What it is
Ingo’s Tasty Food is a burger counter, and it looks like one: a small building on 40th Street a block north of the La Grande Orange corner, with one curved counter inside and a patio wrapped around three sides of it, shaded, misted in summer and heated in winter. It opened in 2013 as the burger arm of the family of restaurants that runs the corner, and the buns still come from the LGO bake shop down the street. The menu was five burgers and a sandwich on opening day and has not strayed far: burgers, a chicken sandwich, salads for the person who came along, fries, and a short list of drinks headed by a frozen Greyhound that has become the house signature.
It is casual in the way the whole neighborhood is casual, which is to say the food is made from scratch, the people at the counter know the regulars, and nobody is wearing anything they could not hike in. It has since grown into a small chain under Hi Noon Hospitality, the Scottsdale group that also runs Buck & Rider on Camelback and Pinyon in Old Town, with all-day rooms downtown at Block 23 and in North Scottsdale on Mayo Boulevard. Arcadia is the original and still a lunch-and-dinner counter.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Not for the burger alone; Scottsdale has burgers, and our what to eat note and Rehab Burger Therapy cover them. You come because it is the lunch on the best restaurant block in the metro, a block from LGO and Postino and five from Chelsea’s Kitchen, and because after a morning on Camelback, whose Echo Canyon trailhead is eight minutes north, it is the burger and the frozen drink that the people who live under the mountain actually go to.
The practical version
Twelve minutes from Old Town along Indian School Road and north on 40th Street. Open daily 11 to 9. Order at the counter, eat on the patio. Parking is a small lot and the street; the block is busy at lunch and at school pickup. It is counter service with real food, priced like it.
When to go
A late weekday lunch, after 1:30, when the neighborhood has gone back to work and the patio opens up. An early dinner on a weeknight, which is when Arcadia families eat here. Weekend lunch is busy and fine; the counter moves quickly and the patio is large. It closes at 9, so this is not the late-night burger; our what to eat note has those.
The patio is comfortable from October to May without help and comfortable in summer with the misters and a frozen Greyhound, which is the reason that drink exists.
What to order
The classic burger, as built. The chicken sandwich if someone insists. A salad on the side instead of fries if you hiked; fries if you did not. The frozen Greyhound, or whatever frozen cocktail is on the board. Cookies are a block south at LGO, and the regulars treat that as the dessert course.
With kids
One of the easiest meals in Arcadia with children: a plain burger, fries, a patio to run on, and no one minding. Weekday afternoons are calmest. Combine it with the canal path a half mile north, at Camelback, for the walk afterward.
The neighborhood
Ingo’s is a block north of La Grande Orange and Postino at Campbell Avenue; Chelsea’s Kitchen is at Camelback, four blocks north; The Vig is at Indian School, six blocks south. The whole stretch of 40th Street between Indian School and Camelback is walkable, and most Arcadia people do it on foot or by bike. The Camelback corridor resorts are a mile and a half east.
The story
By 2013 the corner of 40th and Campbell had La Grande Orange, Postino and a neighborhood that had learned to walk to dinner, and the LGO group that ran the store and Chelsea’s Kitchen up the road saw the gap: the thing Arcadia did not have was a cheap, good burger within walking distance. Ingo’s opened that year a block north of the store, a deliberately small building with one curved counter and a patio doing the work of a dining room. The local press reviewed it within weeks and found the burgers close to perfect and the buns, from the LGO bake shop, the reason. It has not needed to change.
What changed was the company name. Ingo’s, with the seafood house Buck & Rider on Camelback and later Pinyon in Old Town Scottsdale, is now run by Hi Noon Hospitality, a Scottsdale-based group, while La Grande Orange and Chelsea’s Kitchen remain with LGO Hospitality. Under it Ingo’s opened a downtown Phoenix room at Block 23 in 2021 and a North Scottsdale one on Mayo Boulevard, near Mayo Clinic and the Desert Ridge shopping, in 2024, both as all-day rooms with coffee and breakfast. The Arcadia original stayed what it was, a lunch and dinner counter with a patio, and is the better place to understand the idea.
The Scottsdale connection
The North Scottsdale Ingo’s on Mayo Boulevard is a Phoenix address but a Scottsdale breakfast, five minutes from Kierland and the Desert Ridge resorts, and it is where the Arcadia formula reached the people this site is written for. Hi Noon’s Pinyon in Old Town is the group’s grown-up room. Arcadia itself is the neighborhood that Scottsdale’s restaurant and resort staff live in, and this is their lunch counter.
Getting there
Indian School Road west from Scottsdale Road to 40th Street, then north; Ingo’s is on the east side of 40th just past Campbell. From the Camelback corridor, 44th Street south to Campbell, west to 40th, north a block. By bike, the Arizona Canal path from the Waterfront enters Arcadia in about two miles; leave it near 40th Street and ride south. It is a car, a bike or a short rideshare from Old Town.