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www.ahwatukee.com New eatery Gogi& brings Korean cuisine here

Hot Dog Days return to Joe’s Farm Grill

BY GERI KOEPPEL

AFN Contributor

Ahwatukee Foothills now has its first Korean restaurant: Gogi&, a spinoff of Gogi restaurant in Chandler’s Dobson Park Plaza. It quietly opened Aug. 17 and is planning a grand opening in late this month. Gogi&, in the Ahwatukee Foothills Towne Center on Ray Road, is next to Snowtime, a Korean shaved ice and softserve dessert shop. That’s no coincidence: Euijong “John” Chung, who owns Gogi& with his wife, Sun Ok Kim, is the brother of Snowtime owner Jin Chung. The original Gogi, near Lee Lee International Supermarket, opened in 2014. “After eight years of trial and error with Gogi, we found the quickest and easiest way to serve Korean food,” Jon Chung said through his daughter, Amy Chung, who translated the interview for her parents.

He added that this location will concentrate on the most popular items from Gogi, including bibimbap ($15-16), bento boxes ($15-17) and Korean fried chicken ($15). “These are the top three sellers at the Gogi restaurant that will be brought here,” Jon Chung noted. Bibimbap is a mix of rice, vegetables, fried egg and meat served in a sizzling hot stone pot, and Kim said it can be customized to leave out anything a customer doesn’t like. The bento boxes—which include meat,

kimchi, cabbage salad, rice, dumpling and shrimp tempura—are meant to be a quick takeout meal. “The idea was mainly driven by the change of consumers’ preference due to COVID and all that happened in the past two years,” Jon Chung said. Unlike Gogi in Chandler, Gogi& doesn’t serve sushi, but features a variety of other Asian dishes—such as orange chicken ($15), pad Thai ($16), and yakisoba ($13) and udon noodles ($15). That’s why they added the “&” to the name. It also serves appetizers including salEuijong “John” Chung and Sun Ok Kim display Korean bento boxes ads, dumplings, edamame and freshly at their new restaurant, Gogi&, on West Ray Road near South 50th made wings in six types of sauces. Street. The eatery also features bibimbap, Korean fried chicken and a Kim said the menu might change once variety of other Asian dishes. (Geri Koeppel/AFN Contributor ) it’s open a while and they determine customers’ preferences, but the meat-focused seeGOGI& page 31

BY GERI KOEPPEL

AFN Contributor

Now an annual tradition, the Hot Dog Days of Summer have returned through the end of September at Joe’s Farm Grill in Gilbert, featuring nine wiener-based gourmet sandwiches showcasing flavors inspired from around the globe, from Hawaii to Vietnam and Mexico to Michigan. Tim Peelen, co-owner of Joe’s Farm Grill, came up with the idea based on his upbringing in the Midwest. There, the “dog days of summer” generally end on Labor Day, “but not in Gilbert, Arizona,” he said. Here, the dog days of summer and warm weather continue and “hot dogs are warm-weather fare,” he noted. The specials, made with local Schreiner’s sausages and all-beef dogs, have run almost every September for roughly a decade, Peelen said. This year’s menu includes seven dogs Moco Dog and Reuben Dog. All dogs are $13 or $19 for two, which includes a side, and you can mix and match. “This is what I do: I dream about food,” Peelen said. “And I dream about comfort food. And I am always trying different combinations and iterations.” The Banh Mi Dog was inspired by Peelen’s love of street food. It’s made with sliced SchreinJoe Johnston, co-owner of Joe’s Farm Grill, shows off the Carolina Blue er’s Bockwurst meDog and Sonoran Dog, two of the Hot Dog Days of Summer specials dallions (mild veal-that are on the regular menu as well. (Courtesy of Joe’s Farm Grill) pork sausage), fresh house-pickled carrot, daikon, cucumber, serrano pepper and cilantro layered on a toasted French roll with mayo and herb liver paté spread. “That’s the one I’m really, really curious about this year to see how people receive that,” Peelen said. “It’s a lot of fun; it’s delicious; it’s a little lighter than the others.” It uses a chicken liver paté recipe from a restaurant where he worked in college. Peelen said he devised the Loco Moco Dog after two trips to Hawaii in the past year. It riffs on the classic Hawaiian comfort food using an open-face buttered grilled bun, sticky rice, burger patty, split grilled hot dog and homemade brown gravy, topped with a fried sunnyside up egg. “We make a scratch brown gravy with beef bones and marrow and make our own stock,” Peelen explained. “We go all out to make it authentic and make it really delicious. No corners cut on ingredients.” The Reuben Dog has hand-sliced corned seeHOT DOGS page 31

Ahwatukee pizzeria offers ‘inflation buster’ meal

AFN NEWS STAFF

An Ahwatukee pizzeria is offering what it calls an “inflation buster combo.” Ghetto Yo Pizza, 4747 E Elliot Road, is offering a cheese slice of its New Yorkstyle pizza and a soda for a price equivalent to the average price of a gallon of gas in Arizona, based on data by AAA Arizona listed every Sunday and applying to purchases for that week. A spokesman for the 2-yearold eatery said it “is doing its part to help ease inflation and prices at the pump” with the special. Recently, for example, the combo was $4, a 33% saving on Ghetto Yo’s normal price for a slice and a soda. “Inflation and the price of gas have had a huge impact on everyone which has forced people to cut back on spending including going out or ordering from restaurants,” said

Wally Ansari, owner of

Ghetto Yo Pizza.

“We wanted to do something to let our guests know ‘we feel your pain’ so that families can enjoy going out to a restaurant that won’t break the bank.” The Inflation Buster Combo Deal is offered daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and available in the restaurant or online via Ghetto Yo Pizza’s website for pick-up or delivery. Guests can add Pepperoni for 50 cents or other toppings for 75 cents each.

Information: 480-590-3639 or ghet-

toyopizza.com. 

GOGI& from page 30

Korean dishes are mainstays. “Gogi means ‘meat’ in Korean,” Amy Chung explained, saying any type of meat includes the word: “Cow gogi; chicken gogi.” (Gogi is pronounced with hard G’s.) Although the bento boxes are mainly meat-based, she added, the bibimbap and noodle dishes can be made vegetarian. Beer and soju, a clear, neutral-tasting spirit that is the world’s best-selling liquor by volume, are available, along with fountain drinks. Chung and Kim immigrated to the United States in 2004, and Kim had taken many cooking classes in her home country and always had an interest in food, Amy Chung said. The couple operated a teppanyaki restaurant in Chandler for six years prior to opening the original Gogi. They chose this location for Gogi& because there were no other Korean restauHOT DOGS from page 30

beef brisket, melted Swiss and fresh sauerkraut piled on a grilled split hot dog with house-made Russian dressing on a caraway-seed bun. “You can’t really tell where the hot dog stops and the corned beef starts,” Peelen stated. “It all works together quite nicely.” The Dog Days of Summer always features a spicy dog, and this year it’s the Dynamite Dog, with Schreiner’s spicy pork hot link, scorpion pepper and habanero cream cheese topped with hand-breaded fried chilito peppers and sweet-hot pepper jelly. Other specials include: The BBQ Bacon Blue O-Ring Dog, a bacon-wrapped hot dog dipped in barbecue sauce and threaded through three onions rings nestled on blue cheese. The Big Fat Greek Dog, a smoked Greekseasoned pork sausage topped with tzatziki sauce and Greek fries piled with garlic sauce, feta, tomatoes, kalamata olives and fresh herbs. The Cheddar Coney Dog, a grilled hot dog smothered with homemade Michigan Coney chili sauce, diced white onions and yellow mustard and piled with a mound of fine-shredded Tillamook cheddar. Two dogs also on the regular menu are: The Caroline Blue Dog, a grilled dog topped with Joe’s famous barbecued pulled pork, tangy crumbled bleu cheese and hand-cut sweet coleslaw and drizzled with Joe’s Real BBQ sauce and homemade ranch dressing. The Sonoran Dog, a jalapeño-stuffed bacon-wrapped fried hot dog with homemade pinto beans, cotija cheese and pico de gallo topped with a yellow mustard and sour cream-mayo drizzle. Peelen has done exhaustive research to honor the food traditions that inspired the dogs. For the Cheddar Coney Dog, for example, he went to several Detroit coney dog restaurants to sample the goods and develop his own chili. “The [recipe] I settled on, I love it,” Peelen said. “There’s no beans or anything in it. A few secret ingredients.” All the special dogs are piled so high that they’re meant to be eaten with a knife and fork, Peelen noted – “although it’s fun to see guys pick them up and try to eat them with their hands,” he added. People look forward to the Hot Dog Days of Summer every year, Peelen said. “It’s a difficult thing to put together operationally to do all of these at the same time,” Peelen explained. “And just doing them for a month, there’s so many new ingredients; things we normally don’t have in house: making the gravy and pickling all the vegetables and bringing in the corned beef to slice.” However, the staff enjoys the challenge. “They know it’s great fun for customers,” Peelen said, adding, “It’s really the only time we pull out all the stops and really go for it. It’s a lot of fun for everyone.” 

rants in the area. “There were a lot of customers saying we have to drive all the way to Chandler from Ahwatukee,” Kim said. Although Bap & Chicken, a Korean fastcasual restaurant, opened in late 2021 just across the I-10 freeway in Chandler, Kim remarked it’s different from their cuisine with more American influences. The owners of Gogi& hope to appeal to a wide demographic, including office workers looking for a quick lunch, people working from home who want to pick up takeout, and patrons of the nearby AMC Theaters. Patrons can grab a full dinner before a movie or fried chicken and a beer afterward; the restaurant is open until 9 p.m. weekdays and 10 p.m. weekends. “It’s a very delicious and healthy food,” Kim said, adding that nothing is too strong for the typical American palate. “It has a lot of seasoning, a lot of flavor, but also healthy, with a lot of vegetables and rice.”  Byoungdae Kim is the manager of the new Gogi& Korean restaurant in Ahwatukee.

(Geri Koeppel/AFN Contributor )

AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS | SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

What the Inflation Reduction Act means for you

BY HAROLD WONG AFN Guest Writer

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was recently passed and signed by President Joe Biden and according to Wikipedia, these are the main parts. The first is allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drugmakers and limit outof-pocket expenses to seniors on Medicare to $2,000 per year. The second is a 15% corporate minimum tax on companies with at least $1 billion or more in annual profits. The third is the hiring of up to 87,000 new IRS employees at a cost of $80 billion. The fourth part is providing $369 billion to fund energy and climate projects with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. This article will focus on the fourth part. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 introduced the 30% solar tax credit for residential or business solar installations. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, this dropped to a 26% solar tax credit. With the recently passed IRA, the tax credit goes back to 30% from 2022 through 2032, before dropping to 26% in 2033 and 22% in 2034. The credit will expire after 2034. For any solar projects done in 2022, even if started before the IRA was signed into law on Aug. 16, the solar tax credit is 30%. This solar tax credit can have 10% “adders” that can bring the total solar tax credit to at least 50%. The eligibility depends on: whether the solar project pays “prevailing wages”; whether there is a certain minimum amount of domestically produced iron and steel; whether the project is located in a Native American land; whether the project was built on a site that was formerly a closed coal plant; whether the project is in an “economically disadvantaged” area. The IRS will need six-12 months to spell out the rules for these “adders” and undoubtedly there will be many test court cases. However, one can clearly count on the 30% solar tax credit for residential and business solar projects.

Example: A Mesa company produces solar-powered refrigeration units (known as reefers) that replace the diesel-powered reefers that attach to refrigerated food trailers. These units cost $70,000 and are leased for 10 years to large grocery chains and food distribution companies at a 7% annual return. The investor who buys one gets a 30% solar tax credit of $21,000 and has a depreciable basis of $59,500. Depending on whether one is a “passive” or “material participation” investor, one can deduct the $59,500 immediately in the year of purchase or take accelerated depreciation over 5 years. The tax benefits are huge and the most powerful way of reducing federal income tax in today’s tax code.

Investor Example: An individual buys seven solar reefers and eliminates all the federal tax on $280,000 of 2022 taxable income and recovers most of the $250,000 tax owed on $850,000 of 2021 taxable income. Note that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 allows one to take excess solar tax benefits generated in 2022 back one year and forward 20 years. The IRA seems to increase the carryback to 3 years and the carryforward to 22 years. The investor will receive a 7% annual return of $34,300 from large food companies for 10 years and will sell the equipment for $490,000 (to recoup the original purchase price) at the end of the 10-year lease. The typical client who buys a $70,000 solar reefer saves $35,000 in total federal and state income tax. Free seminar and lunch: 10 a.m. Sept. 24 at Hyatt Place, 3535 W. Chandler Blvd., Chandler, with lunch at 12:15 p.m. Topic is “Beat Inflation by Saving Lots of Tax and Increasing Cash Flow!” To RSVP or schedule a free consultation, contact Dr. Harold Wong at 480-706-0177 or harold_wong@hotmail.com. His website is drharoldwong.com.

Dr. Harold Wong earned his Ph.D. in economics at University of California/ Berkeley and has appeared on over 400

TV/radio programs. 