What it is
Culinary Dropout at The Yard is the biggest of Sam Fox’s gastropubs and the one he built to show what the concept could be. It opened on December 9, 2014, in a converted garage on Farmer Avenue, two streets west of Mill Avenue, as the anchor of The Yard at Farmer Arts District, a block of old industrial buildings that Fox Restaurant Concepts and a developer rebuilt into restaurants and event space. At roughly $11 million it was, Fox said at the time, the most expensive project of his career. The room is cavernous: a long bar, high ceilings, communal tables, a stage, and through the back doors the yard itself, a lawn with games, string lights and more tables, where the Saturday music happens.
The menu is the Culinary Dropout menu that Scottsdale knows from the Scottsdale Quarter location: soft pretzels with provolone fondue, 36-hour pork ribs, fried chicken, a good burger, crispy Brussels sprouts, monkey bread for dessert. A weekend brunch runs until three, and a weekday happy hour at the bar from two to five is the cheapest way through the door.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Not for the food, which you can have at the Quarter; for the room and the crowd. The Yard is where Arizona State families eat on move-in weekend and graduation, where a bachelor party starts before Mill, and where a table of ten can be loud without anyone minding. The yard out back is a genuine outdoor room, the live music is free, and the complimentary valet is the easiest parking in downtown Tempe. If you are already in Tempe for a game, a show or a night on Mill, it is the group dinner that requires no thought. Our happy hour guide sends people to the bar here for the 2-to-5 window, which beats Scottsdale’s.
The practical version
Eighteen minutes from Old Town, no traffic: Scottsdale Road south into Rural, west on University past Mill, south on Farmer. Free valet or street parking. Open daily from eleven, ten on weekends for brunch, until ten most nights and midnight Friday and Saturday. Book for groups over six on weekends; the bar and the yard are first come. Two hours for dinner; then walk two blocks east to Mill and Snakes & Lattes.
When to go
Weekday happy hour, 2 to 5 at the bar, is the quiet, cheap version, and the yard is pleasant from October through April at that hour. Saturday nights in the cool months are the loud version: the yard full, the music on, the campus crowd in. Brunch on Saturday and Sunday until three is the family hour and the best time for the yard games. ASU football Saturdays and graduation weekend in May are the two times to book well ahead or go elsewhere. Summer moves everything indoors, where the room’s size and air conditioning make it one of the more comfortable large restaurants in the East Valley.
What to order
The pretzels and fondue for the table, first, every time. Then the 36-hour pork ribs, which are the kitchen’s best plate, or the fried chicken, which is the crowd’s. The burger is a proper one. The Brussels sprouts are the vegetable people actually finish. The spicy rigatoni and the steak frites are there for the table that wants a dinner rather than a pub plate. Brunch is the banana bread French toast and the smokehouse hash. The bar does cocktails well and the draft list leans local.
With kids
Fine, especially at brunch or an early dinner, when the yard games and the lawn do the work. The noise is a feature. Teenagers like it because it does not feel like a family restaurant.
The neighborhood
Farmer Avenue is the west edge of downtown Tempe, two blocks from Mill and three from the lake, and The Yard was the project that made it a destination. The rest of the block’s tenants have turned over since 2014; Culinary Dropout has not. Mill Avenue’s bars, Snakes & Lattes and the streetcar are a five-minute walk; our live music note covers the Tempe stages within walking distance.
The story
Sam Fox built Fox Restaurant Concepts in Phoenix and Scottsdale in the 2000s on the idea that a chain could feel like a neighborhood place: North, True Food Kitchen, Olive & Ivy, and in 2009 the first Culinary Dropout, a gastropub for people who did not want to dress for dinner. By 2014 there were two in the Valley and Fox wanted a flagship. He found it in Tempe, on a block of old warehouses and a former motorcycle garage along Farmer Avenue, two streets west of Mill and a few blocks from the campus, where a developer named Brian Frakes was assembling what became The Yard at Farmer Arts District.
The project cost about $11 million and slipped from a planned October opening to December 9, 2014, which the local press noted with amusement, and it was built as an event venue as much as a restaurant: the yard, the stage, the private rooms, the lawn where a wedding reception could follow a ceremony. The Arizona State press called it the place where Pinterest weddings come to life, which was not meant as a compliment and became one. The yard and the music made it the default group dinner in downtown Tempe within a year, and Fox used the model for the Culinary Dropouts that followed in Las Vegas, Tucson and elsewhere, none of which is bigger. Fox sold a majority of his company to The Cheesecake Factory in 2019; the Tempe Yard has carried on as it was.
The Scottsdale connection
Fox is a Scottsdale company at heart, and the Culinary Dropout at Scottsdale Quarter is the one most visitors know. The Yard is the same restaurant written larger and younger, and the comparison is useful: if the Quarter location is where Scottsdale eats before a movie, the Yard is where its children eat before a night on Mill. Many Scottsdale families know it from the ASU weekends when every table in Tempe is taken and this room still has one.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south from Old Town; it becomes Rural Road at the Tempe line. West on University Drive through the campus and past Mill Avenue, then south on Farmer Avenue; the Yard is on the right. About eighteen minutes with no traffic. Use the free valet. The Valley Metro streetcar on Mill is two blocks east and connects to the light rail; our getting around note has the rideshare math, and for a Saturday night it is the better plan.