Art and Architecture and Really Good Fast Food

With my wife and a couple of Utah friends, I made yet another pilgrimage yesterday to Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and desert laboratory and architectural school at Taliesin West, in Scottsdale.

Then we met up with old friends who now live in Gilbert, and they suggested that we visit the Zelma Basha Salmeri Gallery in Chandler.

We had never heard of it, but I need to give a strong, strong recommendation for it here.  First, though, a bit of background:

Najeeb Basha immigrated to the United States from Lebanon in 1886 and then moved with his wife to Arizona in 1910.  The first Bashas’ grocery store bearing that name was founded by Najeeb’s sons, Ike Basha and Eddie Basha, Sr., in Chandler.  There are now more than 130 Bashas’ stores, all but one of them in Arizona — every county in the state — and one in New Mexico.

Upon the death of Eddie Sr., Eddie Basha, Jr. took over the company’s leadership.  Although himself Roman Catholic — presumably, the family were originally Maronites back in Lebanon — he was a friend of the Latter-day Saints and at least one of his sons joined the Church.  (If I have things right, which is far from certain, he’s currently serving as a stake president.) Eddie Jr. died in March 2013, and the CEO of Bashas’ is now Eddie Jr.’s son, Eddie Basha III (who may [or may not] be the stake president).

Eddie Jr. graduated with a degree in history from Stanford University before returning to the family grocery business, but somewhere along the way he became a dedicated and very discerning collector of western American and Southwest Indian art.

And now you can visit his collection, at absolutely no charge.  (Because of our friends’ personal connection to the family, they held the gallery open for us past its normal closing time.  But there is never an admission charge.)

The Eddie Basha Collection of western American and American Indian art is on display in the Zelma Basha Salmeri Gallery, which is located at

Bashas’ Corporate Office

22402 S. Basha Road

Chandler, Arizona 85248

It’s closed on weekends, but is typically open on weekdays between 9 AM and 4 PM.  You can call them at 480-895-5230.

If you go, don’t expect an outwardly spectacular art museum.  It looks nothing like that.  It’s not even a nice corporate office.  And it’s in what looks at first like an ordinary residential neighborhood, shading perhaps an industrial area.  But inside an unpreposessing building is an absolute treasure.  I’m not, myself, a particular fan of western art, though I like it well enough.  I certainly enjoyed the Basha collection, though — more than 3000 items, including Hopi katsinas, cowboy paintings, sculpture, pottery, baskets — and fully intend to go back sometime and, if possible, more than once.  If you’re in the Phoenix area, you really should go.  Really.  It was stunning.

After the Basha museum, we drove a few minutes to Gilbert where we and our friends had dinner with still other friends at Joe’s Farm Grill, which has some of the best “fast food” I’ve ever had.  We shared a lot.  All of the things that I tasted — including greater or lesser portions of a date shake, a dark chocolate shake, jumbo fried shrimp, onion rings, a gouda garlic bacon burger, sweet potato fries, and fried green beans — were very, very goo.

Posted from Phoenix, Arizona