What it is
Local Jonny’s is the coffeehouse and tavern at the west end of Cave Creek Road, the first real business you reach after the road leaves the north Phoenix suburbs and turns into a town. It is a low building with a dirt lot in front and a patio in back, run by a local couple, Jonny and Lauren, and it does two shifts: from eight in the morning it is the town’s coffee shop, with espresso, a full breakfast and a lunch menu, and from Wednesday through Saturday it stays open until nine at night as a tavern, with dinner, a happy hour, a full bar and a musician on the back patio on Friday and Saturday evenings.
The distinction that matters is who is in it. The saloons farther up the road, Buffalo Chip and Harold’s, run on visitors and bikers. Local Jonny’s runs on the people who live in Cave Creek: horse-property families, retirees who have been here since incorporation, trail runners coming off Black Mountain, and the contractors who build the custom houses in the hills. Visitors are welcome and will be talked to.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has excellent coffee, which our best coffee shops note covers, and plenty of bars with music. What it does not have is a room where a small town eats breakfast together, and that is a thing worth seeing once. Local Jonny’s is also the answer to the practical Cave Creek problem: the saloons do not open until late morning, and a day up here starts with a hike. This is where you eat first.
The practical version
About forty-two minutes from Old Town with no traffic: Scottsdale Road north to Carefree Highway, west to Cave Creek Road, then north into town; the café is on the right at 6033 East Cave Creek Road as the businesses begin. Sunday through Tuesday it closes at two in the afternoon, so the tavern half is a Wednesday-to-Saturday affair. Parking is in the lot. Prices are a level below Scottsdale’s.
When to go
Weekday mornings, any month, are the best version. The patio is in shade until mid-morning, the counter is full of regulars, and breakfast is unhurried. In summer this is one of the few things in Cave Creek that works comfortably before 10, which makes it the natural pairing with a sunrise hike at Spur Cross or the Go John Trail under the summer sunrise rules.
Friday and Saturday evenings from October to May are the other version. A local musician plays the back patio from about five to eight, acoustic and at conversation volume, while the kitchen serves dinner and the bar does cocktails. It is the quiet alternative to the saloon strip on the same night, and the one you choose when you want to hear the person across the table. Weekend brunch adds a musician from ten to noon.
What to order
Breakfast is the strength: eggs, griddle things, a good coffee program, the kind of menu that a town eats from every day without getting tired of it. Lunch is sandwiches and salads. Dinner, Wednesday through Saturday, is tavern food done properly rather than ambitiously; order a cocktail with it and sit outside. The happy hour is the cheapest reasonable drink in Cave Creek that is not in a saloon.
With kids and dogs
Kids are everywhere at breakfast and nobody minds. Dogs are a Cave Creek patio tradition in general, but ask when you arrive. The gravel lot and the patio are stroller-fine.
The neighborhood
You are at the western edge of town. East along Cave Creek Road, in order, come the shops, Janey’s and Big Bronco, the Horny Toad, Harold’s, the Buffalo Chip and the Cave Creek Museum turnoff, then Stagecoach Village and the Carefree line. Our Cave Creek guide lays out the day; our live music note covers what you are driving away from.
The story
The building has a history that matters locally. For years it was the Cave Creek Coffee Company, C4 to everyone, a coffeehouse with a music room that booked singer-songwriters and regional bands and drew an audience from Scottsdale and north Phoenix as well as the town itself. When C4 closed, Cave Creek lost its living room, and the question of what would go into 6033 East Cave Creek Road was a civic one.
Local Jonny’s was the answer: a couple who lived in town, a name that announced the intention, and a formula that kept the two things C4 had been loved for, the coffee and the music, while adding what it had lacked, a kitchen and a proper bar. The music moved to the back patio and shrank to a single musician on weekend evenings; the room became a café. The town took to it quickly, and more than a decade on it is the place residents name first when asked where they eat breakfast.
The Scottsdale connection
Cave Creek’s coffee culture is older and deeper than its size suggests; the town’s roasters supply cafés as far south as Old Town, and the model of coffee by day and a small stage by night is one Scottsdale’s own Cartel Roasting Co. and the Old Town coffeehouses have worked from. Local Jonny’s is the north-Valley original of that idea, with a dirt lot and a full bar.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road north until it ends at Carefree Highway, west about three miles to Cave Creek Road, then north; the café is on the right within the first stretch of businesses. From the Pinnacle Peak and Troon resorts, take Pima Road or Scottsdale Road north to Carefree Highway and the drive is about twenty minutes. There is no transit; rideshares reach Cave Creek but thin out at night, so if the tavern half is the plan, settle the driver question first. Our getting-around note has the math.