What it is
Carefree has had a breakfast counter since 1978, and this is it. The Black Mountain Coffee Shop sits at the corner of Ho and Hum roads, which is a real intersection and the best address in Arizona, in the Spanish Village block behind the sundial plaza. It opens at six every morning and serves breakfast and lunch all day: cinnamon rolls and biscuits baked in-house, biscuits and gravy, huevos rancheros, big omelettes, then burgers, specialty sandwiches and salads, with locally roasted coffee and fresh tea. It calls itself the oldest name in town and, among restaurants, it is.
Don and Lisa Little bought it in 2017 and did the thing new owners rarely manage: they changed nothing that mattered and added what was missing. The missing thing was a bar. Gears, the lounge they built, gave the coffee shop evening hours and a music calendar that now runs most of the week, karaoke on Tuesday, live sets Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, a Friday jam session on the patio with a fish fry, and a Sunday-morning band from ten to one. The full name is now Black Mountain Coffee Shop & Cafe, or Black Mountain Cafe & Lounge depending on which sign you read. Everybody still says the coffee shop.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
For the breakfast before the hike, mostly. Black Mountain, the dark cone over the town, has a short, steep, loose trail to a summit with a view of half of north Scottsdale, and the trailhead is five minutes from this counter. Scottsdale’s own breakfast rooms are better at eggs Benedict and worse at being a town’s living room; here the counter knows the regulars, the patio faces the mountain, and the check is what a Scottsdale resort charges for the coffee. From Old Town it is 38 minutes, so make it the start of a day in Carefree and Cave Creek rather than a trip of its own.
The practical version
Six in the morning, every day, first come first served for breakfast and lunch. Dinner, the bar and the music Tuesday through Saturday evenings, with reservations after three. Closed Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Park in the Spanish Village lot. The cinnamon roll is a sit-down dish.
When to go
Weekday mornings between six and eight are the coffee shop at its truest, when the counter is residents and the talk is the town council. Sunday mornings from ten have music on top of breakfast and are the busiest the room gets outside festival weekends. Friday evenings are the fish fry and the patio jam, which is the closest thing Carefree has to a block party. Festival weekends, when the fine-art shows take over Easy Street and Ho Hum Road, bring a line; come before eight or after one.
Summer mornings are the Desert Foothills’ best season for this place: the town is a thousand feet above Old Town, the patio is pleasant until nine, and the music moves an hour later into the evening.
What to order
The cinnamon roll, first, shared or not. Then biscuits and gravy if you want the Midwestern breakfast, huevos rancheros if you want the Arizona one; the omelettes are large enough to be lunch. At lunch the burger and the specialty sandwiches, with a salad if you are pretending. The Friday fish fry runs four to nine. Groovy Hour, three to six Tuesday through Saturday, is the bar’s happy hour, and the lounge pours a reasonable drink.
The neighborhood
The Spanish Village is Carefree’s second block, the quieter one, with Keeler’s steakhouse next door, galleries and a wine room. The sundial and the Desert Gardens are a two-minute walk through to Easy Street, where the tea room, Venues Café and Giordano’s are. Black Mountain fills the view north from the patio, and the trailhead is a five-minute drive. Cave Creek is five minutes west.
With kids
A diner at six in the morning is a child’s natural habitat. Pancakes, a cinnamon roll to be divided by treaty, a patio, and a mountain to point at. Sunday-morning music is loud enough to be fun and early enough to be over by lunch.
The story
Carefree was planned in the mid-1950s and spent its first twenty years as a resort town with very few places to eat that were not inside a resort. The Black Mountain Coffee Shop opened in 1978 to fix that for breakfast, and the formula, early hours, a counter, baked goods, coffee, has not needed revising since. Owners came and went, as they do in a small town. Don and Lisa Little, who bought it in 2017, kept the breakfast as it was and spending their energy on the evenings. Gears, the bar and lounge, turned a 2 PM-closing diner into a seven-day business with a music schedule, a fish fry and a karaoke night, and gave Carefree, which goes to bed at nine, somewhere to be at eight. In 2025 Phoenix Magazine’s guide to eating in the Desert Foothills listed it as the iconic diner where locals have gathered and gossiped since the 1970s, which is the whole review.
The Scottsdale connection
Carefree is where Scottsdale Road ends, and this is the breakfast at the end of it. For the far north Scottsdale neighborhoods, Troon, Desert Mountain, the Boulders’ edge, it is the nearest counter breakfast, closer than anything in the Airpark; for visitors, it pairs with the Black Mountain hike the way our brunch note pairs the city’s rooms with Camelback. The music calendar, small as it is, makes it the only Carefree stop in our live music thinking; the saloons of Cave Creek are the louder alternative five minutes west.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road north across Carefree Highway, where it becomes Tom Darlington Drive; right on Cave Creek Road, then right on Ho Hum Road into the Spanish Village. The coffee shop is at the corner of Ho and Hum, with the Village lot beside it. From the Airpark, Pima Road north to Cave Creek Road is quicker. Allow 38 minutes from Old Town and 15 from Pinnacle Peak; the Black Mountain trailhead is five minutes farther, and the climb is an hour each way on loose rock, so eat first or second but not during.