What it is
Steak 44 is the steakhouse the Mastro family opened when it could no longer use its own name. Jeffrey, Michael and Dennis Mastro, with partner Scott Troilo, had built Mastro’s from a single room on Pinnacle Peak Road into a national brand, sold it in 2007, and returned to the business in 2011 with Dominick’s at Scottsdale Quarter. Steak 44 followed on April 5, 2014, in the remodeled bones of the old Cork ‘N Cleaver on the northwest corner of 44th Street and Camelback Road, and it is the fullest statement of what the family thinks a steakhouse should be.
The building is a labyrinth: a series of separate dining rooms, each with its own character, arranged around a sunken bar of about a hundred seats and a kitchen behind glass, with the most wanted booths lined along the window onto it. The menu is USDA Prime butchered in house, domestic and Australian wagyu, Japanese A5 by the ounce, a raw bar with a colossal shrimp cocktail, and the sides the Mastro school made standard: gratin potatoes, creamed spinach, mac and cheese. A renovation finished in early 2019 added two thousand square feet next door, eighty more seats, a dining bar that takes reservations and a butcher shop.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because it is the steak dinner Scottsdale would claim if the city line were a few hundred yards further west. Our steakhouse note covers Dominick’s, the original Mastro’s and the rest, and Steak 44 is their equal, ten minutes from Old Town and five from the Camelback resorts, with the practical advantage that in February, when every Scottsdale steakhouse is booked for a month, this one across the line often has a table.
The practical version
Ten minutes west on Camelback Road to 44th Street. Dinner only: from 5 PM Monday through Thursday, 4 PM Friday through Sunday, with the bar from 4. Valet at the door. Reserve for the dining rooms; the sunken bar takes walk-ins. Expect to spend what you would spend in Scottsdale. The Henry is across the intersection for the morning after.
When to go
A weeknight in the shoulder months, October or May, is the room at its most relaxed: a bar seat without a wait, the kitchen unhurried, the price unchanged. Winter weekends are the celebration season and need booking weeks ahead. Event weeks, the car auctions in January, the golf tournament and the spring-training weekends in February and March, are when Scottsdale’s steakhouses fill and Arcadia’s gets the overflow; book early or go to the bar at 4.
It is a dinner house in every season. The patio is small and the point is the rooms.
What to order
From the raw bar, the colossal shrimp cocktail or the crispy shrimp. The heirloom tomato salad in summer. Then the steak: the bone-in New York strip is the house cut, the Delmonico the value, the filet for the person who always orders the filet, and the Japanese A5 by the ounce when the occasion justifies it. Sides for the table: gratin potatoes and creamed spinach first, mac and cheese if there are more than two of you. The wine list is deep and the sommeliers are not snobs. Dessert is the s’mores in a jar, and the kitchen will put a candle in it.
With kids
It is a grown-up room with grown-up prices, but the Mastro style is hospitable and an early seating with a well-behaved twelve-year-old is fine. Younger than that, the babysitter is the better plan; The Henry across the intersection is the family room on this corner.
The neighborhood
44th and Camelback is the east gate of Arcadia. The Henry is on the opposite corner, Buck & Rider is two blocks west on Camelback, and the 40th Street row with La Grande Orange and Postino is a five-minute drive. The Camelback corridor resorts begin a mile east, which is why the room is full of resort guests from January to April.
The story
The Mastro family’s steakhouse story began in Scottsdale. The original Mastro’s on Pinnacle Peak Road became the model for a national chain of steak and ocean rooms, and in 2007 the family sold the company, name included. It was a good sale and it left the Mastros with everything but the sign. Four years later they opened Dominick’s at Scottsdale Quarter, named for the family patriarch and famous for the rooftop pool over the dining room, and proved the formula had travelled with them.
For the second restaurant they went across the city line to Arcadia. The Cork ‘N Cleaver at 44th and Camelback was a chain steakhouse of an earlier era, in a neighborhood that had become the metro’s best restaurant row and lacked a serious steakhouse of its own. The Mastros took the building, kept the warren of rooms and rebuilt everything else; Steak 44 opened to the public on Saturday, April 5, 2014, and the local press described the sunken bar as lively and loud and the glass-lined booths by the kitchen as the seats to covet, which is still right. Within four years it was full enough to need the space next door, and a renovation of more than a million dollars added a bigger kitchen, nearly eighty more seats, a dining bar that takes reservations and an in-house butcher shop, finished in early 2019. The group grew around it: Ocean 44 in Scottsdale, Steak 48 in Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Beverly Hills and Del Mar, Ocean 48 in Newport Beach, and, listed among the family on the restaurant’s own site, Durant’s, the 1950 Central Avenue steakhouse that is the oldest in Phoenix.
The Scottsdale connection
The Mastros are a Scottsdale family in the restaurant sense: the name was made on Pinnacle Peak Road, Dominick’s and Ocean 44 are Scottsdale rooms, and the clientele at 44th and Camelback in winter is largely the Camelback-corridor resorts a mile east. Steak 44 is the Scottsdale steakhouse that happens to be in Phoenix, and our steakhouse note treats it that way.
Getting there
Camelback Road west from Scottsdale Road, three miles to 44th Street; Steak 44 is on the northwest corner, with valet parking at the entrance and a lot behind. From the Camelback corridor, west on Camelback for a mile. Rideshare from Old Town is a short fare and the right choice after the wine list.