What it is
Sofrita is the tapas restaurant on the Avenue of the Fountains, the four-block downtown strip of Fountain Hills that runs up from the lake, about 30 minutes from Old Town. It sits mid-strip on the north side, across from one of the Avenue’s small public fountains and a block from the big one. The cooking is small plates with Spanish and Latin Caribbean flavors and a Puerto Rican heart: bruschettas, mixed plates to share, shrimp tacos, elotes, a cobb salad gone Nuevo Latino, sangria and margaritas by the glass or the pitcher. On some evenings there is live Spanish guitar in the room, and on others a flamenco show, which in a town of retirees and dark skies is the closest thing to nightlife and is treated accordingly.
It is open Tuesday through Sunday from lunch into the early evening and closed on Mondays. That schedule tells you what it is: the lunch and early-dinner room for a town that eats early and goes home to look at the stars.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Fountain Hills is not a dining destination and our neighborhood guide says so plainly. It is a neighborhood-restaurant town, and Sofrita is the neighborhood restaurant that justifies planning a meal around. The honest case is this: you are coming for the fountain anyway, the fountain takes 15 minutes, and the half-day needs a lunch. Sofrita’s patio is a block from the show, the plates are made for sharing over an hour, and the sangria is correct. Scottsdale has Tapas Papa Frita in Old Town for the louder, later version.
The practical version
Shea east, right on Palisades, right on the Avenue of the Fountains; street and lot parking along the Avenue. Patio in the cool months, dining room in summer. Order several plates for the table in two rounds. Check the posted hours and the music calendar before driving over for dinner, because the early close is real and the flamenco nights are not every night.
When to go
October through April, at lunch, on the patio: the Avenue is in its season, the fountain is going off a block away every hour, and the public art along the median is worth the walk after. A flamenco or guitar night is the dinner case; the restaurant posts the dates and the room fills, so book. Summer the patio is out, the dining room is cool, and the whole town is quieter, which some people prefer. The February Great Fair and the November fair put tens of thousands of people on the Avenue; Sofrita is in the middle of it, which is either the point or the problem.
What to order
- Bruschettas, the house way in, several kinds for the table.
- A mixed plate, the Caribbean sampler of the menu, which is the Puerto Rican heart of the place.
- Shrimp tacos and elotes, the two plates everyone photographs, for a reason.
- The Nuevo Latino cobb, if someone at the table insists on a salad; it is the good version.
- Sangria, by the pitcher if there are four of you, and a margarita for whoever is not driving back over the hill.
With kids
Fine at lunch: a patio, plates that arrive as they are ready, tacos and elotes, and the fountain a block away as a reward. A flamenco night is a grown-up evening.
The neighborhood
The Avenue of the Fountains is one of the better small main streets in the Valley: a wide median of fountains and public sculpture, galleries and shops, a few patios, and the lake at the bottom. Grapeables is the wine bar for after, with a patio facing the park; Phil’s Filling Station Grill is the diner one block north for the morning version; the River of Time Museum is a few blocks up La Montana; and Fountain Park is at the bottom of the Avenue with the fountain on the hour.
The story
The Avenue of the Fountains was drawn in 1970 as the ceremonial main street of a planned town, a wide boulevard from Saguaro Boulevard up the hill with a landscaped median of fountains, and for its first decades it had more fountains than restaurants. The town’s downtown filled in slowly: incorporation in 1989, a Community Center and a town hall in the early 2000s, a public-art program that put sculpture along the median, and a second generation of restaurants that treated the Avenue as a place to linger rather than a place to park. Sofrita belongs to that generation, a small-plates room with Spanish and Caribbean roots on a street that had mostly done American and Mexican, and it found its audience in the town’s winter residents, who eat lunch out and dinner early.
The live music is the part that gives the place its character. Spanish guitar in the dining room and, on scheduled nights, a flamenco show, in a town whose evening entertainment is otherwise the lit fountain at nine and the stars after. It is small-town in the best sense: the dancers are known, the regulars have their tables, and the show is for the room.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s tapas tradition runs through Tapas Papa Frita in Old Town, with its late nights and its own flamenco, and Sofrita is the daylight, small-town cousin: the same idea of a shared table and a pitcher of sangria, at half the volume and at lunch. The fair that fills the Avenue twice a year draws most of its crowd from Scottsdale; our Fountain Festival page covers it and the parking.
Getting there
Shea Boulevard east from the Loop 101, over the McDowell saddle into Fountain Hills; turn right on Palisades Boulevard, then right on the Avenue of the Fountains, and Sofrita is on the north side mid-block with street and lot parking around it. Thirty minutes from Old Town, fifteen from the Shea corridor, 35 from the Camelback resorts. Someone at the table is driving back over the hill in the dark, which is the one thing to plan for; Shea is a fast road and the saddle is unlit.