Chef driven scratch kitchen – Elevated street food
Featured Business (see full article):
Imagine you and your friends or family go out to eat, and while you’re in the car, everyone is debating what they want for dinner. One person wants a burger and fries, another is pleading for a chicken and cheese quesadilla, and there’s a request for an omelet? Regardless of the craving, Culinary Gangster can satisfy any appetite, day or night.
You can find an extensive menu of popular street food items like cheese fries and onion rings, burgers and sandwiches, breakfast pancakes, and desserts. And as an added bonus, CG offers many Gluten Free and Vegan options.
There are a lot of unique items to order, like the Gangster Fries, a basket of crinkle-cut fries tossed in the Hot Gangster Spice Blend, sprinkled with bacon, and doused with cheddar cheese sauce and ranch.
Other notable items include the Sweet Potato Quinoa bowl, the Chi Town and PBJ & J burgers, the Club Sandwich, and the Street Gyros.
The Sweet Potato Quinoa bowl is one of Culinary’s best bowls. Quinoa, roasted sweet potato, avocado, black beans, corn, and a few other ingredients are mixed together with a spicy cilantro crema that melds everything together. It’s fresh and doesn’t leave you feeling stuffed, and if you need extra protein, you can add grilled chicken.
The Chi Town Burger is Culinary Gangster’s version of the Big Mac and is the favorite menu item of owner Ricky Raschillo’s son. The burger has two patties, red onions, pickles, lettuce, cheese, and a secret sauce between a brioche bun.
The unusual but tasty PBJ & J Burger was a new creation by Raschillo’s wife, Karrie, who helped bring this restaurant to fruition. It’s a beef patty layered with creamy peanut butter, jelly, and bacon. It is a best seller at CG and a great choice for nostalgic food fans.
All sandwiches at Culinary Gangster are served with a small pasta salad, which pairs nicely with the Club sandwich. CG’s Turkey Club has tomato, lettuce, turkey bacon, swiss cheese, and honey mustard spread on multi-grain bread. (If you don’t prefer pasta salad, you can substitute for a salad.)
Hopefully, you can fit in some dessert at the end of your meal because this restaurant has some out of this world desserts. They offer funnel cake fries, fried crispy and dusted with powdered sugar, and a chimichanga cheesecake. The cheesecake is stuffed in a tortilla, fried, and topped with a drizzle of Nutella and a dusting of powdered sugar, rolled in cinnamon sugar or plain.
And if Culinary Gangster can’t get any better, just wait… In addition to offering fountain drinks, tea, and coffee, CG has a BYOB deal. Bring your own wine, beer, and spirits, and Culinary will supply the glasses and bottle openers with no corkage fee!
The menu at Culinary Gangster is a fusion of menus from the 21 restaurants Raschillo operated previously. To curate this diverse menu, he chose the top 5 best sellers from each menu and included those meals plus favorites from his wife, Karrie, and their son.
The vibe here is fine dining meets street food and stems from the family’s roots in Chicago. Their transition to Scottsdale was intended for retirement but became a journey to open another restaurant.
Raschillo’s goal was to create a restaurant for families and friends to come and have fun while enjoying a high-quality meal. He operates a chef-driven restaurant where every sauce is made in house, and all of the ingredients are local or from a top-notch seller, making Culinary Gangster a standout restaurant in Scottsdale.
Review provided by The Scottsdale Living – RipLey Simone Kennebrew.
RipLey Simone is currently a senior at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University
