Short Tucson review: Downtown Kitchen and Passion for the Love of Pastry

[Claudette]

Two new local businesses well worth supporting!

Janos' new resto, DOWNTOWN KITCHEN, is terrfic! We enjoyed the food (the calamari is a knockout), the service, the wines, and the lovely furnishings. Our only criticism is the harsh light from the semi-open kitchen.

The new pastry shop has a too-long name, but the products are beautiful, tasty, and not too sweet (a plus, IMHO). The raspberry mousse in the red velvet cake gave it a lot of flavor that is usually missing in that genre (I've never understood why people like it); my favorite was the white chocolate passionfruit, even though I don't like white chocolate nor passionfruit (my husband ordered it, and I stole a bite).

[EWSflash]

Are these new places? I didn't realize I had my head in the sand quite so much about downtown. Janos is awesome- he started out in downtown, and moved to the foothills after several years, I think he's brave to open a new place in downtown, and it shows his commitment to Tucson (thank the good Lord).
The downtown Tucson issue is such a cluster****- we have a really lame local government that wants to revitalize downtown but are too lame to figure out how as a group.