Why he matters
For most of its history Scottsdale imported its restaurant brands. Sam Fox made a habit of exporting them. From a Valley base, Fox Restaurant Concepts opened ideas in front of some of the most competitive casual diners in the country, kept what worked, killed what didn’t, and scaled the winners. North Italia, True Food Kitchen and Flower Child are in cities all over the country now, and each started as a Valley experiment.
For anyone eating in Scottsdale, his effect is more immediate: it is hard to have dinner here for a week without eating in one of his rooms. The polished space, the approachable menu and the bar as social engine are the house style, and much of the city’s dining scene now looks like it.
Where to find his mark today
North Italia, the original. North Italia at Kierland Commons, open since 2002 and still rolling pasta daily.
The Waterfront pair. Olive & Ivy (2007) and Culinary Dropout (2009) on the canal, the refined one and the loud one.
True Food Kitchen. The Scottsdale Quarter location, open since 2010, from his partnership with Dr. Andrew Weil.
The one that’s gone. Bloom at Gainey Village, where the Valley run began.
Eating the Fox catalog
Start at Kierland: the original North shares Kierland Commons with The Greene House, another Fox room, and Zinc Bistro, a few doors away, opened the same year as North. Then go to the Scottsdale Waterfront for Olive & Ivy’s canal patio at sunset, and Culinary Dropout next door when you want pretzels, provolone fondue and yard games. Flower Child is the weekday lunch version of the same instinct.
Not every idea worked, and the misses are instructive. Modern Steak at Fashion Square lasted about three and a half years; Bloom itself closed in 2011 when Fox took an offer for the lease. The 2000s chapter sets the scene he arrived into.
The full story
Sam Fox was a young Tucson restaurateur with two restaurants to his name when he opened Bloom at The Shops at Gainey Village in 2001. It was his third restaurant and his first in the Valley: white walls, blue banquettes, a warm lobster salad, and about 70 wines by the glass at a time when a list that deep was unusual on Scottsdale Road.
A year later he and chef Christopher Christian opened North in a vacant space at Kierland Commons, built around Christian’s family recipes and pasta made by hand every day. It became North Italia and the group’s flagship brand, and location number one is still open.
Through the 2000s and 2010s Fox ran Fox Restaurant Concepts as a concept laboratory, launching new ideas at a pace no chef-owner could match. Olive & Ivy opened with the young Scottsdale Waterfront in 2007, Culinary Dropout followed there in 2009 with the recession as backdrop, and the True Food Kitchen partnership with Dr. Andrew Weil took healthy dining national. Bloom served its last dinner on November 26, 2011.
In 2019 The Cheesecake Factory acquired Fox Restaurant Concepts and North Italia, and the brands kept expanding under the new owner. The Waterfront, Kierland and the Quarter are where to see the result, and where most of it began.