What it is
Nook Kitchen is the Italian-American room Arcadia goes to when it is not trying to impress anyone. It began in the early 2010s as a small trattoria in Gaslight Square, the older shopping center at 32nd Street and Indian School, with a dim, speakeasy feel that the local press picked up on immediately, and it has since moved east along Indian School Road into a larger space at 4231, between 40th and 44th streets, on the southern edge of the neighborhood. The cooking describes itself as modern American with Italian roots, which in practice means house-made pastas, a wood-fired Neapolitan pizza from a custom Acunto M. Napoli oven brought over from Italy, seasonal plates, and an espresso-rubbed filet for the table that wants a steak.
Chef Arturo Garino runs the kitchen. The Calabrese pizza and the bolognese are the two dishes people name, and the bar is the other reason the room exists: a happy hour Wednesday through Friday from 3 to 6, and a reverse happy hour on Friday and Saturday from 10 PM to the 2 AM close that makes this the late pizza for the whole east side of Phoenix. It is closed on Monday and Tuesday.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
For the late hours and the oven. Our late-night food note is honest about how thin Scottsdale’s after-ten options are; Nook is a full kitchen with a Neapolitan oven at temperature until 2 on weekends, twelve minutes west. And for the ordinary virtue of being a neighborhood Italian room with house pasta and a reasonable check, which Old Town has fewer of than it should. It is not a destination in the way Chelsea’s patio or the Postino post office are; it is the place Arcadia eats on a Thursday, and that is the recommendation.
The practical version
Twelve minutes from Old Town along Indian School Road to 42nd Street. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 11; until 10 on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, until 2 AM Friday and Saturday. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Parking in the lot. Check the address before you go: older guides still list the Gaslight Square location.
When to go
Friday or Saturday after 10 is the room’s particular hour: the reverse happy hour knocks the pizza and the drinks down, the oven is still roaring, and the crowd is the neighborhood’s service-industry people getting off shift, which is always the best sign. Wednesday and Thursday evenings are the quiet dinners, with the 3-to-6 happy hour before them. Sunday lunch is the family hour.
Do not plan on Monday or Tuesday; it is closed, and The Vig, four blocks west on Indian School, is the fallback.
What to order
The Calabrese pizza, from the Acunto oven, is the signature and the right first order. The bolognese is the pasta people come back for; the seasonal house pastas rotate and are worth asking about. The espresso-rubbed filet is the splurge, at market price. A glass of Italian red at the bar during the reverse happy hour is the whole late-night formula. Our happy hour guide covers the Scottsdale windows; this one runs later than any of them.
With kids
Early on a Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday, yes: pizza, pasta and a room that does not mind. After 9 on a weekend, no; it becomes a bar with an oven.
The neighborhood
Indian School Road is Arcadia’s southern seam, and this stretch between 40th and 44th has been filling in with restaurants for a decade. The Vig, the original one with the bocce court, is at 40th and Indian School; O.H.S.O. Brewery is east at 48th; the LGO corner at 40th and Campbell is a half mile north. The Camelback corridor resorts are a ten-minute drive northeast. Our what to eat note files this under the neighborhood rooms worth knowing.
The story
Gaslight Square, at 32nd Street and Indian School, is an older Arcadia-edge shopping center that has been a restaurant incubator for the neighborhood for years, and Nook was one of its small rooms: a trattoria with a hidden-door feel that the Phoenix press called a speakeasy when it reviewed it in the early 2010s. The pizza and the pasta were better than the size of the room suggested, the bar stayed open later than anyone expected, and within a few years the restaurant was planning an expansion and had announced a second room downtown inside the Hilton Garden Inn on Monroe Street.
The Arcadia room eventually moved east along Indian School into a bigger space at 4231, between 40th and 44th streets, closer to the center of the neighborhood’s restaurant row, and brought the formula with it: a custom Acunto oven from Naples for the pizza, chef Arturo Garino’s house pastas, the espresso-rubbed filet, and the late weekend hours and reverse happy hour that had made the original a service-industry hangout. The identity has held through the move. It is a neighborhood Italian-American with a good oven that stays open late, and Arcadia has decided that is exactly enough.
The Scottsdale connection
Nook is where some of the people who cook and pour in Scottsdale eat after their shifts, which is the quiet connection: the reverse happy hour on a Saturday at 11 is a cross-section of the Valley’s restaurant trade. For a visitor, it is the answer to the question our late-night note keeps dodging, where to get a real dinner after ten, as long as you are willing to drive twelve minutes west.
Getting there
Indian School Road west from Scottsdale Road, a little under three and a half miles, to 42nd Street; Nook is on the north side at 4231, with parking in front. From the Camelback corridor, 44th Street south to Indian School, then west two blocks. After the reverse happy hour, rideshare; it is a short fare back to Old Town and Indian School Road is a straight line.