What it is
Cornish Pasty Co. is the small, dark, loud pub in a strip of shops on University Drive, a half mile west of the ASU campus, where a Cornishman named Dean Thomas started baking the hand-crimped meat pies of his home county in 2005 for students who had never seen one. The idea worked better than a pasty shop in the desert has any right to: the company has grown to a handful of pubs across the Valley, including the Old Town Scottsdale branch that opened on Goldwater Boulevard in 2013 and a downtown Glendale one that opened in 2026. The Tempe shop is the first, and still the one locals mean.
The room is a bar down one side, a few tables, a sidewalk patio and an oven. The Oggie, the traditional pasty of steak, potato, onion and rutabaga with red wine gravy on the side, is the reference point; the menu then goes anywhere it likes, with several dozen fillings from chicken tikka masala and lamb vindaloo to a full Thanksgiving dinner in a crust and a long vegetarian and vegan list. Everything is made ahead and baked to order, so there are no substitutions and nobody apologizes for it. The bar leans British, with craft beer and classic cocktails behind it, and the hours run to eleven on weeknights and later on weekends.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
The honest answer is that you do not have to, since the Old Town branch is a five-minute walk from the Scottsdale Road bars with the same menu. The reason to drive is the original: cheaper drinks, a student crowd, twenty years of scuffs, and the particular quality of a British pub that grew up next to a university. It is also one of the best cheap dinners within twenty minutes of a Scottsdale hotel, which our budget note counts for a lot.
The practical version
Twenty minutes from Old Town: Scottsdale Road to the 202 west, exit Priest, south to University, east a half mile. Small lot in front and street parking. Open daily from eleven to eleven, later on Fridays and Saturdays. Order one traditional and one odd, split them, gravy on the side. Avoid six to eight on a Friday or any ASU weekend unless you like a wait.
When to go
Weeknights after nine are the pub at its best, when the students have eaten and the bar turns quiet and British. Lunch is quick and uncrowded in summer, when the campus empties. ASU weekends and the two weeks around graduation fill the room from six and the wait can run an hour; the Old Town branch is the escape valve. There is no patio season to speak of, since the sidewalk tables are in shade from the building and the room is dim and cool in any month.
What to order
- The Oggie. Steak, potato, onion and rutabaga, hand-crimped, with red wine gravy or ketchup on the side. The reference pasty and the right first one.
- A curry. The chicken tikka masala and the lamb vindaloo are where the crust and the kitchen are most interesting together.
- The specials board, which changes with the season and includes a Thanksgiving pasty with turkey, stuffing and cranberry in November.
- The vegan list. Long and serious; the vegetable curries are as good as the meat ones.
- A pint. British standards on draft and a rotating set of local craft; the cocktails are classic and cheap.
A pasty is a meal. Two between two people, split, is the right order, with a side of the chips if you must.
The neighborhood
University Drive west of the campus is the student side of Tempe, cheap and unpolished, and the shop fits it. Casey Moore’s is a mile east on Ash, the right second stop; Mill Avenue is a mile and a half, and the light rail along University connects the two ends.
The story
Dean Thomas grew up in Cornwall, the peninsula at the far southwest of England where the pasty was the tin miners’ lunch: a pie you could carry underground, hold by the crimp with dirty hands, and throw the crust away. He landed in Tempe in the early 2000s, found that nobody in Arizona knew what a pasty was, and in 2005 opened a shop in a strip on University Drive to tell them. The customers were students, who liked that it was cheap and large; the menu grew as Thomas discovered that a crimped crust would hold a curry or a breakfast as readily as a steak. By the time the Old Town Scottsdale pub opened in November 2013, Cornish Pasty had become a Valley institution and a small chain, with pubs in Mesa and Phoenix following, and in 2026 one in downtown Glendale, each a little newer and calmer than the last.
The Tempe shop has been expanded and repaired over twenty years but not redesigned, which is the point of it: the bar, the dim light, the oven and the patio on the sidewalk are what they were when a pasty in Arizona was a strange idea. The company’s own description of itself, Cornish owned and operated since 2005, is on every menu and is still true.
The Scottsdale connection
The Old Town pub on Goldwater Boulevard, open since 2013, is the company’s Scottsdale face, and our guide to it covers that room; it is the one most Scottsdale visitors will end up in, and the pasties are identical. The Tempe original is for the people who want the story with the pie, or who are already across the river for a game or a show at Gammage, a mile east.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south to the westbound 202, one exit to Priest Drive, south to University Drive and east a half mile; the shop is on the south side in a small strip west of the campus. From North Scottsdale take the 101 to the 202. The light rail runs along University with a stop at Rural a mile and a half east; a rideshare from Old Town is twenty minutes, and our getting around note has the alternatives.