Somewhere around 2013, Scottsdale decided that breakfast was a party. The rest of the country noticed, and now “Scottsdale brunch” is a genre: build-your-own Bloody Mary bars, DJs on the patio at 11:00 AM, cereal-crusted French toast and a line out the door. It’s real, it’s fun once, and it’s about a third of the story. The other two thirds are a pancake culture that goes back to the 1980s and a set of neighborhood rooms where the eggs are the point. Here’s all of it.
The party brunches
Hash Kitchen at Gainey Village is the one that started it and the one that still does it best: a fifty-topping Bloody Mary bar, weekend DJs, and a menu that treats French toast as an engineering problem. Go for the spectacle, not the quiet. Weekends mean a wait; put your name in and walk the shops.
The Morning Squeeze on Scottsdale Road is the Old Town version since 2013: a retro diner with a mimosa list and a prime people-watching patio. It’s where the Saturday night crowd reconvenes, and the banana Nutella crepes are better than the setting suggests.
The Montauk runs a DJ-driven weekend brunch with lobster rolls and frozen drinks in a Hamptons beach house that somehow landed on Scottsdale Road. It bridges the neighborhood’s restaurant and nightlife scenes better than almost anyone, and it is the bachelorette brunch of record.
Eggstasy on Shea is the party brunch for people who don’t want to park in Old Town: maximalist benedicts, red velvet pancakes, morning cocktails, and a lot with actual spaces in it.
The pancake dynasties
Before the DJs, Scottsdale’s breakfast identity was pancakes, and the houses that built it are still open.
The Original Pancake House on Camelback has drawn Sunday lines since 1988 for the oven-puffed Dutch Baby and the apple pancake, which arrives the size of a hubcap. Cash was king for decades; it’s a proper multigenerational room.
Butters on Hayden in McCormick Ranch is the family-owned original of a Scottsdale-born chain: scratch pancakes, crepes, fresh-squeezed juice, 6:30 to 2:30 every day since 2005. It’s what a neighborhood breakfast should be.
Butterfield’s on Shea is the old-school one: oven-baked apple pancakes, super omelettes, corned beef hash, bottomless coffee, and a staff that knows the regulars’ orders. If your grandparents are visiting, this is the room.
U.S. Egg on lower Scottsdale Road has been family-run since 1986 and invented its protein pancakes decades before that was a trend. Fast, big, done by mid-afternoon.
The neighborhood rooms
This is where we actually eat on a Saturday.
- The Eleanor at Hayden and Osborn, from the Fate Brewing family, opened in 2023 as the deliberately quiet, family-first alternative to the party brunches and promptly won Best Breakfast in the state. Homemade pancakes, Eggs Blackstone, a deli case for the road.
- Daily Dose on Scottsdale Road is Old Town’s scratch-kitchen standby: cinnamon roll pancakes, breakfast nachos, the Hangover Sandwich, and locals at the next table.
- Breakfast Club is one of the originals of the modern breakfast boom, with a diner side and a cheffier side to the menu and two decades of Old Town regulars. The weekend line is real but moves.
- Over Easy, chef Aaron May’s diner concept at the Ancala corner of North Scottsdale, does waffle dogs and hash browns with real technique behind them.
- Perk Eatery west of Kierland has been the neighborhood’s pancake-and-breakfast-enchilada headquarters since 2010, Guy Fieri stamp and all.
- The Breakfast Joynt on Bell Road near McDowell Mountain Ranch is biscuits and gravy and counter service in a corner of the city otherwise run by chains.
- Lo-Lo’s Chicken & Waffles on south Scottsdale Road is the outpost of a Phoenix soul food institution, and the chicken and waffles are the best answer to “brunch, but not eggs” in the city.
- Pinnacle Peak General Store serves a home-style breakfast from 7:00 in a 1977 crossroads store at the foot of the mountain. It’s the pre-hike breakfast for the whole north end.
- Arcadia Farms on Marshall Way is the garden-patio lunch that also does a civilized breakfast, and the room the gallery district meets in.
The resort brunch
Sunday brunch at a resort is its own Scottsdale tradition, and two stand out. El Chorro on Lincoln Drive has served complimentary sticky buns and lawn views of Camelback since 1937; brunch on the patio there is a Valley rite of passage. Lon’s at the Hermosa puts you in a cowboy artist’s 1930s adobe for the most romantic morning table in the area. Both book up in high season.
Coffee first
If the plan is a walk before food, start at Cartel on Fifth Avenue, the coffee nerd’s pick in Old Town, or Berdena’s around the corner for the pastry case. Fourtillfour is the car-culture coffee bar with a gravel patio; Press is the local roaster’s reliable outpost. Our Old Town walk starts from Fifth Avenue for exactly this reason.
When to go
Weekends between 9:30 and noon are the wait everywhere on this list. Locals go at 8:00, or on a weekday, or at 1:00 when the party rooms are turning over. Sunday afternoons in spring training season are the worst hour of the year; the whole Cactus League is trying to eat before a 1:05 first pitch.
The honest ranking
If you’re here once and want the Scottsdale brunch you’ve heard about, it’s Hash Kitchen. If you want the one we’d choose on our own Saturday, it’s the Eleanor, then the Original Pancake House, then Daily Dose. And if you want to understand why the city takes breakfast this seriously, order the apple pancake, wait the twenty minutes it takes to bake, and don’t share.