What it is
Worth Takeaway is a sandwich shop, and the East Valley’s agreement about it is unusual. It occupies a narrow old storefront at 218 W Main Street in downtown Mesa, with about fifteen seats, mid-century furniture, a counter and a short menu: sandwiches on Proof bread, a few salads in apple cider vinaigrette, house-made sea-salt potato chips, banana pudding, a breakfast menu until eleven and a happy hour from four. Jim Bob and Kelsey Strothers, a couple from Gilbert who had managed restaurants for the group behind Postino, opened it in early 2016, and within a year the Valley’s food writers had settled on it as the best sandwich in the metro, a verdict that has held.
The sandwich is the crispy chicken: battered strips with a sriracha-honey spread, mayonnaise and the juice of the shop’s sweet-and-spicy pickles soaking into the bread. The roast beef, the Reuben, the chicken salad and the grilled cheese make up the rest of the core list, with specials on a board. Prices are what sandwich prices were in Scottsdale a decade ago.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Not for the sandwich alone; twenty-eight minutes is a long way for lunch, and our what to eat note has sandwiches closer to home. For the Mesa day. If you are taking children to the natural history museum, seeing a show at the arts center or catching the A’s at Hohokam, this is where lunch is, and it is the kind of lunch that upgrades the day. It is also, as the budget note would put it, the East Valley’s reminder of what a good meal is supposed to cost.
The practical version
Twenty-eight minutes from Old Town via the 101, the 202 and Country Club Drive; the shop is on the north side of Main between Robson and Macdonald, two blocks from the Center/Main light-rail station. Open daily from 8 AM to about 9 PM. The noon rush fills the room; come at 11:30 or after 1:30, or take the sandwich to the arts center plaza two blocks east.
When to go
Late morning on a weekday, between the breakfast menu and the lunch line, is the quiet window. Happy hour from 4 PM is a real one, and with Cider Corps around the corner on Robson and Oro Brewing next door, the block from four to seven is downtown Mesa’s best stretch. The second Friday of the month, when the street stays open late, the shop is packed and worth it anyway. The shop closes early on a few days before holidays and shuts for Thanksgiving and Christmas; the website lists them.
What to order
- The crispy chicken. The reason you came. Ask for pickles on the side if you are carrying it anywhere.
- The roast beef. The sleeper, and the one the food writers tend to pick.
- The Reuben or the chicken salad for the second person.
- Sea-salt chips and banana pudding, both made in house.
- Breakfast, before 11: a short menu of egg sandwiches on the same bread, and the best breakfast in downtown Mesa by default.
The once-a-year burger
Jim Bob’s Burgers is the shop’s annual pop-up, a themed burger night now in its ninth year. It sells out; if you are in the Valley when it is announced, it is a reason to go to Mesa on a weeknight.
The neighborhood
Worth sits on the best block of Main Street: Oro Brewing next door, Cider Corps around the corner, the arts center two blocks east, the museums a few minutes’ walk. It is the lunch in the downtown Mesa day, and the day is the reason to come.
The story
In 2015 downtown Mesa was mid-construction on the light rail, with Main Street torn up and storefronts closing, and two restaurant managers from Gilbert decided it was the moment to open a sandwich shop there. Jim Bob and Kelsey Strothers had run restaurants for Upward Projects, the Phoenix group behind Postino and Windsor, and they took what that group does well, a short menu, local partners, a room people want to sit in, and shrank it to fifteen seats and a counter. Worth Takeaway opened in early 2016 with bread from Proof, then a small Mesa bakery, and a crispy chicken sandwich that was on every Valley best-of list by the end of the year.
The timing turned out to be right. The train opened in August 2015, the arts center a block away kept the evenings busy, and over the next decade the blocks around Worth filled with the brewery next door, a cidery around the corner and the Arizona State campus down the street. The shop added breakfast, a happy hour, a catering kitchen and the annual burger pop-up, and never got bigger than the room it started in, which is a large part of why it is still good.
The Scottsdale connection
The Postino lineage is the link: the Upward Projects restaurants that trained Worth’s owners have a Scottsdale presence at Postino Highland, and the Valley’s sandwich argument, if there is one, runs between Worth in Mesa and the delis and counters in our what to eat note. Scottsdale visitors who have found Worth tend to have found it on a Cactus League afternoon, on the way to or from Hohokam Stadium a mile north, which is the right way to find it.
Getting there
The 101 south to the 202 east, exit Country Club Drive, south to Main Street, east about half a mile; the shop is on the left between Robson and Macdonald. Twenty-eight minutes from Old Town, thirty-five from the Camelback corridor. Street parking on the side streets is usually easy; the city garages off First Avenue are a two-minute walk. The light rail’s Center/Main station is two blocks east, useful from Tempe, not from Scottsdale, as the getting around note explains.