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August 4, 2000/3 Av 5760, Vol. 52, No.47
Medizona blends flavors of two regional cuisines
LEISAH NAMM
Staff Writer
After devoting years to preparing gourmet meals in the kitchens of Valley resorts, Chef Lenard Rubin recently opened his own restaurant, Medizona, in Old Town Scottsdale.
Medizona - for "Mediterranean" and "Arizona" - opened in December to offer diners a menu of "Mediterranean-inspired Southwestern cuisine," combining ingredients and preparations of the two traditions.
Dishes include entrees like Moroccan-spiced chicken breast with black bean-saffron couscous and cilantro-yogurt sauce, and desserts such as prickly pear tiramisu with Turkish coffee-pistachio sauce.
Entrees are $21-29, appetizers $8-12, and desserts $6.
The restaurant, which seats 50, is decorated with trinkets Rubin has collected on his travels around the world: a peace pipe from Sante Fe, where he worked as the executive chef at The Eldorado Hotel; paintings from Barcelona; and a hookah (water pipe) from Turkey.
Rubin's experience includes a stint as the chef de cuisine at the Scottsdale Princess Resort's five-diamond restaurant, Marquesa. He also stirred up delectable delights at The Phoenician Resort and Ritz-Carlton in Phoenix and at Scottsdale's Inn at McCormick Ranch & Pinon Grill.
He's won numerous culinary awards and represented the state of Arizona, preparing Southwestern cuisine, at the American Southwest Food and Culture Festival at the Crown Princess Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1992.
He has also been guest chef at the Marina Mandarin Hotel in Singapore; Clarion Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska; and Harvard Street Grill in Brookline, Mass.
He was one of 13 featured Southwestern chefs on the PBS show "Savor the Southwest," and was included in the show's accompanying cookbook.
Rubin, 39, lives in Phoenix with his wife, Tatiana, and their children, Sasha, 6, and Valeria, 1. The couple met while Rubin was executive sous chef at the Nevsky Palace Hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia.
While in Russia, Rubin worked with a Venezuelan restaurant company to open several restaurants, including a fried chicken eatery and a pizza parlor in Siberia, and an eatery in Minsk.
While living in Russia, he also looked into the genealogy of his ancestors, some of whom immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s.
"I tried to find the villages where they were from," he says, "but they were totally gone."
Rubin grew up in Beth El, Conn., a member of one of two Jewish families in town. He became a bar mitzvah at his grandparents' Orthodox synagogue in Waterbury, Conn.
Fond childhood memories include cooking for the Jewish holidays. Some of his recipes appear in "Jewish Cooking in America" by Joan Nathan and "Passover Cookbook," published in 1999 by the New York Times. He has also been published in several Arizona and Southwestern-themed cookbooks.
Rubin's first cooking job was a summer job as a cook at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, while a student at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. He graduated from Suffolk University in 1982, with a degree in business management.
When he frequents other restaurants, he usually goes "for simple stuff like barbecue." He says he rarely lingers over his own entrees.
"I just pick here and there," he says. "I never sit down and have a meal or anything. That's a chef's thing, for the most part - eating on the run."
Medizona is open for dinner 6-10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, at 7217 E. Fourth Ave., Scottsdale. For reservations, call 480-947-9500.
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