What was Taneko Japanese Tavern?
Taneko Japanese Tavern was the restaurant P.F. Chang’s built to find out whether it could grow a second chain, and the answer turned out to be no. The Scottsdale-based P.F. Chang’s China Bistro opened it in fall 2006 at The Borgata, 6166 N Scottsdale Road, the replica Italian village on the Paradise Valley line. Co-founder Paul Fleming was no longer part of the company; Phoenix New Times called it the work of “the new execs” behind Chang’s.
The model was the Japanese izakaya, a tavern where drinking comes first and the food is small plates for the table. The team had Chang’s DNA: development partner Rich Sullivan, one of the creators of the P.F. Chang’s concept; founding chef Paul Muller, formerly head of culinary operations for Chang’s and Pei Wei; and operating partner Mark Evensvold. The room looked nothing like a Chang’s. New Times described enormous red lanterns hanging from massive wooden ceiling beams, like an old Japanese country house, with an open kitchen and a wood-burning stone hearth oven. Servers brought oshibori hot towels when you sat down.
The drinks were the point: 16 sakes in four categories, 17 beers including the Hitachino Nest ales from Japan, shochu cocktails and 56 wines. The food was more adventurous than anyone expected from a chain test kitchen, with a custom soy blend, local produce and a tableside Hot Rock for searing American Kobe beef, which New Times’ critic picked as the dish most likely to become “the next chicken lettuce wraps.”
It lasted less than two years. A deal to sell control to a Dallas restaurateur collapsed in spring 2008, Chang’s closed it in July 2008, and Fox Restaurant Concepts opened a Blanco cantina in the space that November. Our verdict: the most interesting thing P.F. Chang’s ever tried in its hometown, and a few years too early for the Central Scottsdale crowd it was aimed at.
What the menu and the room were
The small plates. New Times’ November 2006 review, by Michele Laudig, is the fullest record. Four kinds of organic heirloom tomatoes came with a sesame-tofu dressing; scoops of house-made tofu got soy, bonito shavings, scallions and ginger; the edamame were tossed in a hot wok with sea salt and sansho pepper until smoky. The tempura list had squash blossoms still on the baby squash, stuffed with shrimp, scallops and green tea salt, and oysters wrapped in shiso leaves, served in their shells on a long plate.
The big plates. The Hot Rock was a heated river stone for cooking marinated American Kobe beef at the table. From the hearth came wood-roasted yellowtail with sansho and sake ($20) and duck breast with Japanese plum ($18), per Nation’s Restaurant News; the critic’s favorites were the wild Alaskan black cod in mirin broth, wok-seared white shrimp with ponzu and pickled garlic, and littleneck clams steeped with leeks, pork, sake, white soy and yuzu. Concessions to American diners, an American Kobe burger and a tempura fish sandwich, were tasty and beside the point.
The drinks. Sake ran from $6 to $15 a glass, $24 to $60 a half bottle and $40 to $180 a bottle. Hitachino Nest bottles were $7 to $8, Sapporo draft $5, Kirin $4. The shochu cocktails were the Roppongi Fizz ($8, lychee and yuzu) and the Hibiya-tini ($9), and a 19-bottle reserve Tavern List topped out with a 2003 Dunn Napa Valley Cabernet at $125. NRN put beverages at about 27 percent of sales.
What regulars did. By May 2007 Taneko had a weekday happy hour, 3 to 6:30, with half-price appetizers, draft beers and martinis, and half-price wine and sake all day on Mondays. Evensvold pushed three-taste cold sake flights at $7 to $9: once you get into the cold sakes, he told New Times, you probably won’t order hot sake as much as you used to. Dessert was the weak spot; the critic thought the warm chocolate cake with soy-milk crème anglaise was an American dessert in a Japanese tavern, and preferred the citrus semifreddo.
The second chain that P.F. Chang’s never built
Scottsdale has launched a lot of national restaurant brands, and P.F. Chang’s is one of the biggest. By the mid-2000s the company had a full-service bistro chain and a fast-casual one in Pei Wei, and Taneko was its attempt at a third leg. NRN’s February 2007 profile treated it as a prototype, and New Times’ critic said plainly that she understood it could end up a chain someday, and was relieved it had taken more risks than expected. Izakaya were booming in New York and Los Angeles; there was nothing like it in the Valley.
It never got a second location. In January 2008, Chang’s announced a memorandum of understanding to sell a controlling stake in Taneko to Jack Baum, whose Dallas company Food, Friends & Co. ran 13 restaurants in nine states, including Cozymel’s. Chang’s would keep a minority interest, Muller and Evensvold would stay, and Baum told NRN, “I wouldn’t have done this if I thought Taneko’s potential is just one location.” Chang’s took a charge of about eight cents a share on the restaurant’s assets in its fourth quarter. By spring the parties had not reached a definitive agreement, and the deal was off, for reasons nobody disclosed.
About three months later, in July 2008, Chang’s closed Taneko, with a spokeswoman saying the company would focus on its namesake brand and Pei Wei. Fox Restaurant Concepts took the site, and on a Monday in late November 2008 Sam Fox opened Blanco Tacos + Tequila in what Arizona Foothills Magazine called the space where Taneko Tavern used to reside. The Blanco brand, renamed Blanco Cocina + Cantina, still anchors the Borgata. What the record does not say is how much Taneko cost to build, how many seats it had, or how much it sold.
Honest assessment: Taneko was a better restaurant than its short life suggests. It brought a real izakaya menu, a serious sake list and Japanese craft beer to Scottsdale Road well before small-plates Japanese drinking became common in the Valley, and the New Times review it got was warm. It failed as a business plan, a one-unit prototype that was expensive to run, opened at the edge of a recession by a company that decided it had better things to do. The Borgata replaced it with tacos and tequila, which is a fair summary of what Scottsdale wanted in 2008.