What it is
Tarbell’s is the restaurant Phoenix measures the others against, mostly because it is still here. Mark Tarbell opened it in 1994 in a strip on Camelback Road at 32nd Street, west of the resorts and east of the Biltmore, with a wine list that was the real argument. Thirty-two years later he still owns it and still cooks in it, which makes it the longest-running chef-owned dining room in the city and one of a very few anywhere that has not changed hands, changed concepts or franchised itself.
The food is French-trained American, which in Tarbell’s case means the technique is in the stock and the restraint rather than on the plate: a short seasonal menu that changes at a pace you would call slow. The room is warm and unshowy, with a proper bar along one side. The wine list runs deep and is priced for people who drink wine rather than collect it. Tarbell trained at Steven Spurrier’s Académie du Vin in Paris before he trained at La Varenne, and the order shows.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale’s good rooms have scenes and this one does not. The what to eat in Scottsdale note sends you to the city’s own institutions; Tarbell’s is the one across the line that their owners eat at. It is also the answer to a specific question visitors ask, which is where to take parents, or a client, or someone you have been married to for a long time, when the point is the conversation and the food has to be good enough not to interrupt it.
The practical version
Fifteen minutes west of Old Town on Camelback Road, dinner only, from five nightly. Reservations on weekends. Price level three, four if you let the wine list win. Tarbell’s Tavern, next door in the same strip, is the casual room under the same ownership, and the Wine Store sells bottles to take back to the resort.
When to go
Any night in season, which here means October through May, when the corridor’s resorts are full and the dining room with them. Sundays are the quiet night and the one regulars prefer. Summer is the local secret: half the clientele is gone, the room is cool, and the kitchen runs specials for the people who stayed.
Go early for the bar, which fills with people who have been sitting at it for twenty years, or late for the dining room.
What to order
Whatever the season has put on the short menu; the kitchen’s instinct is to cook a good ingredient simply and the specials are where it shows. Do not skip dessert, and do not order it without asking what the kitchen is proudest of that week.
The wine list is the reason to let someone else choose. Tell the server or the bartender what you like and a number, and take the recommendation. Tarbell studied wine before he studied cooking and the list is built for drinking with dinner, not for the trophy page.
The Tavern and the Wine Store
Tarbell’s Tavern, next door at 3209 East Camelback, is where the neighborhood goes on a Tuesday: a bar room with a shorter, cheaper menu under the same ownership. The Wine Store is the group’s retail room, selling bottles from the same cellar; it is the best place in the corridor to buy something to drink on a casita patio.
Gertrude’s
Tarbell also runs Gertrude’s, the sit-down restaurant at the entrance to the Desert Botanical Garden, which is the daytime version of this kitchen and the right lunch after the garden’s trails.
The neighborhood
Thirty-second and Camelback is where Arcadia stops and the Biltmore begins; the locals’ term for the stretch is Arcadia Lite. The Biltmore Fashion Park is a mile west, the Arcadia restaurant row on 40th Street and Indian School is ten minutes southeast, and the Camelback corridor resorts are the ten minutes between here and Scottsdale.
The story
Mark Tarbell came to cooking through wine. He studied at Steven Spurrier’s Académie du Vin in Paris and at the École de Cuisine La Varenne, where he earned the Grande Diplôme. When he opened Tarbell’s in 1994 the Camelback corridor’s restaurants were mostly hotel dining rooms and steakhouses, and a chef-owned neighborhood restaurant with a Paris-trained cook and a cellar as the headline was new to the city. It filled immediately and has not emptied since.
The honors came in the decades after: a James Beard Foundation nomination for Best Chef Southwest, a win on Food Network’s Iron Chef America, two inductions into the Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame, more than fifty best-of awards from the local press and the trade. Tarbell spent them on the same block. The Tavern and the Wine Store opened next door; he took over Gertrude’s at the Desert Botanical Garden; and he became the host of Arizona PBS’s Check, Please! Arizona, the show where three locals review each other’s favorite restaurants, which made him the most recognizable restaurateur in the state and did nothing to change the menu.
That is the story, really: a restaurant that declined to become a brand. Phoenix has produced national chains from this corridor, several of them a mile away, and Tarbell’s stayed one room and a tavern.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s dining history is resort rooms and the post-2000 restaurant groups, and both owe something to this place: the chef-owned, wine-first neighborhood restaurant that every new Scottsdale room now imitates was unusual on Camelback Road in 1994. The romantic Scottsdale note lists the city’s own anniversary rooms; this is the one across the line that predates most of them.
Getting there
West on Camelback Road from Scottsdale Road for about six miles, through Paradise Valley’s resort stretch, past 44th Street and into the straight run toward the Biltmore; the restaurant is on the right just past 32nd Street in a low strip with its own lot. Rideshare from Old Town runs fifteen to twenty minutes, and is the right call if the wine list wins; the getting around note has the math.