All Wrapped Up

It's ironic that hospitals so often lack healthful restaurant options in their immediate neighborhoods. Think of the fictional County General Hospital on "ER." The show's characters always found themselves eating at Doc MaGoo's, a seedy diner with greasy fare definitely not aligned with any current nutritional guidelines. Many real hospitals are similar. They're often found in areas with few food options nearby. That's why All Wrapped Up, located across the street from St. Joseph's Hospital in Midtown, is so refreshing. It's a restaurant right by a major medical center, yet its food is both tasty and reasonably nutritious. The name is yet another pun on the word "wrap," just like at the better known That's a Wrap restaurant over on 7th St., and the food is of course the recently popularized derivative of the burrito with any range of non-traditional fillings inside a rolled, flavored tortilla.

All Wrapped Up is located on the south side of Thomas just a few blocks west of the Thomas / Central light rail station. It's in the same little plaza as a few other restaurants that serve both hospital traffic and the adjacent Willo neighborhood. The restaurant is most easily identified by the big "lunch" sign over the front door; it's an apt description since the restaurant currently serves only during midday hours, even if it does have a handful of eggy breakfast wraps on the menu. The interior is an unexpected charmer with local art, half of it cute animal images and half of it weightier depictions of travel and architecture, surrounding about a dozen tables. This is a fast-casual place, meaning that everyone orders at the counter and awaits delivery of food to the table.

There are both hold and cold wraps. Both types combine interesting mixes of ingredients with clever names. A Thanksgiving Turkey wrap combines roasted white meat, hearty stuffing, and chunky cranberry sauce in a whole wheat tortilla. The China Wrap (jokingly subtitled "Made in U.S.A.") is teriyaki-coated chicken breast with nutty jasmine rice and crunchy vegetables like water chestnuts. A meatless option is the Hot Vegetarian, a phrase which probably describes someone we all wanted to date in college. It's actually remarkably similar to the restaurant's Philly Cheesesteak wrap, minus the meat of course. It's full of roasted eggplant, peppers, onions, tomato, zucchini, and provolone cheese, all of which meld nicely inside a spinach tortilla.

All the tortilla varieties are organic and come from a local producer in Glendale. They're both firm and flexible, but not rubbery, avoiding the worst textural flaws of some mass-produced versions of this staple ingredient. The wraps come with a choice of sides: chips, pasta , or mango yogurt. The chips are Poore Brother's in several varieties that require no explanation here. The pasta salad works well. The noodles are al dente, appropriately seasoned with a type of pesto, and not excessively oily. The last item seems more like a dessert than a side and works best when saved untl the end of the meal.

You're probably going to visit All Wrapped Up for, obviously, the wraps, but there are alternatives. Half a dozen subs on French bread are available, and big salads provide a potential route to a low-carb entree, as long as one ignores the tortillas they're served atop. The Greek feta salad is full of crumbled cheese, red onion, bell pepper, salty kalamata olives, and mesclun greens. It's judiciously dressed so as not to drown out the flavors of the ingredients, and the result is a notch above the typical Greek salads of iceberg, canned generic black olives, and mealy winter tomatoes that are offered at so many lunch places. It's big enough to be an entree by itself. Among the non-wraps, the only disappointment, a slight one, is the minestrone soup, in which the vegetables and pasta are just a bit on the mushy side.

Because the restaurant is lunch-only, there's no liquor license. Most beverage options come from the soda fountain, although coffee beverages like espresso and cappuccino are offered. Dessert takes the form of monstrous cookies which are best shared among several diners. It's easy to overlook All Wrapped Up given its location in an inconspicuous building across the street from the much larger hospital complex, but this restaurant, to use a tacky medical pun, shouldn't be bypassed. It's a refreshing choice for anyone looking for an affordable lunch in Midtown and yet another creative approach to sandwiches at a time when value-priced dining is at a premium. There's no doubt that Phoenix health care institution St. Joe's is one of the best places to go if sick, but anyone looking to eat well while trying to stay out of the hospital might do well to begin with a lunch across the street at All Wrapped Up.

503 W. Thomas Rd., Phoenix AZ 85013 | Map
(602) 279-5122