What it is
Tacos Chiwas is a counter-service taqueria on Indian School Road just west of 12th Street in midtown Phoenix, and it cooks the food of Chihuahua, which is not the food most of Arizona thinks of as Mexican. The Valley’s default is Sonoran, the cuisine of the state directly south: big flour tortillas, carne asada, the Sonoran dog. Chihuahua, the state to the east of Sonora and across the river from Texas and New Mexico, cooks stews and beef, splits gorditas and fills them, makes its burritos in thin flour tortillas, puts its tacos on fresh corn, and has a dish called the montado, a taco laid on a tortilla crisped with cheese, which is the thing to order if you order one thing. Chiwas is slang for the state and its people.
The restaurant is family-owned and started in the 2010s in a small building near 20th Street and McDowell Road, just west of State Route 51, where the lines and a 2017 visit from Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives made it the Valley’s best-known taqueria. It then moved its original kitchen to the larger, newer space on Indian School Road, and added a location on Main Street in downtown Mesa and a stand at Sky Harbor. Prices are counter prices. Sunday closes at four.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Our best Mexican restaurants note is honest that Scottsdale’s Mexican food is mostly Sonoran, mostly sit-down and mostly priced for the resort; Barrio Queen does the fine-dining version of the taco well. Chiwas is the other thing: a cheap, fast, regional kitchen cooking a cuisine Scottsdale does not have at all, twenty minutes west on the road you are already on. The budget note has it down as the best lunch under the price of a resort cocktail within reach of Old Town.
The practical version
Twenty minutes from Old Town west on Indian School Road, with its own lot. Order at the counter; eat in or take it away. Open 10 AM to 9 PM Monday through Saturday and 10 AM to 4 PM on Sunday. Weekday at 11 is the empty hour. Get the montado.
When to go
Weekday mornings and early lunch, from opening at ten until about 11:30, are the quiet hours; the lunch line builds from noon. Dinner is calmer than lunch. Sunday is the trap: the kitchen closes at 4 PM, and a Scottsdale visitor planning Sunday-evening tacos should plan them for Saturday. There is no season; it is a taqueria.
What to order
- The montado. A taco built on a tortilla that has been crisped with cheese on the griddle; with asada or adobada. Eat it first.
- Gorditas. Thick corn cakes split and stuffed; the chicharrón in green salsa and the deshebrada are the two to start with.
- Tacos. On fresh corn tortillas, by the piece: asada, adobada, the day’s guisados, chile colorado, with the salsas on the side so you can tell them apart.
- Burritos. Chihuahua-style, in thin flour tortillas rather than the Sonoran blanket, which means they are a reasonable size and the filling is the point.
- Drinks. Horchata and the aguas frescas; Mexican sodas.
The menu is short and the plates are cheap enough that a table of four can order across it and argue.
The neighborhood
The Indian School Road space sits at the bottom of the Coronado and north-of-downtown neighborhoods, a few minutes from the Heard Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum on Central and ten minutes from downtown. It is a natural lunch on a museum day, and the Fry Bread House a mile and a half north-west is the other cheap regional kitchen worth the same trip.
With kids
Easy: quesadillas, plain tacos, rice and beans, horchata, and no waiting beyond the line. The patio is small; inside is fine.
The story
Tacos Chiwas began as the kind of restaurant Phoenix produces every year and rarely notices: a small, family-run taqueria in a modest building near 20th Street and McDowell Road, just west of the 51, serving the food of the owners’ home state to the neighborhood. What set it apart was the state. Chihuahua’s cooking, with its gorditas, its stews and its cheese-crisped montados, was almost unrepresented in a Valley that eats Sonoran, and the restaurant cooked it precisely and cheaply. The lines started within months; the local press named it among the best restaurants in metro Phoenix; and in 2017 Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives filmed there, which made the lines permanent.
The owners have said that when they opened on McDowell their ambition was to make a living. They went on to plan a second restaurant in north Chandler, open a location on Main Street in downtown Mesa, a stand at Sky Harbor, and to move the original Phoenix kitchen out of its first building into a larger, more modern space on Indian School Road just west of 12th Street, which is the address today. Fieri came back for a second visit. The menu is what it was.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s Mexican food has always been Sonoran, from the 1950s cantinas our best Mexican note chronicles to the current generation; it is the cuisine of the people who built the city. Chiwas is a reminder that northern Mexico is several cuisines, and for a Scottsdale visitor the twenty-minute drive is the cheapest lesson in that available.
Getting there
Indian School Road west from Old Town for about six miles, under the 51 and past 16th Street, to just west of 12th Street; the restaurant is on the north side with its lot, about twenty minutes with no traffic. From the Camelback-corridor resorts, 16th Street south to Indian School is fifteen minutes. The light rail on Central is a mile west and does not help; drive.