Ask a Scottsdale local for a restaurant recommendation and the odds are good the answer is a steakhouse. This is a cattle-country town that became a resort town that became a special-occasion town, and the steakhouse is the room where all three of those identities eat dinner. The city supports an absurd number of them. This is how we sort them.
Tier one: the homegrown dynasty
The Mastro family built Scottsdale’s steakhouse identity, and their rooms remain the standard.
Mastro’s Steakhouse near Pinnacle Peak is the original, opened in 1999: the 1,500-degree broiler, steaks arriving on 400-degree sizzling plates, a piano lounge and the warm butter cake that closes every meal. The template it set was exported to Beverly Hills, Chicago and New York. Go to the source.
Mastro’s City Hall on Camelback is the Old Town outpost, same formula, bigger seafood towers, a bar scene that runs late. It’s the one you can walk to from an Old Town hotel.
Dominick’s Steakhouse at Scottsdale Quarter is the Mastro brothers’ later act, prime and wagyu under one of the strangest amenities in American dining: a rooftop pool deck where you can eat cabana-side above Scottsdale Road. The family’s seafood house, Ocean 44 at Fashion Square, is where the same crowd goes for fish.
Tier two: the resort rooms
The steakhouse with the mountain in the window is a Scottsdale invention, and four of them are worth a special trip.
- Bourbon Steak at the Fairmont Princess: Michael Mina’s butter-poached prime, duck-fat fries, a cellar of thousands of bottles. The Valley’s resort-steakhouse benchmark since 2007.
- J&G Steakhouse at The Phoenician: Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s globally spiced steaks and the best sunset terrace in the city. Book the patio an hour before sundown.
- Talavera at the Four Seasons: Spanish-accented prime against the boulder fields of Pinnacle Peak. The drive is long and the light at 6:30 is the reason.
- Lincoln Steakhouse at the Camelback Inn: prime and wagyu seared at 1,200 degrees in a charcoal oven behind windows aimed at Camelback. The heritage pick.
Tier three: the scene steakhouses
The newer wave treats dinner as a night out. The volume is part of the product.
Maple & Ash at the Waterfront landed from Chicago in 2019 with a hearth-fired menu, a fire-roasted seafood tower and the loudest, best-dressed dining room in the city. Toca Madera at Fashion Square is the modern Mexican steakhouse version: tableside-torched tomahawks, theatrical mezcal cocktails, a DJ. The Americano in North Scottsdale is Scott Conant’s Italian steakhouse, dry-aged bistecca beside his famous spaghetti pomodoro. And the newest entry, The Guest House at Scottsdale Quarter, arrived from Austin in early 2026 with tableside grill theatrics and a wagyu program.
Bourbon & Bones on Scottsdale Road is the Old Town chophouse that splits the difference: prime and wagyu, a serious raw bar, and one of the deepest whiskey collections in Arizona at more than 600 bottles, in a room where you can still talk.
Tier four: the reliable nationals
Scottsdale’s business-dinner economy runs on the national names, and they run well here. The Capital Grille at the Promenade dry-ages in-house and carries the Airpark’s expense accounts. Fleming’s has two locations, including a DC Ranch room at Market Street. Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s do what they do everywhere. Fogo de Chão is the churrascaria answer for a table of eight with different appetites.
The value plays
Two rooms east of the 101 on Salt River Pima-Maricopa land deliver the steakhouse experience at prices the corridor can’t match. Cholla Prime at Casino Arizona is a white-tablecloth prime rib house that locals have kept quiet about for decades. Orange Sky, fifteen floors up at Talking Stick Resort, has 360-degree glass and the desert sunset it’s named for. Neither requires a resort budget.
The lost cowboy steakhouses
Scottsdale’s first steakhouses weren’t luxury rooms. They were cowboy dinner houses in the desert, and their loss is the city’s most-mourned dining history.
The Pink Pony on Scottsdale Road was baseball’s favorite steakhouse for seven decades, the clubhouse where spring training managers held court, until 2016. Pinnacle Peak Patio cut the necktie off any man who wore one and hung a million of them from the rafters. Reata Pass served mesquite-grilled steaks on a stagecoach stop from 1958 until 2012, and Greasewood Flat next door poured beer around desert firelight until 2015. Rawhide anchored a whole fake 1880s town on Scottsdale Road. All gone; the pages are worth reading before you book Maple & Ash, because they explain what the city traded.
Which one, which night
- Anniversary: J&G at sunset, or Lincoln Steakhouse if you want the mountain closer.
- Business dinner: Capital Grille or Mastro’s City Hall.
- Group birthday: Maple & Ash or Toca Madera. Warn the one quiet friend.
- First time in Scottsdale: the original Mastro’s. Order the bone-in filet and the butter cake, and understand the city.
- Tuesday, no reservation, real budget: Cholla Prime.
- A steak you can walk home from: Bourbon & Bones.
Two more notes. Reservations at the tier-one and resort rooms run two weeks out in high season and same-day in July. And the cuisine filter on our restaurants index lists every steakhouse in the city, open and lost, if you want the full census. For the rest of what to eat, start with our Scottsdale food guide.