What it is
Phil’s Filling Station Grill is the diner of Fountain Hills, which is a town of twenty-odd thousand people and therefore has exactly one. It sits on Parkview Avenue a block north of the Avenue of the Fountains, about 30 minutes from Old Town, and Phil Rodakis has run it since 1997. The theme is a gas station, as the name says, but the collection is Coca-Cola: three dining rooms of bottles, tins, serving trays, signs, art and framed puzzles from the 1930s to the 1950s, built up over nearly thirty years with the help of locals who bring things in from their garages. Nearly a hundred of the framed puzzles were assembled by Rodakis’s father during the illness that killed him in 2019, and they are the part of the room that regulars point out.
The food is diner food at a scale that is the other half of the joke. The pancakes are the size of the plate. The house burger is 20 ounces. The omelets, the burgers and the rest of the diner canon are what you would expect and bigger than you expect, and the motto on the door is that you never leave hungry. On Sunday mornings from October to May the back lot fills with classic cars for Cruisin’ at Phil’s, an informal show that the retirees of Fountain Hills take seriously.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Not for the food alone; Scottsdale has the Sugar Bowl and a dozen pancake houses. For what it does to a Fountain Hills morning: breakfast at eight, the nine o’clock fountain three blocks away, the Avenue, the museum, the ten o’clock fountain, home by noon. And on a winter Sunday, for the cars, which are the best free car show within reach of Scottsdale that does not involve an auction tent.
The practical version
Shea east, right on Palisades, into the downtown grid; Parkview is one block north of the Avenue. Breakfast and lunch; hours move by season, so check. A wait on winter weekends. Free street parking, and the car show takes the back lot on Sundays from October to May.
When to go
Sunday mornings, October through May, for the cars; arrive by half past nine, before the lot and the dining rooms both fill. Weekday breakfasts any month are quiet and the regulars are at the counter. Summer the town empties, the car show pauses, and Phil’s is air-conditioned and unhurried, which is its own argument for an eight o’clock start before the 9 AM fountain. The town’s two big fair weekends, in February and November, turn every table in Fountain Hills over three times; eat early or elsewhere.
What to order
- One pancake. It is the plate. Order one for the table and something else for yourself.
- The 20-ounce burger, if you are the kind of person who orders the 20-ounce burger. Split it.
- A proper omelet with hash browns, which is the sane breakfast and still enormous.
- A Coke, in a glass bottle if they have them, for the photograph against the wall.
With kids
Ideal. Booths, three rooms of things on the walls to count, pancakes bigger than their heads, and on Sunday a parking lot of old cars whose owners like children who ask questions. Our Scottsdale with kids note has the Fountain Hills morning laid out: Phil’s, the fountain, the splash pad at Fountain Park, and home before anyone melts.
The neighborhood
The downtown grid of Fountain Hills is four blocks square and Phil’s is at the north edge of it. The Avenue of the Fountains is one block south with its median of fountains and public art, Sofrita and Grapeables are on it for later in the day, the River of Time Museum is a few blocks north, and the park with the fountain is three blocks east.
The story
Phil Rodakis, who grew up in Greece by his own telling, opened Phil’s Filling Station Grill in Fountain Hills in 1997, when the town had been incorporated for eight years and had a downtown that was mostly intentions. A filling-station theme for a diner was not original; what made it his was the collecting. He started hanging Coca-Cola pieces when the restaurant opened and never stopped, and the town joined in: for nearly thirty years people have brought him trays and tins and bottles from attics and estate sales, so the walls are in some sense Fountain Hills’ own collection with Phil as the curator. At Christmas the regular pieces come down and the Coca-Cola Christmas pieces go up, which is a bigger operation than it sounds.
The puzzles are the human part. Rodakis’s father, during cancer treatment, assembled Coca-Cola jigsaw puzzles, nearly a hundred of them, which were framed and hung; he died in 2019 and the puzzles stayed. The car show grew the way these things do, from a few regulars with old cars parking out back on Sunday to a standing event, Cruisin’ at Phil’s, that runs every Sunday morning from October to May and that the Harley clubs of the Valley put on their ride calendars as a breakfast stop.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale had diners like this once, on Scottsdale Road and in the Motor Mile days, and has mostly traded them for brunch. The Sugar Bowl on Scottsdale Road, since 1958, is the closest surviving relative in spirit: one family, one theme, a town’s worth of regulars. Phil’s is what that looks like in a town thirty years younger, and a good number of its Sunday regulars are Scottsdale people who drove over the hill for the cars.
Getting there
Shea Boulevard east from the Loop 101, over the saddle into Fountain Hills, right on Palisades Boulevard; at the Avenue of the Fountains turn into the downtown grid, and Parkview Avenue is the next street north. Thirty minutes from Old Town, fifteen from the Shea corridor, 35 from the Camelback resorts. Street parking is free and the lot is behind; on Sundays in season the lot belongs to the cars.