-Fil-A protests of 2012, Chipotle Mexican Restaurants have decided to pull their sponsorship of a Utah Scout-A-Rama event after admitting that their support of the event ran counter to company policy.

Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold, by way of ThinkProgress, who asked Chipotle about the policy inconsistency in the first place:

By way of follow up, we have terminated our sponsorship of this event.

As I mentioned yesterday, community support decisions like this are made in a decentralized way and this one was inconsistent with our own policy. We believed that terminating the sponsorship and remaining consistent with our policy was the right thing to do, and we have reinforced our policy with the team that makes these decisions to try to prevent similar issues in the future.

The Great Salt Lake Council of the Boy Scouts of America is "the largest council in the Boy Scouts of America and the leading voice within the BSA against lifting the nationwide ban on LGBT Scouts and leaders," according to ThinkProgress.

Good for Chipotle for standing by their company-wide scruples, though I have to question who thought it was a good idea to challenge those scruples in the first place—and why they went back on their original stance, which was to hold firm to their Scout-O-Rama sponorship.

The good folks at Serial Grillers appear to have put us on a fairly regular schedule, as they're back outside of our offices at 3280 E. Hemisphere Loop from now 'til 2 p.m., gracing our lives with the scent of grilled meats, veggies, and cheese sandwiches.

I'll say this much for the guys at the Serial Grillers truck, by the way: I've yet to have an unsatisfying lunch so long I've been patronizing them, having sampled the cheesesteak, chicken cheesesteak, and veggie sandwiches thus far, making today burger day. I'll let you know how it is on Twitter.

Make sure to check out Serial Grillers on Facebook.

And if you happen to run a food truck and are interested in swinging by Weekly World Central, don't hesitate to give us a shout. We'd love to have you — and a monopoly on the best damn mobile food court in Southern Arizona.

Vice Magazine's UK arm recently published a fascinating Q&A interview with a man who has come up with a fairly revolutionary way to live without actually, uh, eating anything.

Rob Rhinehart is a 24-year-old software programmer from San Francisco who apparently feels that food was just too damn inefficient, and took it upon himself to streamline the nutrient-obtaining process — "hacking the body," as he says — by mixing nutrients, in their most basic reasonable forms, into a nutrient shake he calls Soylent. Yes, as in Soylent Green.

From Vice.com:

So what’s in Soylent, exactly?
Everything the body needs — that we know of, anyway — vitamins, minerals and macronutrients like essential amino acids, carbohydrates and fat. For the fat, I just use olive oil and add fish oil. The carbs are an oligosaccharide, which is like sugar, but the molecules are longer, meaning it takes longer to metabolise and gives you a steady flow of energy for a longer period of time, rather than a sugar rush from something like fructose or table sugar. I also add some non-essentials like antioxidants and probiotics and lately have been experimenting with nootropics.

And that tastes as good as a burger?
It tastes very good. I haven't got tired of the taste in six weeks. It's a very "complete" sensation, more sweet than anything. Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.

What are some of the benefits to the food-free lifestyle? Any drawbacks?
Not having to worry about food is fantastic. No groceries, dishes, deciding what to eat, no endless conversations weighing the relative merits of gluten-free, keto, paleo or vegan. Power and water bills are lower. I save hours a day and hundreds of dollars a month. I feel liberated from a crushing amount of repetitive drudgery. Soylent might also be good for people having trouble managing their weight. I find it very easy to lose and gain precise amounts of weight by varying the proportions in my drink.

There are drawbacks: It doesn't keep long after mixing with water, so I still have to make it every day. If I make a mistake with the amount of an ingredient it can make me sick, but that hasn't happened in a while. Also, some people really enjoy food a lot more than I do, so they may not like the idea.

How could Soylent affect the world's eating habits?
Consumer behaviour has a lot to do with cost and convenience. There are plenty of ways to be healthy, but Americans are more likely to be overweight simply because the food that's cheap and convenient is unhealthy. I think it's possible to use technology to make healthy food very cheap and easy, but we'll have to give up many traditional foodstuffs like fresh fruits and veggies, which are incompatible with food processing and scale.

Rhinehart has fascinating ideas here, but I'm still not sold — mostly because I'm a big fan of tasting different things from time to time. Either way, you can find out more about Rhinehart's Soylent shake (which, he promises, has absolutely zero human in it) at Vice, or at his blog, where he's chronicled his experiences.

A new farmers' market is opening at a one of Tucson's local loves, The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd.

On Saturdays, the market will take over the new outdoors patio area to the east of the main building. Hours are 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Local food farmers and gardeners will be featured including local honey from the Tucson Honey Company; produce from Breckenfeld Family Growers and Local Roots Hydroponics; raw macaroons and crackers from R’s Raw Kitchen; eggs from ZenHens; lasagna from Lasagna and More; canned goods from Iskashitaa Refugee Network; spices from Spice Smith/Solar Cooking; raw ice cream from Tonic Sustenance; fair trade/organic coffee from Café Aqui; plants from Dream Flower Garden; cotton candy from Fluff It Up; power bars from PHOD; salsa from Chilttepica Salsa; and seed bombs from Green Fire Arizona, along with organic produce, baked goods and cold salads from Food Conspiracy Co-op. Topping it off, there's free organic popcorn available for all attendees!

Also each week, along with all the great local food being sold, they will offer live music, food demonstrations, short films, and other activities. There will also be three tables for other non-profits to use, free of charge, to promote their organizations. For questions, or to express interest in being a vendor, email [email protected].

The owners of 47 Scott will be bringing Caribbean food and a lot of rum to downtown Tucson this August.

After some construction delays thanks to the age of the building, Saint House, is set to open August 15 at 256 E. Congress, filling the space left behind by Shark's Nightclub.

The owners decided to pause construction after a few delays and open when streetcar construction on Congress Street is finished, Nicole Flowers, co-owner of 47 Scott said.

"It's a Caribbean restaurant based around all the different regions where rum comes from," Flowers said. "So we'll have a lot of rum drinks a lot of different rums."

The food will be based off of the Caribbean, Flowers added, but also Caribbean cuisine influences such as South America, France and the United Kingdom and the surrounding islands.

Having the streets open to traffic in August will help people get into downtown easily which makes for great timing. In May 2010, 47 Scott was one of the first new concepts in downtown Tucson. Flowers said she doesn't see many vacant spots in the area, "which is nice."

"We ... are all in on downtown as far as businesses and any future businesses that we do," Flowers said. "We've seen a lot of growth with everyone else opening since then ... it'll just be nice to have a walkable, urban feeling downtown here in Tucson."