What it is
Ocean Prime is the Phoenix location of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants’ steak-and-seafood chain, about twenty rooms nationwide from Beverly Hills to Boston run out of Columbus, Ohio, and it sits on High Street in Desert Ridge, where it has been the anchor restaurant since the street’s early years. People who know the name often place it in the Biltmore, next to the other Camelback steakhouses; it is not there. It is at 5455 East High Street, a mile from the Scottsdale line and five minutes from the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, which is the point of it.
The room is the chain’s house style: dark wood, low light, a long bar, a lounge with its own menu, a dining room that takes itself seriously without being stiff. The menu splits down the middle. On one side are the dry-aged steaks and the chops; on the other the raw bar, the fish and the shellfish, including the restaurant’s two signatures: the “Smoking” Shellfish Tower, which arrives over dry ice and pours fog across the table, and the Rose & Garnet oysters, the chain’s private-label Cape Cod oysters, which are the better order. Dinner runs nightly from four, there is a weekday happy hour in the lounge from four to six, and Sunday brings a Surf & Turf set menu built around an eight-ounce filet and a choice of seafood.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
You would not, from Old Town; Scottsdale has a dozen steakhouses as good or better and our steakhouse note ranks them. You come because you are staying at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, the Princess or one of the Kierland hotels and you want the dress-up dinner without the drive, or because it is 4:30 on a weekday and the lounge menu is half price.
The practical version
Thirty-three minutes from Old Town, five from the JW Marriott, fifteen from Kierland. Free parking in the High Street garage. Dinner nightly from four; reserve for Friday and Saturday. A level-four bill in the dining room, closer to two in the lounge at happy hour. Smart casual and up.
When to go
Weekday happy hour, four to six in the lounge, is the restaurant’s best hour and the one locals use: half off the lounge plates, ten-dollar specialty cocktails, five-dollar beers and ten-dollar wines, in a room that is still quiet. Sunday evening has the Surf & Turf set menu, a fixed-price filet-and-seafood dinner that is the dining room’s value play. Friday and Saturday are the resort crowd’s nights and need a reservation; the bar fills with Desert Ridge regulars by seven. Summer, when the resorts are discounting and the room is cool, is the easy season.
What to order
- The Rose & Garnet oysters. The chain’s private-label oysters from Cape Cod, on the half shell; the dish the kitchen is proudest of and the one to repeat.
- The Smoking Shellfish Tower. Lobster, shrimp, crab and oysters over dry ice, for a table of four that wants the show.
- A steak. The dry-aged cuts are the point of the steak side; a filet or a bone-in strip, cooked carefully.
- The fish. The sea bass and whatever is seasonal are the sleepers; the kitchen handles fish better than most steakhouses.
- The lounge menu. At happy hour, the smaller plates and the sliders at half price, with a cocktail from the specialty list.
- Sunday Surf & Turf. The eight-ounce filet with a choice of surf, as a set menu.
With kids
It is a grown-up room, and the lounge is a bar. Older children at an early Sunday dinner are fine; a family with young kids should take the Desert Ridge Marketplace option a half mile west and come back here on date night.
The neighborhood
High Street is the dinner street of Desert Ridge, with Hula’s Modern Tiki, Blue Martini and the Humble pair within a hundred yards; the JW Marriott is north across Deer Valley Road, the Marketplace is west on Tatum and the Kierland Quarter is across the line to the east.
The story
Cameron Mitchell started in Columbus kitchens and built one of the larger independent restaurant companies in the country, and Ocean Prime was its bid for the national fine-dining market in the 2000s: a steak-and-seafood concept polished enough for an expense account and consistent enough to repeat in twenty cities. Phoenix got one on High Street, the new main street of Desert Ridge, which had opened in 2008 as the first phase of the CityNorth urban plan and then lost its department-store anchors and its developer in the crash. The restaurant was one of the tenants that kept the street alive while the rest of the plan collapsed around it, and by the early 2010s it was counted among the chain’s core locations alongside Dallas, Denver and Atlanta.
It has stayed because of the resorts. The JW Marriott Desert Ridge, Arizona’s largest resort, is a mile north with 950 rooms and no white-tablecloth dining room of its own that guests choose for an anniversary; the Fairmont Princess and the Kierland hotels are fifteen minutes east. Ocean Prime became their fine-dining annex, which is why its Friday nights look like a resort lobby and why the lounge happy hour, aimed at Desert Ridge residents, is such a good deal by comparison.
The Scottsdale connection
The Mastro’s family of steakhouses, born in Scottsdale, is the local benchmark for this kind of room, and Mastro’s Ocean Club at Kierland Commons is Ocean Prime’s nearest rival in both menu and distance. Ocean 44 in Old Town is the Scottsdale version of the seafood-first steakhouse. Ocean Prime is a notch more corporate than either and a good deal more convenient for anyone sleeping north of the 101.
Getting there
The 101 north to Tatum Boulevard or 56th Street, north about a mile to High Street; the restaurant is at the east end of the street near 56th. About thirty-three minutes from Old Town, fifteen from Kierland via Bell Road, five from the JW Marriott. The garage behind the street is free, and street parking is easy on weeknights.