What it is
Los Dos Molinos is a New Mexican restaurant on South Central Avenue, a mile north of the gate to South Mountain Park, in a rambling adobe-style house that once belonged to Tom Mix, the biggest cowboy star of the silent-film era. The food is the Hatch chile cooking of New Mexico rather than the Sonoran cooking of Arizona: red and green chile sauces that are the dish, not the garnish, on pork adovada, enchiladas, chile-rubbed ribs and a machaca pizza, at a heat the Valley talks about in the tone other cities reserve for weather. The margaritas are large. The rooms sprawl through the old house and onto a patio hung with lights and painted in colors Tom Mix would not have chosen, and the Saturday wait is a South Phoenix institution in itself.
The family that runs it has New Mexican roots and has opened and closed other Valley locations over the years, including an Ahwatukee branch under a different owner that went through liquidation; this one is the original and the one that matters.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale’s Mexican food is Sonoran, and good, and our best Mexican restaurants note ranks it, but none of it is this. Los Sombreros cooks interior Mexico, Frank & Lupe’s cooks New Mexican with the heat turned to Scottsdale, and Los Dos Molinos cooks New Mexican the way New Mexico does, which means the chile is the point and the heat is honest. For anyone who grew up on it, or wants to know what the fuss is about, it is the only place within an hour.
The practical version
Thirty-five minutes from Old Town down the 101, 202 and I-10 to Baseline, then south on Central. Lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday; check the hours before a long drive. Order the adovada, a cheese crisp for the table and the margarita. Tell the server the truth about your tolerance. The park gate is two miles south, and the drive up Summit Road to Dobbins Lookout in South Mountain Park is the correct digestif.
When to go
Tuesday through Thursday for lunch or an early dinner, when there is no wait and the patio is yours. Saturday is the show: a line by six, a crowd at the bar, the whole of South Phoenix in the rooms, and a long wait that the margaritas are built for; go at opening instead and you get the room without the line. Autumn, when the new Hatch chile arrives and the patio weather returns, is the best season; in summer the dining rooms are cool and the chile seems, oddly, to help.
Pair it with the park. Lunch here, then two miles south to the gate and up Summit Road to the lookout, is the best half day on this side of the Valley from October to April; in summer, do the lookout at sunset and dinner after.
What to order
- Adovada. Pork marinated in red chile until it falls apart; the signature and the hottest standard plate.
- Enchiladas, green. Stacked New Mexico style if they will do it, with an egg on top if you want to be correct about it.
- Chile ribs. Rubbed and slow-cooked; the plate that converts the people who thought they came for tacos.
- Machaca pizza. The house’s own idea, a flour-tortilla base under shredded beef and chile; the heat is lower and the regulars love it.
- A cheese crisp and the big margarita. Not optional. The crisp is the fire extinguisher and the margarita is the anesthetic.
Say “on the side” if you want to taste the chile before you commit, and say “mild” knowing it is relative.
With kids
Children who eat spicy food will be happy and children who do not have the cheese crisp and the tacos, with the sauce left off. The rooms are loud and the patio is forgiving.
The neighborhood
South Central Avenue below Baseline is an old South Phoenix of ranch houses, churches and farm stands with South Mountain filling the windshield. There is nothing else to do here but the park, which is enough.
The story
Tom Mix made more than 200 Westerns between 1909 and 1935, most of them in the silent years, and was the highest-paid cowboy in Hollywood when the talkies arrived. He had been a real Arizona ranch hand, or said he had, won riding and roping contests at Prescott before the movies, and kept Arizona as his retreat: a ranch near Prescott through the 1920s, and this house in the South Mountain foothills, where Phoenix thinned to farms and the mountain rose behind it. He died in October 1940 when his Cord roadster went into a wash south of Florence, and a stone memorial marks the spot on the highway. The house outlived him, and after a long second life as a residence it became a restaurant.
The family behind Los Dos Molinos brought New Mexican cooking to the Valley at a time when Mexican food here meant Sonoran, mild and cheese-covered, and the two sauces of Hatch, red and green, were something you drove to Albuquerque for. They cooked the heat straight, built a following that argued about the adovada, and over the years opened other locations around the Valley; the Ahwatukee branch, under a separate owner, closed through a Chapter 7 liquidation, and the others came and went. The South Central original kept going, kept its awards shelf full of Best of Phoenix plaques for salsa and neighborhood Mexican, and kept its wait.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s one New Mexican restaurant of note, Frank & Lupe’s, served its red and green chile enchiladas on Marshall Way for thirty years and now does it at Gainey Ranch, with the heat turned to a Scottsdale audience. Los Dos Molinos is what that food is like at home, and the two are worth eating in the same week to understand the difference. There is also the cowboy thread: Tom Mix’s era of Western film is the one the West’s Most Western Town was built to evoke, and the Rawhide and the cowboy steakhouses that Scottsdale lost were, in their way, Tom Mix sets. Eating in his actual house, with the chile burning, is the closest the Valley gets to the real thing.
Getting there
Loop 101 south to the 202, the 202 west to I-10, I-10 east toward Tucson to the Baseline Road exit, west on Baseline about two miles to Central Avenue, then south about a mile; the restaurant is on the east side of Central at 8646 S Central, with the mountain ahead. Thirty-five minutes from Old Town with no traffic. The South Mountain Park gate is two miles further south on Central; the Arizona Grand and its water park are ten minutes back east on Baseline. No transit of any use.