Every Scottsdale restaurant worth knowing — past and present
Scottsdale has been feeding people theatrically since the first mesquite-broiled steak hit a checkered tablecloth: cowboy steakhouses with neckties stapled to the rafters, resort dining rooms that chased five stars, and today’s chef-driven blocks in Old Town. This is the working archive — 267 places to eat right now and 119 legends we’ve lost, each with what to order, what it costs, and the story behind it. Every page has a reading-depth toggle: skim it in 30 seconds or go full rabbit hole.
Just want the short list? Local Spots puts the places locals actually use on one card each: the dish to order, the tip, the date we last checked.
Openings by decade
Tap a decade to filter to the restaurants born in it. Height = how many opened.
386 of 386 showing
Cafe Monarch
A family-owned, reservation-only Old Town dining room serving a weekly-changing four-course prix fixe — routinely ranked among the top fine-dining restaurants in the entire country and the Valley's default special-occasion table.
$$$$ Old Town institution
FnB
Charleen Badman and Pavle Milic's Old Town restaurant put Arizona farm-to-table cooking on the national map — a James Beard Award, an all-Arizona wine list, a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the best plate of leeks in America.
$$$ Since 2009
Los Olivos Mexican Patio
The Corral family's adobe landmark has fed Old Town Scottsdale since the late 1940s — Sonoran enchiladas, margaritas, and a sculpted folk-art facade that's been a rite of passage for first-time visitors for nearly 80 years.
$$ Since 1947
Maple & Ash
Chicago's glamorous hearth-fired steakhouse landed at the Scottsdale Waterfront in 2019 with two-Michelin-star chef Danny Grant's menu, a fire-roasted seafood tower, and the loudest, best-dressed dining room in the city.
$$$$ Since 2019
P.F. Chang's (the original)
The very first P.F. Chang's opened July 20, 1993 at Scottsdale Fashion Square, founded by Paul Fleming and Philip Chiang — and the flagship still operates today, just across the street at the Scottsdale Waterfront.
$$ Since 1993
The Mission Old Town
Chef Matt Carter's modern Latin flagship beside the historic Old Adobe Mission — a moody, candlelit room of tableside guacamole, salt-slab searing, and wood-grilled pork shoulder that has defined Scottsdale dining since 2008.
$$$ Since 2008
The Sugar Bowl
A shocking-pink ice cream parlor that has anchored Scottsdale Road since 1958, immortalized in hundreds of Family Circus cartoons and still serving hot fudge sundaes to the grandchildren of its first customers.
$ Since 1958
Cowboy Ciao
Peter Kasperski's whimsical 'modern American with global influences' flagship helped invent contemporary Old Town dining, launched chef Bernie Kantak and the legendary Stetson chopped salad, and anchored Stetson Drive until tax debt and bankruptcy ended its 21-year run in October 2018.
$$$ Closed 2018
Don & Charlie's
Don Carson's Chicago-style chophouse was the Cactus League's living museum — every wall covered in signed balls, bats, and jerseys, with Hall of Famers at the next table each March. For 38 years, it was where baseball ate in Scottsdale.
$$$ Closed 2019
Greasewood Flat
For 40 years, an open-air burger-and-beer roadhouse built around an 1880s bunkhouse near Pinnacle Peak, where bikers, cowboys, snowbirds, and CEOs shared picnic tables and fire barrels until the land sold in 2015.
$ Closed 2015
Mary Elaine's
The Phoenician's rooftop French dining room was Arizona's standard-bearer for formal fine dining for two decades — a AAA Five Diamond room with a Grand Award cellar where Alex Stratta and Bradford Thompson won James Beard Awards before it closed in April 2008.
$$$$ Closed 2008
Pink Pony
For nearly seven decades, Old Town's legendary steakhouse doubled as the unofficial clubhouse of the Cactus League — owner Charlie Briley helped bankroll Scottsdale Stadium itself — before three closures between 2009 and 2016 ended it for good.
$$ Closed 2016
Pinnacle Peak Patio
For 58 years, the giant of north Scottsdale: a mesquite-smoke cowboy steakhouse that seated crowds by the thousand, hung tens of thousands of severed neckties from its rafters, and taught generations of visitors that Scottsdale dinner could be a rodeo.
$$ Closed 2015
Trader Vic's Scottsdale
For nearly three decades, Victor Bergeron's famed tiki empire held court at Fifth Avenue and Craftsman Court, pouring mai tais for Paul Newman, Eva Gabor, and every Scottsdale local with a date to impress — Polynesian glamour, 1962 to 1990.
$$$ Closed 1990
11:11 Scottsdale
A Thursday-to-Saturday nightclub in the old INTL space on Drinkwater Boulevard that has carved out a lane the Entertainment District mostly ignores: hip-hop, R&B and dancehall, celebrity and influencer hosts, bottle-service sections and a kitchen that serves lamb chops and Cajun shrimp until close.
$$$ 2020s and running
3rd Avenue Grill
The restaurant and bar inside the all-suite Scottsdale Marriott Old Town on Third Avenue — American cooking with a Southwestern twist from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., a daily 3-to-5 happy hour, a patio and poolside service, and the most dependable early breakfast within a short walk of the Civic Center and Scottsdale Stadium.
$$ 2020s and running
40 Love
A 7,000-square-foot modern American restaurant and lounge that opened on Sixth Avenue in December 2025, in the SouthBridge space that was Kelly's, with vintage tennis racquets on the walls, wagyu and caviar on the menu, and a late-night kitchen on weekends.
$$$$ Since 2025
50 Shades of Rosé
A restaurant, cocktail bar and late-night room at the quiet east end of Indian Plaza that redecorates itself for a new theme every season, with its own menu, cocktails and costumes. In October 2026 it is Carnevil, a haunted carnival with corn dogs, cotton-candy cocktails and clowns.
$$ Seasonal pop-up bar
Almost Famous
A small house-music dance club next door to 50 Shades of Rosé, open only Friday and Saturday nights since 2023. It sells itself as the alternative to the big open-air clubs a block over: rotating DJs, a dark room, and bottle service if you want it but no requirement to buy it.
$$ Since 2023
Alo Cafe
A small, globally minded breakfast-and-lunch cafe in a converted 1960s garage in Charles Miller Square, opened in 2013 by husband-and-wife Steve and Hilja Martinez and named for an Estonian composer: kringel and tortilla española, Belgian waffles with hot compote, and a dog-friendly patio a few minutes' walk from the galleries.
$$ Since 2013
Andreoli Italian Grocer
Chef Giovanni Scorzo's strip-mall grocer-trattoria on Via Linda is a national cult favorite — bread, mozzarella, pasta, and gelato all made in-house by the Calabrian-born James Beard semifinalist, worth every minute of the fluorescent-lit line.
$$ Since 2005
Anhelo
Chef Ivan Jacobo's fine-dining restaurant spent three years in downtown Phoenix's Orpheum Lofts, then moved in July 2025 into a building of its own at Goldwater and First Avenue: a garden walkway, a fountain, a small dining room and a choice of tasting menus that run from a short, approachable one to an 11-course blowout.
$$$$ Since 2021
Arcadia Farms Café
Carolyn Ellis opened Arcadia Farms in a vintage house on 1st Avenue in 1990 as a carryout market and bakery; thirty-six years later it is Scottsdale's definitive daytime café — organic salads, French-leaning plates, serious patisserie, and the most civilized patio in the arts district.
$$ Since 1990
Aridus Wine Company
The Old Town tasting room of Aridus, a Willcox winery that grows every grape on its own 40-acre estate in the Chiricahua foothills and makes it in a 28,000-square-foot former apple warehouse. The Main Street room, a former art gallery with caged chandeliers and leather high-tops, pours seated, guided tastings that change every month.
$$ On Main Street since the mid-2010s
Arrivederci Ristorante
A family-run Italian dining room at Thunderbird and Scottsdale Road since 1996, Arrivederci does the old-school things — homemade ravioli, veal ossobuco, chicken al limone, tableside warmth — a mile south of the Kierland glitz and at half the price.
$$ Since 1996
Atlas Bistro
A tiny South Scottsdale strip-mall dining room serving serious globally-inspired tasting menus with a no-corkage BYOB policy fed by the AZ Wine Company shop next door — Valley food insiders' favorite open secret.
$$$ Since the mid-2000s
AZ88
A glass-walled Civic Center landmark serving martinis, burgers, and towering fries until midnight since 1988 — with rotating avant-garde art installations, no reservations, and the best people-watching in Scottsdale.
$$ Since 1988
Bad Jimmy's
Chef James Piazza's retro smash-burger bar, a pop-up turned downtown Phoenix favorite, opened its Scottsdale outpost in March 2025 in the space Starlite BBQ held for more than six years — lacy griddled double burgers on K4 Ranch Arizona beef, wings, soft serve finished with olive oil and salt, and a bar that pours Miller High Life next to natural wine.
$ Since 2025
Barrio Queen
The original Barrio Queen by the Old Town canal bridge pairs regional Mexican cooking — cochinita pibil, birria, house-pressed tortillas — with more than 400 tequilas and a riot of Dia de los Muertos color, and launched a statewide restaurant family in 2011.
$$ Since 2011
Barstool Scottsdale
The Barstool Sports name on the old Two Brothers Tap House building — two floors of bars, more than 50 TVs, live music seven days a week and weekend doors at 8:30 a.m. — the entertainment district's sports bar facing Scottsdale Road.
$$ 2020s and running
Beginner's Luck
An all-day room in the courtyard storefront off Main Street from Citizen Public House chef Bernie Kantak and partner Andrew Fritz: specialty coffee and brunch from 9 a.m., a 'lucky hour' in the afternoon, and weekend dinners of slow-roasted pork, crab rolls and Kantak's famous Original Chopped Salad.
$$ Since 2024
Belle's Nashville Kitchen
A small, locally owned honky-tonk restaurant and bar in the Main Street space where Lulu Belle drew 1950s Scottsdale's celebrities: Nashville hot chicken, Kool-Aid fried pickles and Honky Tonk Fries, a whiskey-forward bar under the old saloon's vintage backbar, live music most nights and a country brunch on weekends.
$$ Since 2020
Berdena's
A tiny, minimalist specialty coffee bar tucked off 5th Avenue in Old Town Scottsdale, famous for honey lavender and rose cardamom lattes and a line that regularly stretches out its very small door.
$ Since 2017
Best Life Nutrition
A small, owner-run shake bar on Goldwater Boulevard that serves protein smoothies, loaded energy teas, açaí and smoothie bowls from early morning, built for people coming off a workout or heading into one.
$ 2020s and running
Blanco Cocina + Cantina
Fox Restaurant Concepts' splashy Sonoran-style cantina anchors the redeveloped Borgata of Scottsdale near the Paradise Valley border — short rib tacos, guacamole, and margaritas on one of the busiest patios on lower Scottsdale Road.
$$ Since 2022
Boondocks Patio & Grill
A sprawling patio bar on 75th Street that took over the Spanish Fly pool club in 2014 and turned it into Old Town's backyard: one of Scottsdale's largest climate-controlled patios, pool tables and bag toss, live bands, game-day TVs, burgers and fries, and open until 2 a.m. every night.
$$ Since 2014
Bootleggers Modern American Smokehouse
Bootleggers pairs low-and-slow smoked brisket and ribs with a deep American whiskey list in a moody, Prohibition-styled Old Town room — one of the only serious barbecue operations in a city that mostly outsources its smoke.
$$ Smoking since the 2010s
Bottled Blonde
Evening Entertainment Group carved half of the old Axis-Radius nightclub into a 9,000-square-foot pizzeria and beer garden in January 2014 — wood-fired pies and craft beer at picnic tables by day, one of the entertainment district's loudest parties by night, and the template for a brand now copied in other cities.
$$ Since 2014
Bourbon & Bones Chophouse
Square One Concepts' contemporary chophouse opened in 2016 and became an Old Town anchor — prime and wagyu steaks, an extensive raw bar, and one of Arizona's deepest whiskey collections at 600-plus bottles.
$$$$ Since 2016
Bourbon Steak
Michelin-starred chef Michael Mina's AAA Four Diamond steakhouse at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, where butter-poached prime cuts, duck-fat fries, and a roughly 3,000-bottle cellar have set the Valley's resort-steakhouse standard since 2007.
$$$$ Since 2007
Brat Haus
Old Town's European-style beer garden — scratch-made bratwursts, poutine, soft pretzels and 28 craft taps under the trees, with ping pong, giant Jenga and a dog-friendly gravel patio that makes it Scottsdale's most reliable group hang.
$$ Since 2012
Breakfast Club
One of the originals of Scottsdale's modern breakfast boom, the Breakfast Club's Old Town flagship has fed hungover bar-crawlers and business breakfasts alike for two decades — diner classics on one side of the menu, cheffier fare on the other, and a weekend line to prove it.
$$ Two decades running
Brittlebush Bar & Grill
The golf clubhouse restaurant at the Westin Kierland is a Scottish-accented gastropub — beer-battered haddock, loaded Yorkshire puddings, sticky toffee bread pudding, a house pale ale — in a lodge-style room with a rock fireplace and a patio over the fairways, open to the public and priced like a neighborhood grill.
$$ Since at least 2010
Butterfield's Pancake House
A Shea Boulevard staple since 2005, Butterfield's is Scottsdale's old-school pancake house — oven-baked apple pancakes, super omelettes, corned beef hash, and bottomless coffee served by staff who know the regulars' orders by heart.
$$ Since 2005
Butters Pancakes & Café
The family-owned original of a Scottsdale-born breakfast chain: scratch-made pancakes, crepes, and fresh-squeezed OJ served daily from 6:30 am to 2:30 pm on Hayden Road since 2005, with weekend waits to prove it.
$$ Since 2005
CAKE Nightclub
A boutique nightclub dressed like a French chateau, open Thursday through Sunday nights on the busiest corner of the entertainment district — the room Riot Hospitality Group calls the one that launched the company, and still one of Old Town's purest late-night clubs.
$$$ Since 2014
CALA Scottsdale
Celebrity chef Beau MacMillan's splashy 2022 return to Valley dining — a 5,000-square-foot coastal-Mediterranean room at the Senna House hotel bringing Greece, Spain, Italy and Morocco to the eastern edge of Old Town.
$$$ Since 2022
Call Her Martina
The Moreno family, from Hermosillo, built a glamorous Waterfront dining room around old Sonoran recipes, prime beef and agave cocktails, dressed it in Mexico's golden age of cinema, and dedicated the whole thing to the women who raised them.
$$$ Since the early 2020s
Carlsbad Tavern
A veteran-owned, family-run Scottsdale tavern serving bold New Mexican cooking since 1995 in a cave-themed room of bats, waterfalls, and Roswell kitsch — with a late-night kitchen that made it a legendary industry hangout.
$$ Since 1995
Carlson Creek Vineyard
The Old Town tasting room of one of Arizona's largest family-owned estate wineries, poured across a 20-foot copper bar in a renovated former gallery on Marshall Way: five Willcox wines for $25, rotating local art on the walls, and room for a group.
$$ 2010s and running
Cartel Roasting Co.
Cartel helped launch Arizona's third-wave coffee movement from Tempe in the late 2000s, and its 5th Avenue outpost brings house-roasted single origins to Old Town in an industrial, bohemian room — the coffee nerd's pick in a neighborhood of latte art.
$ Roasting since the late 2000s
Casa Amigos
Evening Entertainment Group spent $4 million turning the former Livewire music hall into a white-walled Mexican cantina in January 2018. Today Casa Amigos runs as a tequila-fueled nightclub with a rooftop, open Tuesday through Saturday nights next door to its sister Bottled Blonde.
$$ Since 2018
Chacónne Patisserie
Mark Chacón's farmers-market pastry business grew into a real bakery at Roosevelt and Hayden in late 2024, and when former Tartine head baker Nick Beitcher moved from San Francisco to run the bread program in 2025, a south Scottsdale storefront became the most serious sourdough address in the Valley.
$$ Since 2024
Chin Up Donuts
Alex McEntire's woman-owned doughnut shop makes dense, buttery brioche doughnuts from scratch, in flavors that run from Lavender Fields to pepperoni pizza. After closing her original North Scottsdale shop at the end of 2025, the bright little room on Main Street is now the only Chin Up.
$ On Main Street since 2023
Cholla Prime Steakhouse & Lounge
Casino Arizona's white-tablecloth steakhouse on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Community serves prime rib and classic steak dinners at prices the Scottsdale resort corridor can't match — a longtime local secret hiding in plain sight.
$$$ Decades running
Chompie's
The Borenstein family built Arizona's definitive New York deli starting in Phoenix in 1979, and the Scottsdale location on Shea keeps the hand-rolled bagels, matzo ball soup, and Sunday bagel-run tradition alive for the northeast Valley.
$$ Valley institution since 1979
Chula Seafood
The Heflin family — commercial swordfish fishermen out of San Diego — opened this fish market and lunch counter at Hayden and Roosevelt in 2016, serving swordfish off their own boat, FV Chula. The best seafood story in landlocked Arizona.
$$ Since 2016
Cielito
The rooftop restaurant and bar atop the AC Hotel Scottsdale Old Town, serving seafood-forward flavors of Mexico's northwest coast on a skyline patio — one of the buzziest recent additions to Old Town's upscale Mexican scene.
$$$ 2020s newcomer
Cien Agaves Tacos & Tequila
An Old Town original since 2007, Cien Agaves pairs scratch-made Mexican cooking with more than a hundred agave spirits — a taco-and-tequila bar that USA Today readers have ranked among the best Mexican restaurants in the country.
$$ Since 2007
Citizen Public House
Chef Bernie Kantak's upscale gastropub on 5th Avenue, opened in 2011 and home of the cult-famous Original Chopped Salad — one of Arizona's first cocktail-driven kitchens and still the gastropub Scottsdale measures the rest against.
$$$ Since 2011
Clancy's Pub
A Midwest-style neighborhood sports bar and grill on Miller Road with roots in Omaha: big screens, an official watch site for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Green Bay Packers, a whiskey-themed party room, a kitchen that runs until 2 a.m., and one of Scottsdale's louder St. Patrick's Days.
$$ Family-run, Midwest roots
Coach House
Scottsdale's oldest tavern has poured under the same family since 1959, opens at 6am and closes at 2am, and every winter disappears beneath thousands of Christmas lights — the great equalizer of Old Town, where bikers and CEOs share the patio.
$ Since 1959
Cobre Kitchen + Cocktails
The ground-floor restaurant of the Canopy by Hilton Scottsdale Old Town, open since the hotel's October 2020 debut: an American brasserie with Southwestern accents, run by chef Patrick Gaudet, serving breakfast every morning and dinner every night, with an acoustic guitarist on Fridays.
$$$ Since 2020
Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers
Born in north Scottsdale in 2011, this truth-in-advertising sports bar grew into one of Arizona's most successful homegrown chains on legitimately great burgers, a deep beer list, and roughly 30 TVs per location.
$$ Since 2011
Cool Gelato Italiano
Alberto Della Casa from Modena and Letizia de Lucia from Chieti left careers as food-industry analysts, trained in Italy as gelato makers, and opened this small shop behind the Scottsdale Center for the Arts on Valentine's Day 2012; it has won Phoenix New Times' Best Gelato award six times since.
$ Since 2012
Cornish Pasty Co.
Cornwall native Dean Thomas brought his Tempe pasty shop to Goldwater Boulevard in 2013 — a dim, pub-like room where hand-crimped British hand pies come stuffed with everything from traditional steak to chicken tikka masala, with a full bar that runs to midnight on weekends.
$$ Since 2013
Cottontail Lounge
The W Scottsdale's second-floor rooftop lounge shares a level with the WET Deck pool, so it works as a sunset cocktail bar in the late afternoon and a DJ-and-bottle-service club at night, with the entertainment district below and the hotel's front door a short walk away.
$$$ W Scottsdale's rooftop lounge
Course
Chef Cory Oppold's tasting-menu-only dining room hides in a Shea Boulevard strip mall and serves some of the most visually precise food in Arizona — a Chopped champion's answer to resort fine dining, minus the resort.
$$$$ Since 2022
Craft 64
This Main Street brewpub-pizzeria pairs wood-fired pies made with housemade mozzarella and local ingredients with 30-plus Arizona craft taps — earning a spot among the top 50 pizzerias in America from Italy's 50 Top Pizza guide.
$$ Since 2013
Culinary Dropout
Sam Fox's rebellious gastropub at the Scottsdale Waterfront is Fox Restaurant Concepts at its most fun — pretzels and provolone fondue, 36-hour pork ribs, yard games and live music — the default group-hang restaurant for a generation of Scottsdale diners.
$$ A 2010s original, still packed
Daily Dose Old Town Bar & Grill
Locally owned by Matt and JenLyn Long, Daily Dose is Old Town Scottsdale's scratch-kitchen breakfast standby — cinnamon roll pancakes, breakfast nachos, and Hangover Sandwiches served to neighborhood regulars and the walking wounded of Saturday night alike.
$$ An Old Town morning standby
DeFalco's Italian Eatery, Grocery & Deli
The DeFalco family has run this combined Italian grocery, deli, and red-sauce eatery on South Scottsdale Road since 1972, working from recipes brought over a century ago — the Valley's most authentic slice of the old neighborhood.
$ Since 1972
Diego Pops
Inspired by taco-and-tequila conversations on Yucatan beaches, Diego Pops brought a playful, pink-hued modern taco shack to Old Town in 2015 — home of the cult Brussels sprout nachos and one of the most photographed dining rooms in Scottsdale.
$$ Since 2015
Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row
Country superstar and Phoenix native Dierks Bentley's modern honky-tonk anchors Old Town's entertainment district with Southern comfort food, nightly live music, and one of the deepest whiskey walls in Scottsdale — the corner where cowboy boots meet bottle service.
$$ Since 2013
Dominick's Steakhouse
The Mastro brothers' Scottsdale Quarter steakhouse stacks prime and wagyu beef under one of America's strangest restaurant amenities — a rooftop pool deck where you can eat cabana-side above Scottsdale Road.
$$$$ Since 2011
Duke's Sports Bar & Grill
A father-and-daughter sports bar at Miller and McDowell since 1998, with a sprawling dog-friendly patio that backs onto the Vista del Camino disc golf course, a few dozen TVs, pool tables and shuffleboard, and a menu of burgers, sandwiches and ribs priced for the neighborhood rather than the tourists.
$$ Since 1998
Dynamite Grille
The clubhouse restaurant at Troon North Golf Club is open to anyone who drives up Dynamite Boulevard — breakfast through dinner on a renovated indoor-outdoor patio over the 18th green of the Pinnacle course, with the actual Pinnacle Peak filling the sky behind it.
$$ Decades running
Eddie V's Prime Seafood
Darden's flagship luxury seafood brand at Scottsdale Quarter pairs prime seafood and steaks with live jazz nightly in the V Lounge — a location so successful the company closed its nearby Wildfish rather than compete with it.
$$$$ A Quarter fixture since the early 2010s
Eggstasy
The Shea corridor's maximalist brunch destination piles on creative benedicts, red velvet pancakes and morning cocktails — all the flourish of the Old Town brunch scene without the Old Town parking.
$$ A Shea standby for years running
El Camino
A laid-back Jocque Concepts bar in the Southbridge building at 7133 E Stetson Dr, serving smash burgers under $12, $4 PBR and a Cowboy Killer from 11 a.m., with the kitchen open until midnight every day.
$ 2020s and running
El Chorro
One of Arizona's most storied restaurants: an adobe dinner house between Camelback and Mummy mountains, serving complimentary sticky buns and lawn-party sunsets to generations of Valley celebrations since 1937.
$$$ Since 1937
El Hefe
Riot Hospitality's 'super macho taqueria' — legitimate tacos and margaritas by day, DJs and dancing on the tables by night — the archetype of the taco-to-club formula that defines modern Old Town Scottsdale nightlife.
$$ Since 2013
Elements
The clifftop restaurant of Sanctuary Camelback Mountain Resort — for two decades the launching pad of celebrity chef Beau MacMillan, and still the Valley's definitive view table for seasonal American cooking with Asian accents.
$$$$ Since 2001
Ella on the Park
Hotel Solaya's main restaurant opened in April 2026 with a Southern accent nobody expected in Scottsdale: chef Brian Paskvan's oak-smoked meats, country hams from Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina, a 30-seat round bar and a patio looking across the Civic Center lawn. Common Ground Bistro in the lobby covers coffee and breakfast.
$$$ Since 2026
Estelle
The team behind The Montauk and Diego Pops opened this two-story, open-air restaurant and bar in late November 2025 — Mediterranean and Mexican plates from a Mexico City-born chef, cocktails with Camelback views, and a 'beach house meets nightlife' room that gets louder after dark.
$$$ Since 2025
Evo
A locally owned Italian room on the Goldwater edge of Old Town that turns out handmade pasta and pizza from 4 p.m. until 2 a.m. every night — the rare Scottsdale kitchen still feeding people properly after the bars have given up on food.
$$ Since the 2010s
F/Sixteen
The REMI.'s street-level diner borrows its name and look from the F-16 fighter jet and serves classic American diner food with some excess on top: churro pancakes, wagyu smash burgers, spiked milkshakes and a peanut-butter-washed old fashioned. It opens at 6 a.m. every day in the middle of the entertainment district.
$$ Since 2025
Farm & Craft
A Scottsdale-born 'sustainable wellness' restaurant that tags its menu by health benefit — anti-inflammatory, probiotic — without surrendering brunch-crowd fun, holding down a big Scottsdale Road patio daily from morning through dinner since 2016.
$$ Since 2016
Fat Ox
Chef Matt Carter's sleek 7,000-square-foot modern Italian room on the Scottsdale-Paradise Valley border, named for Italy's Bue Grasso festival — handmade pastas, slow-roasted meats, and one of the Valley's top Italian dining rooms since 2017.
$$$$ Since 2017
Fate Brewing Company
Steve 'McFate' Fate's 11,000-square-foot south Scottsdale brewpub pairs Great American Beer Festival-winning house beers with a full scratch kitchen and wood-fired pizzas — the anchor of the south Scottsdale Road craft scene since 2015.
$$ Since 2015
Fleming's Prime Steakhouse — DC Ranch
Fleming's has anchored Market Street at DC Ranch since the development's early years, giving North Scottsdale's master-planned communities a neighborhood prime steakhouse — co-founded by Paul Fleming, the restaurateur who launched P.F. Chang's in Scottsdale.
$$$$ Since the early 2000s
Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar
The upscale national steakhouse keeps two Scottsdale rooms — the longstanding Lincoln Village dining room and a DC Ranch sibling — making Fleming's the neighborhood's reliable choice for prime beef and a hundred wines by the glass.
$$$$ Decades on Scottsdale Road
Flo's - New Asian Cuisine
Locally owned since 1997, Flo's is north Scottsdale's neighborhood Chinese-American standby — famous lettuce wraps, Mongolian beef, and a Thompson Peak dining room that has fed McDowell Mountain Ranch families for nearly three decades.
$$ Since 1997
Flower Child
Born from Scottsdale-based Fox Restaurant Concepts, Flower Child turned organic grain bowls and wraps into a sunny fast-casual formula that spread nationwide — and the 90th Street location near Shea is the local office crowd's weekday-lunch mainstay.
$$ A 2010s Fox Concepts original
Fogo de Chao
The Brazilian churrascaria's Scottsdale steakhouse at Lincoln Village brings the full gaucho experience — fire-roasted meats carved continuously tableside until you flip the card to red — to the Scottsdale Road resort corridor, a high-volume favorite for celebrations.
$$$ Fires burning for years running
Fourtillfour
A former Marine sold his air-cooled Porsches to open a minimalist coffee bar on 1st Avenue in January 2016, named for a 356 vanity plate — and turned it into the Valley's cars-and-coffee headquarters, pouring house-roasted beans to a crowd that arrives in vintage German metal.
$ Since 2016
Franco's Italian Caffe
Florence-born Franco Fazzuoli first cooked in Scottsdale in 1987, left for New York, and came back to open this small Florentine dining room in the old Bravo Bistro space in October 2012. The menu is Tuscan and unfussy, the bistecca is the big order, and the wine list is the kind that wins awards.
$$$ Since 2012
Frank & Lupe's Old Mexico
The cheerful cantina that dished New Mexico-style enchiladas to Old Town's gallery district for three decades, quietly closed in 2025 — then came back to life in 2026 at Gainey Ranch, original scratch-made recipes and all.
$$ Since 1995
Frasher's Tavern
The Old Town successor to Frasher's Steakhouse & Lounge, George Frasher's 1999 St. Louis-style steakhouse on south Scottsdale Road — Iowa Premium beef, toasted ravioli and Provel cheese, a seven-day happy hour, and the gooey butter cake that made the original famous, at the northwest corner of Drinkwater and Indian School.
$$$ Since 2019
Gelato Cimmino
A royal-blue-and-white gelateria wedged between the galleries of Main Street, where Naples native Mario Cimmino churns gelato from bases made with a gelato-maker friend in Naples, using lemons from the Amalfi coast and hazelnuts from Giffoni. The almond and orange is one of the best frozen scoops in the Valley.
$ Since 2018
Goldman's Deli
Tucked into a Hayden Road strip near Hilton Village, Goldman's is Scottsdale's old-school Jewish deli — chopped liver, gefilte fish and corned beef made the way transplanted East Coasters remember, a beloved holdout of a vanishing genre.
$$ Decades running
Goldwater Brewing Co.
Old Town Scottsdale's own production brewery since 2015, named for Arizona's most famous political family, with small-batch and barrel-aged releases poured in a below-street-level taproom locals call the Draft Mine.
$$ Since 2015
Goodwood Tavern
A dim, wood-covered pub at 7330 E Stetson Dr that chef Aaron May built out of the old Shotgun Betty's in the mid-2010s and that still runs as the Entertainment District's comfortable middle ground: pub food, brats and bison, pool and darts, big-game screens and a 3-to-7 happy hour every day.
$$ Since the mid-2010s
Grassroots Kitchen & Tap
A dark-wood neighborhood tavern with a chef's touch, Grassroots serves southern-leaning American comfort — fried chicken, short rib grilled cheese, bourbon — to a McCormick Ranch crowd that treats it like an extension of their own kitchen.
$$ A 2010s-era neighborhood fixture
Grimaldi's Pizzeria
The Brooklyn Bridge coal-oven legend chose Old Town Scottsdale for its Arizona debut in the early 2000s — then moved its company headquarters here, making the blistered, smoky Grimaldi's crust the Valley's benchmark for New York pizza.
$$ Since 2003
Grounds on 2nd
A small coffee bar and urban market at 69th and Second streets, on the quiet west edge of Old Town, built by the owners of Mythic Goat Coffee and Rift Wine and Tap: lattes, panini and Saturday bagel pop-ups by day, curated wine and draft beer until 8 p.m.
$ 2020s and running
Hand Cut Chophouse
Riot Hospitality Group opened Hand Cut on the Scottsdale Waterfront in October 2016 as a burger counter by day and chophouse by night; a decade later it is a full modern steakhouse with live music, a sibling in Nashville, and the same canal-side address across from Fashion Square.
$$$ Since 2016
Handlebar J
Scottsdale's original rib house has been run by the musical Herndon family since 1975 — fall-off-the-bone ribs, live country six nights a week from the Herndon Brothers Band, and free Wednesday dance lessons keeping the two-step alive.
$$ Since 1975
Hash Kitchen
Chef Joey Maggiore's brunch-only party palace opened at Gainey Village in 2015 and turned Scottsdale mornings into a scene — a 50-topping build-your-own Bloody Mary bar, DJ weekends, and cereal-crusted French toast that launched a growing chain.
$$ Since 2015
Hearth '61
The signature restaurant of the rebuilt Mountain Shadows resort, named for Paradise Valley's 1961 incorporation, pairs chef Charles Wiley's ingredient-driven American cooking with floor-to-ceiling Camelback Mountain views just over the Scottsdale line.
$$$ Since 2017
HiFi Kitchen & Cocktails
Les and Diane Corieri's music-obsessed bar and club has held the Indian Plaza corner of Saddlebag Trail since March 2013 — bar food and cocktails early, a 20-foot LED wall and theme nights late, and one of the district's more forgiving rooms for people who just want to dance to songs they know.
$$ Since 2013
Hillstone
Long known to locals as Houston's before taking the parent company's name, Hillstone is the dark-boothed clubhouse at the Paradise Valley border where half of Scottsdale closes deals over spinach dip, French dips, and ribs.
$$$ Decades running (as Houston's, then Hillstone)
Hiro Sushi
Chef-owner Hirofumi Nakano trained in Japan for twenty-five years, then spent two decades cutting fish in a Scottsdale Ranch strip center — Hiro Sushi is the quiet, traditional, neighborhood-priced sushi bar the Shea Corridor keeps to itself.
$$ Since the early 2000s
HULA'S Modern Tiki
The Scottsdale outpost of Phoenix's modern tiki pioneer strips the genre of its kitsch — scratch Hawaiian-inflected food, award-winning tropical cocktails, and giant roll-up glass walls that open Old Town onto a street-side patio.
$$ Since 2016
Hush Public House
Chef Dom Ruggiero's unassuming strip-mall restaurant opened in February 2019 and became one of the Valley's worst-kept secrets — elevated pub-influenced cooking that earned a spot in the inaugural Michelin Guide Southwest.
$$$ Since 2019
Ironwood American Kitchen
The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess's all-day American restaurant serves local, organic, sustainably sourced comfort cooking on a plaza-facing patio — the relaxed, family-friendly anchor of one of Scottsdale's deepest resort dining lineups.
$$$ Princess mainstay
Isabella's Kitchen
American-Italian comfort food and wood-fired pizzas at Grayhawk Golf Club since 2012, with a patio pointed straight at the McDowell Mountains — the rare golf-club restaurant North Scottsdale locals treat as their own.
$$ Since 2012
J&G Steakhouse
Jean-Georges Vongerichten's steakhouse at The Phoenician replaced the legendary Mary Elaine's in 2009 and remains the resort's fine-dining flagship — globally spiced prime steaks and seafood served with the best sunset terrace in Scottsdale.
$$$$ Since 2009
Jalapeño Inferno
For decades this family-run cantina has been north Scottsdale's neighborhood Mexican restaurant, feeding the Pinnacle Peak and Troon crowd Sonoran platters and seriously good green chile in a part of town where restaurants rarely last.
$$ Decades running
Jamie's Bottle Shop
A wine shop, wine bar and small French-bistro kitchen under one roof, opened in March 2025 by Wrigley Mansion owner Jamie Hormel and partner Jack Borenstein: more than 700 labels from $15 to $15,000, a locked reserve room, a Champagne Room for classes, and a window bar for watching Main Street.
$$$ Since 2025
JING Scottsdale
The Aspen-born glam-Asian concept opened its fourth location in 2025 after an $11 million transformation at Scottsdale Road and Shea — waterfall chandeliers, velvet booths, and the JING portfolio's first Spanish Josper charcoal oven behind sushi, prime steaks, and premium seafood.
$$$$ Since 2025
JOJO Coffeehouse
Mike Melton's Scottsdale Road coffeehouse opened in December 2018 as a dark, cozy music room with flights of coffee, beer, wine and mimosas, then rebuilt itself during the pandemic into a bright, skylit brunch spot for 120, with live music on weekend mornings and the mimosa flights intact.
$$ Since 2018
Juice Core
A tiny, mother-and-daughter organic juice bar on Stetson Drive that has been cold-pressing raw, unpasteurized juice in Old Town since 2013, with smoothies, bowls, wellness shots and organic coffee alongside the bottles.
$ Since 2013
Julio's Too
A no-fuss Sonoran-American Mexican joint on Camelback, a few doors from the W, whose menu still reads 'The Original Julio's, Est. 1986': spinach con queso by the quart, chimichangas eight ways, a lunch-special board until 4 p.m., and ice-cold margaritas in a district of $25 cocktails.
$$ Est. 1986
Karsen's Grill
A small neighborhood bar and grill on First Street, a block off Brown Avenue, that has served pub food to Old Town regulars since 1991; its owner, Jacob Finley, opened Ponderosa House on Marshall Way in 2026 and kept Karsen's running.
$$ Since 1991
Kauboi
The REMI.'s flagship restaurant splits its grill in two: yakitori on one side, Santa Maria-style steaks on the other. Add a sushi bar, a Japanese whisky list and a 40-ounce tomahawk carved at the table, and it is the entertainment district's most expensive dinner, with the Maya pool party visible from the terrace.
$$$$ Since 2025
Kill Club
Jocque Concepts' low-lit, loud, old-school-cool bar at 7318 E Stetson Dr, open 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. every day since early 2025, with smash burgers, Italian grinders and hot dogs from a kitchen open till midnight, and an upstairs Motor Room with its own bar and pool table.
$$ Since 2025
La Hacienda
The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess's storied Mexican restaurant has run since the resort opened in 1987, later reimagined by chef Richard Sandoval — long ranked among the finest upscale Mexican dining rooms in the country, with a tequila library to match.
$$$ Since 1987
La Locanda Ristorante Italiano
A dinner-only, white-tablecloth-adjacent Italian room at the west end of Fifth Avenue, near Indian School Road — homemade gnocchi, osso buco with risotto, a weekday happy hour at the bar, and the kind of quiet that the rest of Old Town gave up years ago.
$$$ Years running
La Zozzona
The fine-dining centerpiece of the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale's $115 million renovation, created with Top Chef All-Stars winner Richard Blais — handmade pastas and charcoal-grilled steaks in a love letter to Italian-American cooking at Gainey Ranch.
$$$$ Since 2024
LDV Winery Tasting Room
The Old Town tasting room of LDV Winery, Peggy Fiandaca and Curt Dunham's estate vineyard at 5,000 feet in the Chiricahua foothills near Pearce: estate-grown Rhône varieties by the flight, glass or bottle, in a room with two patios at Southbridge, steps from the Arizona Canal.
$$ In Old Town since 2014
Lincoln Steakhouse & Bar
The Camelback Inn's signature dining room since 2016 — first a desert-to-table bistro, then relaunched as the JW brand's American steakhouse prototype — sears Prime and Wagyu at 1,200 degrees in a Josper charcoal oven behind floor-to-ceiling windows aimed straight at Camelback Mountain.
$$$$ Since 2016
Ling & Louie's Asian Bar and Grill
The Arizona-born Asian-fusion grill on Shea Boulevard, open since 2008 and frequently cited as the brand's first location — playful mashup cooking built on the fictional romance of Ling from Taiwan and Louie from Ohio.
$$ Since 2008
Lo-Lo's Chicken & Waffles
The Scottsdale outpost of Larry 'Lo-Lo' White's Phoenix soul food institution — extra-crispy fried chicken on cinnamon-kissed waffles, shrimp and grits, catfish, and red velvet cake — has fed south Scottsdale from Scottsdale Road since around 2010, a family recipe that traces straight back to Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe.
$$ Since about 2010
Local Bistro + Bar
A chef-driven independent near Hayden and Pinnacle Peak serving handmade pastas, wood-fired pizzas, and hand-cut steaks — the Grayhawk area's quiet answer to the resort corridor for well over a decade.
$$$ Over a decade running
Loco Patron
A homegrown Arizona cantina-sports bar hybrid, Loco Patron's Old Town location is the unpretentious counterweight to the neighborhood's clubby taco spots — big patios, big TVs, and margaritas priced for regulars, with a beer-brewing sibling up north.
$ An Arizona-grown cantina, decades running
Lon's at the Hermosa
The AAA Four Diamond restaurant of the Hermosa Inn occupies cowboy artist Lon Megargee's hand-built 1930s adobe hacienda, where executive chef Brian Peterson's wood-fired, Arizona-rooted cooking meets one of metro Phoenix's most atmospheric dinner settings.
$$$$ Decades running
Los Milics Vineyards
The Old Town tasting room of Los Milics, the Elgin estate winery co-founded by FnB's Pavle Milic: it opened as a small dark bar on Marshall Way in February 2024 and now pours from a larger room on Third Avenue with an open kitchen, two patios and fresh mozzarella pulled behind the bar.
$$ Since 2024
Los Sombreros
Chef Azucena Tovar turned a 1930s house on south Scottsdale Road into the Valley's temple of interior Mexican cooking in 1994 — lamb adobo, real mole, killer margaritas, and a twinkle-lit patio that still feels like a secret.
$$ Since 1994
Luna by Giada
Celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis's flagship Arizona restaurant inside Caesars Republic Scottsdale pairs her Roman family recipes with California brightness, live music at the bar and a front-row seat to the Fashion Square scene.
$$$ Since 2024
Malee's Thai Bistro
A fixture of Old Town's Main Street arts district since 1987, Malee's has served Thai curries and pad thai to gallery-goers for nearly four decades — one of Scottsdale's longest continuously running restaurants.
$$ Since 1987
Marcellino Ristorante
Roman-born chef Marcellino Verzino and his wife Sima run one of Scottsdale's most personal Italian dining rooms on Stetson Drive — daily handmade pasta, live jazz nights, and old-world service from a chef who still works his own stove.
$$$ Two decades running
Mastro's City Hall Steakhouse
The Old Town outpost of Scottsdale's homegrown Mastro's steakhouse dynasty, serving steaks on 400-degree sizzling plates, towering seafood platters and warm butter cake to a piano-bar crowd for over two decades.
$$$$ Since 2003
Mastro's Ocean Club
The seafood-forward sibling of Scottsdale-born Mastro's Steakhouse anchors Kierland Commons with dry-ice shellfish towers, prime steaks, nightly live music, and the warm butter cake that ends every big night out in North Scottsdale.
$$$$ Since 2008
Mastro's Steakhouse (the original)
The first Mastro's Steakhouse opened in 1999 near Pinnacle Peak and Pima, where the Mastro family's 1,500-degree broiler, sizzling-plate service, and piano-lounge glamour created a luxury steakhouse template later exported to Beverly Hills, Chicago, and New York.
$$$$ Since 1999
Maya Day + Night
The Yari family's pool club and nightclub on Indian Plaza was gutted and reopened by Riot Hospitality Group in summer 2025. It is now a 15,000-square-foot room with a 100-foot carved wooden goddess behind the bar, a day club around the pool, and a door into the new REMI. hotel next door.
$$$ Reopened in 2025
Merci French Cafe & Patisserie
A husband-and-wife French cafe and patisserie near Indian School and Miller, opened in late 2013 by Duc and Noelle Liao in the same storefront where their Scratch Pastries had started — butter croissants, quiche and croque madame by day, a pastry case of Belgian-chocolate tarts, and a brief BYOB bistro dinner of bourguignon, duck confit and scallops on Friday and Saturday.
$$ Since 2013
Morton's The Steakhouse
The Chicago steakhouse chain founded on State Street in 1978 holds the northeast corner of Kierland Commons — prime-aged steaks, cold-water lobster tails, a dinner-only room with private dining, valet and a Power Hour that makes the bar the best deal on the block.
$$$$ Since the early 2000s
Mother Tucker's Tavern
The two groups behind Bottled Blonde and The Porch replaced their own Bevvy with a retro, wood-paneled party pub in 2024 — forty TVs, big sandwiches, beer-can walls and 'high-low' bottle service of Miller High Life and Don Julio 1942 shooters, on the corner of Saddlebag Trail and Shoeman Lane.
$$ Since 2024
Mowry & Cotton
The Phoenician's approachable-but-ambitious restaurant opened during the resort's 2017 reinvention, pairing fire-driven modern American cooking with a lively, DJ-scored room by the pool — the grande dame's deliberately unbuttoned side.
$$$ Since 2017
Night Owl Pizza & Drinks
The Genuine Concepts crew behind The Vig and The Little Woody teamed with Ziggy's Magic Pizza Shop chef Greg Ziegler to open this owl-decorated neighborhood pizza bar at Hayden and McDowell in March 2023 — New York-style slices, smashburgers, wings, twelve taps, vintage pinball and a twinkle-lit patio that south Scottsdale adopted on sight.
$$ Since 2023
Nobu Scottsdale
Chef Nobu Matsuhisa's world-famous Japanese-Peruvian empire anchors Scottsdale Fashion Square's luxury wing — miso black cod, yellowtail jalapeño, and omakase that announced Scottsdale's arrival on the global luxury-dining circuit.
$$$$ Since 2016
North Italia (the original)
Sam Fox and chef Christopher Christian opened North in a vacant Kierland Commons space in 2002; the handmade-pasta concept became Fox Restaurant Concepts' flagship brand, sold to The Cheesecake Factory in 2019 — and location number one is still rolling dough daily.
$$ Since 2002
Not My First Rodeo
Ben Foreman and Justin Massey's country-western bar and restaurant opened on Sixth Avenue in December 2024, in the building Geisha A Go Go filled for 17 years — a Broadway-in-Nashville room of country DJs, a Honky Tonk Heroes mural, Nashville hot chicken and novelty shots, with a no-cover, boots-optional attitude the Entertainment District clubs don't share.
$$ Since 2024
OBON Sushi + Bar + Ramen
Tucson-born OBON brought its mix of sushi, ramen, and pan-Asian street food to Scottsdale Quarter in 2017 — a modern, approachable room where the maki gets Southeast Asian accents and the daily happy hour does heavy lifting.
$$ Since 2017
Ocean 44
The seafood-focused sibling of Steak 44 from the Mastro restaurant family, Ocean 44 has been the Valley's benchmark for high-end fish since 2018 — a massive, clubby Fashion Square room built on daily-flown seafood and prime steaks.
$$$$ Since 2018
Ocean Trail
Talking Stick Resort's New Orleans-style seafood bar seats nineteen at a counter just off the casino floor and serves raw oysters, steamers, gumbo and Cajun boils with the spice dialed from one to ten — the rare Creole kitchen in the Phoenix area, and the cheapest good seafood on the east side of the 101.
$$ Since the 2010s
Old Town Pizza
A small New York-style pizza shop on Fifth Avenue — classic thin pies, thick Sicilian squares, grandma-style pans, calzones and strombolis — that fills the one gap Old Town's chef-driven 5th Avenue block never bothered with: a cheap, fast, honest slice.
$ Mid-2020s newcomer
Old Town Ski Lodge
The ski-lodge-themed bar upstairs at Wasted Grain on Stetson Drive, open Friday and Saturday from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. with an après-ski menu of fondue pots, Bavarian pretzels and charcuterie, and a promise that it is 'always winter in Old Town Scottsdale.'
$$ 2020s and running
Old Town Tavern
Old Town's working musicians' bar: owner Paul Mitchell's tavern started in 2006 as 'the biggest little stage in Old Town,' moved next door into a bigger building on the Civic Center mall, and still puts local rock and acoustic acts on stage every day for the price of a beer.
$ Since 2006
Olive & Ivy
Fox Restaurant Concepts' Mediterranean restaurant-and-marketplace has anchored the Scottsdale Waterfront's canal bank since 2007 — mezze, brunch and a sprawling patio over the Arizona Canal, steps from Fashion Square.
$$ Since 2007
One Handsome Bastard
A mother-and-daughter micro-distillery and cocktail kitchen in the old Eddie's House and Blue Clover space on Indian School Road, making small-batch vodka and gin on site and serving them with burgers, flatbreads and shareable plates.
$$ Since 2024
Orange Sky
Talking Stick Resort's signature fine-dining room sits 15 floors up with 360-degree glass, named for the blazing desert sunsets it frames — steak, seafood, and an award-winning wine list east of the 101.
$$$$ Since 2010
Oregano's Pizza Bistro
Mark Russell opened the first Oregano's in a 1930s Old Town adobe in 1993 as a tribute to his father's 1950s Chicago pizza days — and the retro-stuffed-pizza bistro that birthed the Pizza Cookie grew into a homegrown Arizona empire.
$$ Since 1993
Original ChopShop
Ryan and Caitlin Jocque opened this Old Town juice-and-bowl shop on 5th Avenue in 2013, betting early on the fast-casual healthy wave — the chain it spawned now spans Arizona and Texas, but the original still feeds Old Town daily.
$ Since 2013
Outrider Rooftop Lounge
The seventh-floor rooftop bar and pool of the Canopy by Hilton Scottsdale Old Town, open since October 2020: an L-shaped lounge with fire pits, desert murals and a clear view of Camelback Mountain, and since then one of the most popular sunset bars in Old Town.
$$ Since 2020
Over Easy
Chef Aaron May's diner-inspired breakfast concept — a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives alum — brings waffle dogs, crisp hash browns, and chef-technique griddle classics to the Ancala corner of North Scottsdale.
$$ An Arizona morning staple
Palo Verde
The Boulders' signature restaurant sits on the sixth fairway of the South Course, floor-to-ceiling windows on a duck pond and the granite piles beyond — contemporary Southwestern cooking restyled in a 2015 renovation that closed Latilla and made this the resort's dinner destination, with a chef who beat Bobby Flay on his way in.
$$$$ Decades running
Passion Cellars
A small, sofa-and-chandelier tasting room on Fifth Avenue, across from Bob Parks' bronze horses, pouring the Domanico family's Willcox wines: Passion Cellars for drinking now, with Salvatore Vineyards and Cabal Cellars in the same family and olive oil and balsamic on the shelves.
$$ 2010s and running
Pasta Brioni
A family-run Italian room on Miller Road that started with six tables in one storefront suite and now fills four — scratch pasta, hand-rolled meatballs, rolls baked every morning, and an owner-chef who sold his tax practice to run it full-time. Phoenix New Times called it the Cheers of Italian restaurants.
$$ Since the early 1990s
Pattie's First Avenue Lounge
The genuine dive in the middle of tourist Old Town: a three-room bar on First Avenue, entered through a gap in weathered brick, its ceiling papered in thousands of decorated dollar bills, pouring cheap drinks under the Pattie's name since 1992 to a crowd that runs from spring-training pilgrims to the people who own the buildings nearby.
$ Since 1992
Paula Jacqueline Cakes & Pastries
A small, woman-owned bakery in a Marshall Way suite that does three things: a case of macarons, cupcakes, cake slices and brownies, custom cakes for weddings and birthdays (vegan, kosher and gluten-free on request), and a kitchen full of kids learning to bake.
$$ A Marshall Way specialist
Perk Eatery
Carmen and Pauline Martinez opened a strip-center breakfast-and-lunch café west of Kierland in 2010, Guy Fieri filmed it in 2013, and Perk Eatery has been the neighborhood's pancake-and-breakfast-enchilada headquarters ever since — classic American with a Southwest twist, 6:30 to 2:30, every day.
$$ Since 2010
Pescada Scottsdale
An upscale seafood restaurant and raw bar on North Pima Road near DC Ranch, bringing fresh oysters, coastal plates, and craft cocktails to a stretch of north Scottsdale that had everything except a proper fish house.
$$$ Since the 2020s
Picazzo's Healthy Italian Kitchen
Two Portland homebuilders opened a pizza joint in Sedona in 2002 and a Scottsdale branch at the Promenade a year later; Picazzo's then rebuilt itself around gluten-free, vegan and whole-food Italian long before those words sold anything, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard room is its Scottsdale flagship.
$$ Since 2003
Pinnacle Peak General Store & Cafe
A 1977 general store on Pinnacle Peak Road that grew into a village — gas pumps, liquor, a coffee bar, real-estate offices and a home-style cafe serving breakfast and lunch from 7 to 2 every day — and remains the last honest crossroads stop between the gated golf communities and the mountain.
$ Since 1977
Pinyon
Hi Noon Hospitality's two-story Mediterranean room opened on the Civic Center Mall in October 2025 — house-made pita, rotating hummus, crudos and whole fish off a Barcelona-forged Josper grill, served under olive trees on a European-style patio next door to AZ88.
$$$ Since 2025
Pistoleros Parrilla
Brothers Luke and Jake Kory of Boondocks teamed up with Luke's childhood friend from Nogales, chef Marco Garcia, to open a wood-fired Mexican steakhouse in a converted office building on Civic Center Plaza: mesquite-grilled steaks sliced to order, Sonoran seafood and borderland plates downstairs, a second-story patio, and a late lounge called Pisto.
$$$ Mid-2020s newcomer
Pita Jungle
Founded by three ASU grads in Tempe in 1994, Pita Jungle pioneered healthy Mediterranean eating in Arizona long before hummus went mainstream — and the Shea Boulevard location is Scottsdale's reliable standby for shawarma and wood-fired lavosh.
$$ Since 1994 (Tempe original)
Pizzeria Virtù
Virtù Honest Craft chef Gio Osso took over the old Grazie building on Main Street in January 2020, kept the seasoned Valoriani oven, and opened a certified-Neapolitan pizzeria — blistered pies, polpette, wood-fired vegetable salads, Negronis at a copper bar — that survived a six-week pandemic shutdown to become the arts district's neighborhood pizza room.
$$ Since 2020
Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana
Pomo holds the Verace Pizza Napoletana certification — dough, San Marzano tomatoes, and a 90-second wood-fired bake vetted to Naples' strict standards — making its Scottsdale dining room a pilgrimage for Neapolitan pizza purists since the early 2010s.
$$ Since the early 2010s
Ponderosa House
Karsen's Grill veteran Jacob Finley took over the old Frank & Lupe's address at Marshall Way and Indian School and opened Ponderosa House in May 2026: a taco-and-margarita cantina up front, a patio, and a restored 1920s house in back serving what he calls Arizona-born food.
$$$ Since 2026
Porters Western Saloon
A narrow, family-owned cocktail saloon that opened in June 2019 inside the 1929 brick building that was Scottsdale's first post office and, for decades after, Porter's Western Wear. The horse on the balcony stayed; the bar added flocked blue walls, a chandelier, a cocktail list named for the building's past and seasonal pop-ups that take over the old upstairs apartment.
$$ Since 2019
Postino Highland
The Scottsdale outpost of Arizona's beloved wine-cafe family delivers the formula locals swear by: bruschetta boards, approachable wines, $6 glasses before 5pm, and the famous weeknight bottle-and-bruschetta deal that made Postino the Valley's default first date.
$$ An Arizona original, decades running
Pour Decisions Patio & Kitchen
A two-building, 10,000-square-foot patio-and-rooftop bar that reopened the old Dos Gringos address on Craftsman Court in 2023 — Camelback views, a four-sided rooftop bar, a 16-foot screen, live bands and DJs, and a crowd pitched at people who've outgrown the Old Town club scene.
$$ Since 2023
Prado
The flagship restaurant of the Omni Scottsdale Resort at Montelucia, where Moorish-Andalusian architecture sets the stage for Spanish-leaning Mediterranean cooking, wood-fired dinners and one of the Valley's grandest Sunday brunches.
$$$ Since 2008
Press Coffee
The homegrown Phoenix roaster's Scottsdale Quarter cafe has anchored north Scottsdale's specialty coffee scene since the center's early days, with serious sourcing and barista training that keep it a clear step above the mall-coffee norm.
$ Since 2008
Problem Restaurant & Lounge
Chef Cleaz and Deebo's restaurant and lounge opened on Sixth Avenue on July 24, 2026, at the address Barney's Boathouse moved to from Tempe in 2011: an Italian steakhouse with Creole-Cajun influences, handcrafted cocktails and a lounge that keeps going after dinner.
$$$ Since 2026
Proof, An American Canteen
The Four Seasons Scottsdale's all-day canteen has served house-smoked meats, pretzel knots, and ten-layer chocolate cake against Pinnacle Peak since 2012 — the rare luxury-resort restaurant that is honestly casual, and the reason Troon North locals eat there without checking in.
$$$ Since 2012
PussyCat Gelato
An all-natural gelato shop from a French-born hotel veteran and his partner, born in a former brothel district in Bisbee and opened on Fifth Avenue six months later — no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives, served in a 1970s throwback lounge with Josie and the Pussycats cartoons on the screen.
$ Since the 2010s
Quill Creek Cafe
The clubhouse restaurant at Grayhawk Golf Club — now billed as Quill Creek Restaurant & Grill — serves Southwest-leaning American food to anyone who walks in, on a patio above the Raptor course's 18th hole with the McDowell Mountains filling the horizon and fire pits lit at sunset.
$$ Decades running
Rehab Burger Therapy
A beach-shack-themed Old Town burger joint slinging peanut butter bacon burgers, mac-and-cheese-topped patties and boozy shakes since 2012 — with a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives stamp from Guy Fieri to prove the indulgence is doctrine.
$$ Since 2012
RESERVE
An ultra-intimate, appointment-only tasting-menu hideaway on 1st Avenue with a dress code, live piano, and an 8,000-bottle cellar — earning Michelin recognition in 2026 and the inaugural Michelin Southwest Sommelier Award for wine director John Germain.
$$$$ Since the 2020s
Riot House
Riot Hospitality Group's Miami-styled, open-air club and bar opened in May 2018 with palm-print walls, neon and gold, a wraparound bar and ten bottle-service booths — brunch on weekend mornings, one of the district's busiest dance floors by midnight.
$$$ Since 2018
Roaring Fork
Founded by James Beard Award-winning chef Robert McGrath, Roaring Fork defined upscale 'American Western' cooking in Arizona — wood fire, green chile pork, and the famous big-ass burger keep its Scottsdale Road saloon an institution decades on.
$$$ Decades running
Rockbar Inc.
A two-level rock bar on Craftsman Court that opened over Thanksgiving weekend 2011 in the old Acme Bar & Grill — live bands, DJs, an upstairs bar and a rooftop with TVs — and, on fall Sundays, the Arizona home of the Philadelphia Eagles' EaglesWest fan club.
$ Since 2011
Roka Akor
The steak-and-sushi concept built around a Japanese robata charcoal grill, with Scottsdale among its flagship U.S. locations — binchotan-grilled prime beef and pristine sushi that keep it atop every local Japanese-dining list.
$$$$ Since 2011
Rusty Spur Saloon
Scottsdale's oldest saloon pours drinks in the 1921 Farmers State Bank building — the vault now holds the liquor — with live country music every day and night, no cover, and a guest list that has included John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.
$ Since 1951
Ruth's Chris Steak House
Ruth Fertel's New Orleans steakhouse formula — corn-fed, custom-aged beef served sizzling in butter on a 500-degree plate — has held the second floor of the Scottsdale Seville at Scottsdale Road and Indian Bend for decades, the quiet occasion steakhouse for McCormick Ranch and the resort corridor.
$$$$ Decades running
Růže Cake House
A mother-daughter bakery that began on a Facebook page in 2013 and grew into a Main Street Arts District storefront — custom wedding cakes with local ingredients, a cactus-topped prickly pear cake copied around the world, and macarons in flavors like lavender white chocolate and french fry milkshake.
$$ Since 2013
Salt & Lime Modern Mexican Grill
A locally owned modern-Mexican grill that gives the Shea corridor its own taco-and-margarita destination — scratch salsas, fresh-squeezed margaritas, and lighter, brighter takes on cantina classics without the drive to Old Town.
$$ Since the 2010s
Salvatore Vineyards
The Domanico family's second Old Town tasting room, on Stetson Drive near the canal: a wood-lined, art-hung room pouring the reserve Salvatore Vineyards label and the Cabal Cellars collaboration, a few blocks from its Passion Cellars sibling on Fifth Avenue.
$$ Salvatore wines since 2012
Sauce Pizza & Wine
Sam Fox launched Sauce in 2003 as a fast-casual answer to the Valley's pizza chains, then sold it in 2015; the Waterfront location is still the cheapest sit-down meal on a canal lined with steakhouses, with thin-crust pies, big salads and half-price wine bottles at happy hour.
$ Brand since 2003
Schmooze
A cafe, bar and co-working space hidden on Marshall Way since 2018, built by a real estate founder as the meeting place he wanted to visit every day: breakfast and lunch, coffee, a wall of taps pouring beer and cocktails, rentable boardrooms and a garden patio full of flowers.
$$ Since 2018
Sel
Chef-owner Branden Levine's jewel-box dining room among Old Town's Main Street galleries pairs refined French technique with global flavors — three parallel five-course prix fixe menus make it Scottsdale's most flexible fine-dining ticket.
$$$$ Since 2017
Sexy Roman
Los Angeles-based Alliance Hospitality Group spent more than a year rebuilding the W Scottsdale's old Sushi Roku space into Sexy Roman, a 5,500-square-foot Italian grand salon of olive wood, black marble and green velvet, with James Beard-nominated chef Jason Franey's pastas and prime steaks and martinis chilled tableside.
$$$$ Since 2025
Shakes & Cones
Rock N Robin's Shakes & Cones is the locally owned, family-run walk-up window on First Street, next door to Bootleggers. Since 2014 it has made organic soft serve from scratch in small batches every day: gluten-free, egg-free, with no preservatives, plus a coconut-milk vegan vanilla. Shakes, floats, banana splits and cones in waffle cones rolled in house make it the Old Town dessert stop that works for almost everyone's allergies.
$ Since 2014
ShinBay Omakase Room
Arizona's most rarefied sushi experience: an intimate Old Town counter led by Osaka-born chef Ken Tanaka, serving a $285 two-hour omakase at two nightly seatings and recognized in the inaugural Michelin Guide Southwest in 2026.
$$$$ Since 2021
Shiso
A dinner-only sushi room that opened in 2026 at 7133 E Stetson Dr, in the corner space last held by The Drunk Munk, cooking Japanese technique with a Korean accent: signature rolls, crudo, A5 wagyu, kimchi fried rice, and DJs on weekend nights.
$$$ Since 2026
Shiv Steakhouse
Riot Hospitality Group gutted the old Mint Ultra Lounge on Camelback and reopened it in 2025 as Shiv, a nearly 14,000-square-foot supper club of tableside truffle bread, seafood towers, caviar and charcoal-fired steaks, with live music every night and a dessert-and-bottle-service room after dinner on weekends.
$$$$ Since 2025
Simon's Hot Dogs
Felipe and Marcela Roldan's tiny Colombian hot dog counter moved from a Sedona brewery to a Drinkwater Boulevard strip center at the end of 2015 and became, of all things, Yelp's top-ranked place to eat in Arizona in 2021 — perros calientes piled with pineapple, mozzarella and crushed chips, and one of Old Town's deepest vegan menus.
$ Since 2015
Simply Shroom Café
A pink, unabashedly playful daytime café on Fifth Avenue where every coffee, tea and smoothie gets a tasteless scoop of the house four-mushroom extract — opened in 2024 by two friends turned business partners as a café 'by women, for women,' and now the flagship of a would-be franchise.
$$ Since 2024
Sip Coffee & Beer House
Old Town Scottsdale's hybrid coffeehouse-and-craft-beer bar, where remote workers, first dates, and open-mic musicians share the same worn couches from morning espresso through late-night pints.
$ 2010s and running
Sizzle Korean BBQ
Chef Hyunwook Lee's upscale Korean barbecue on Scottsdale Road, where servers grill marbled beef and pork in the center of your table, a la carte, with banchan and steamed egg; a two-time Phoenix New Times Best Korean Barbecue pick that shares a building and an owner with the ShinBay Omakase Room upstairs.
$$$ Since 2019
Social Tap Eatery
A two-level sports bar and scratch kitchen on the north end of Brown Avenue: big patios, local drafts and more than thirty TVs on the ground floor since 2016, and since 2019 The Balcony, an 1,800-square-foot rooftop wine and cocktail lounge with its own bar, a DJ booth and a fireplace.
$$ Since 2016
SOL Mexican Cocina
The Newport Beach-born Baja concept that landed at Scottsdale Quarter in 2012 and never left — coastal Mexican plates, a serious tequila list and one of north Scottsdale's most dependable patios.
$$ Since 2012
Sorso Wine Room
Scottsdale Quarter's anchor wine bar hands you a card and a wall of enomatic machines — dozens of wines poured by the ounce, self-serve — paired with flatbreads and boards in a room built for groups and grazers.
$$ Scottsdale Quarter era
Spinato's Pizzeria & Family Kitchen
The Spinato family's Chicago tavern-style thin crust and cult-favorite spinach pizza, served at The Block near Talking Stick by one of Arizona's most beloved family-run restaurant groups, in business since the 1970s.
$$ Since the 1970s
Spotted Donkey Cantina
The Boulders' casual Mexican cantina at the El Pedregal marketplace sets a big patio against the resort's twelve-million-year-old rock pile, pours from a list of more than 45 tequilas, and has been the far-north Scottsdale happy-hour default for well over a decade.
$$ Over a decade running
Starfish Scottsdale
Orange County's Starfish Hospitality Group picked McCormick Ranch for its first restaurant outside California, opening May 5, 2026 at Hayden and Via de Ventura with a 5,200-square-foot dining room and 90-seat patio of polished coastal-Asian cooking.
Since 2026
STK Steakhouse Scottsdale
The ONE Group's steakhouse-meets-lounge brand, which first came to Scottsdale on Stetson Drive in 2021, reopened in October 2025 on the Scottsdale Road corner where the company's RA Sushi had been born in 1997: steaks and cocktails under a live DJ, and a conversion the company now calls its model for the rest of the chain.
$$$$ Since 2025
SumoMaya
The high-energy Mexican-Asian mashup at Scottsdale Road and Lincoln that pioneered the Valley's fusion-party-dining genre in 2013 — shareable plates, a legendary patio, and DJ-fueled weekend brunches that remain a Scottsdale scene staple.
$$$ Since 2013
Sushi Brokers
A locally owned sushi bar at Scottsdale Road and Bell that has run since 2000 on a simple formula — fresh fish daily, fifty-plus oversized signature rolls, a twice-daily happy hour, and late-night hours — and grew from this North Scottsdale flagship into Arcadia and Gilbert locations without changing the menu.
$$ Since 2000
Sushi Ko
Chef-owner Dai Hayashi's family-run sushi bar has held a strip-center corner on East Shea since 1997 — traditional nigiri and sashimi, a deep sake list, the same chefs behind the bar for a decade-plus, and a past Arizona Republic Best Sushi Bar nod that regulars still cite.
$$ Since 1997
Sweet Dee's Bakeshop
Lynda and Danielle O'Day's bakery and café at the foot of the Camden apartments on Stetson Drive, open since June 2018: seasonal themed pastry cases, a scratch-made breakfast and lunch menu, a full coffee bar and one of Old Town's deepest gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan selections.
$ Since 2018
Sweet Provisions
Chef Christopher Collins opened this candy-striped scoop shop on March 1, 2017, a few doors from his Grassroots Kitchen — ice cream churned daily from local Arizona dairy, pies and bars baked from scratch, a wall of thirty-odd classic candies and a milkshake called the Campfire S'more that families drive across McCormick Ranch for.
$ Since 2017
Sweet Republic
Two former finance professionals opened this artisan ice cream shop in a Shea Boulevard strip mall in 2008 and built one of America's most nationally praised scoop shops, churning small batches from Arizona dairy.
$ Since 2008
Taj Mahal Restaurant & Lounge
A family-owned North Indian restaurant and full-bar lounge on Craftsman Court, the Scottsdale sibling of a Prescott original with more than two decades behind it — lunch and dinner daily, a private dining room for up to 40, and one of Old Town's most vegetarian-friendly menus.
$$ Since 2016
Talavera
The Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale's signature restaurant serves Spanish-accented prime steaks against boulder-strewn Pinnacle Peak sunset views — the fine-dining anchor of the city's far-north resort corridor since 2009.
$$$$ Since 2009
Tapas Papa Frita
Bilbao-born chef Joseph Gutierrez revived his 1990s Phoenix tapas bar at SouthBridge in 2010, and it has become Old Town's Spanish institution — fifty-odd tapas, paella, a circular stone bar, a patio over the Waterfront, and flamenco on Fridays. Phoenix New Times named it the Valley's best tapas in 2022.
$$$ Since 2010
TeaTime
A loose-leaf tea shop on Fifth Avenue that began as part of a German tea chain in 2009 and now runs independently — a wall of nearly 100 teas, house hand-crafted blends, tea classes, and a reserved, pre-paid afternoon tea that is the most civilized 90 minutes in Old Town.
$$ Since 2009
The Americano
Celebrity chef Scott Conant's Italian-inspired steakhouse in North Scottsdale pairs dry-aged bistecca with his famous spaghetti pomodoro — and in 2026 handed the kitchen's direction to fellow Food Network star Beau MacMillan.
$$$$ Since 2021
The Breakfast Joynt
A north Scottsdale neighborhood breakfast house near McDowell Mountain Ranch serving honest home cooking — biscuits and gravy, big omelets, friendly counter-style service — in a corner of the city otherwise dominated by chains.
$$ Years running
The Canal Club
The stylish restaurant of The Scott Resort & Spa serves Caribbean-inflected American cooking and rum cocktails in a 1930s Cuban-colonial setting — a favorite hidden patio-and-bar scene between Old Town and Camelback Mountain.
$$$ Since 2017
The Capital Grille
The national steakhouse's Scottsdale outpost at the Promenade near Kierland dry-ages its beef in-house, keeps a 350-plus-label wine list, and quietly runs the business-dinner economy of the Airpark corridor.
$$$$ Decades running
The Eleanor
The Fate Brewing family's breakfast-and-brunch room at Hayden and Osborn — homemade pancakes, Eggs Blackstone, a grab-and-go deli case with its own pickup parking — opened in September 2023 as the deliberately quiet, family-first alternative to Scottsdale's party brunches, and won Phoenix New Times' Best Breakfast in 2025.
$$ Since 2023
The Ends
Tommy Plato's Anthony Bourdain-inspired restaurant on Stetson Drive hops borders course by course — Laos sausage to bison with bone-marrow butter — with a visible pasta room and the craft DNA of his old speakeasy, Second Story.
$$$ Since 2024
The Grapevine Restaurant & Karaoke Bar
A two-story Brown Avenue bar and restaurant that has fed and watered Old Town since 1971 and now runs karaoke every single day, with a crowd that cheers the bad singers as loudly as the good ones, Phoenix New Times' pick for the Valley's Best Karaoke in 2023 and again in 2025.
$$ Since 1971
The Greene House
Fox Restaurant Concepts' Craftsman-styled one-off at Kierland Commons has been north Scottsdale's special-occasion standby since 2007 — seasonal American cooking from an open kitchen, in the rare Fox room that never became a chain.
$$$ Since 2007
The Guest House Scottsdale
Austin's 'vibey' steakhouse opened January 9, 2026 in the former Etta space at Scottsdale Quarter, bringing DJ energy, tableside grill theatrics, tuna-caviar cones, and a wagyu program to North Scottsdale's most-watched new room.
$$$$ Since 2026
The Herb Box
Founded as a 1990s Scottsdale catering company by Susan Wilcox and Becca Windsor, The Herb Box grew into one of the city's most enduring farm-to-table restaurants — its Old Town 5th Avenue room and Shea Boulevard outpost still set the local brunch standard.
$$ 1990s roots, on 5th Ave since 2021
The Hot Chick
A retro dive bar and hot chicken counter on 75th Street that opened in 2019 and won Phoenix New Times' Best New Nightspot that year: Nashville-style fried chicken from a counter built like a vintage camper, a sauce bar, Donkey Kong and Frogger cabinets, DJs, a misted patio and, later, the Valley's best drag bingo.
$$ Since 2019
The House Brasserie
A white-tablecloth dinner house inside a 1939 home built by the Mowry family, who came to Scottsdale to grow Pima cotton: modern American cooking with French influence, 28-day dry-aged steaks, a picket-fenced patio under shade trees, and one of the quietest corners at the west end of Main Street.
$$$$ 2010s and running
The Living Room DC Ranch
Tom Kaufman's wine café and lounge on the south corner of Market Street carries on what Armitage Wine Lounge started in 2004 — a wraparound patio, a self-serve wine wall of 30 dispensers, sushi and steak on one menu, and live music most nights of the week.
$$ A wine bar on this corner since 2004
The Mission Kierland
Chef Matt Carter's modern-Latin hit expanded from Old Town to Kierland Commons in 2017, bringing candle-lit drama, tableside guacamole, and a Spain-to-South-America menu — North Scottsdale's rare chef-driven Latin room.
$$$ Since 2017
The Montauk
A Hamptons beach house teleported to Old Town Scottsdale — lobster rolls, clam chowder, smash burgers, frozen drinks, and DJ-driven weekend brunches that bridge the neighborhood's restaurant and nightlife scenes better than almost anyone.
$$ Since 2017
The Morning Squeeze
A cheeky, retro-styled Old Town diner where classic breakfast meets day-drinking energy — banana Nutella crepes, carne asada frittatas, and a mimosa list that fuels the Scottsdale brunch crawl from a prime people-watching patio.
$$ Since 2013
The Original Pancake House
Ron Horton opened the Portland-born Original Pancake House franchise beside a 1965 Motel 6 on Camelback Road in 1988, and the oven-puffed Dutch Baby and apple pancake have drawn multi-generational Sunday lines to the edge of Old Town ever since.
$$ Since 1988
The Roost
A tiny bar tucked into the back of Rooster Bus, the Arizona menswear shop that started life in a converted retired fire-department bus — cold beer, a couple of stools, and the rare Old Town drink that comes with denim, boots and hats instead of a DJ.
$ Brand born in 2018
The Salt Cellar
A Valley landmark since 1971, the Salt Cellar is built entirely underground — descend three flights into a subterranean dining room where the Huie family has flown in fresh seafood daily since 1980, king crab legs first among equals.
$$$ Since 1971
The Thumb
A working gas station, car wash, gourmet market, and legitimate competition-style barbecue joint in one North Scottsdale building — founded by a former surgeon, blessed by Guy Fieri's Triple D crew, and beloved by locals eating ribs while their SUVs get detailed.
$$ Since 2011
The Vig McCormick Ranch
Genuine Concepts planted its popular Phoenix tavern brand in McCormick Ranch in 2014, styling the mid-century-meets-rustic patio and lawn-games backyard as a salute to the classic Scottsdale neighborhood around it.
$$ Since 2014
Tiki Taka
Richard Blais's playful Japan-meets-Spain restaurant at the renovated Grand Hyatt Scottsdale pairs sushi with Spanish tapas — the most original concept among the resort's six-venue dining overhaul at Gainey Ranch.
$$$ Since 2024
Toca Madera
The Madera Group's modern Mexican steakhouse brought Los Angeles nightlife-dining to Scottsdale Fashion Square — tableside-torched tomahawks, theatrical mezcal cocktails, and DJ-driven energy that defines Old Town's vibe-dining wave.
$$$$ Since 2021
Tommy V's Urban Kitchen & Bar
A dinner-only Italian room on Indian School Road running on old-school supper-club energy — veal, chops, house pastas, a deep wine list and regular winemaker dinners — that has held its ground through Old Town's churn since 2012.
$$$ Since 2012
Toro by Richard Sandoval
Richard Sandoval's pan-Latin restaurant at the TPC Scottsdale clubhouse — Latin grill cooking, sushi-crudo crossovers, and a rum bar overlooking the 18th green of the course that hosts the WM Phoenix Open.
$$$ Since 2015
True Food Kitchen
Dr. Andrew Weil and Sam Fox's wellness restaurant at Scottsdale Quarter, serving anti-inflammatory bowls, seasonal vegetables, and clean-eating comfort food since 2010 — the Arizona-born concept that took healthy dining national.
$$ Since 2010
U.S. Egg
A family-run Arizona breakfast institution since 1986, U.S. Egg invented its cult-famous protein pancakes decades before high-protein menus were a trend — and the Old Town location still runs the formula: big omelets, fast service, done by mid-afternoon.
$ Since 1986
Uchi Scottsdale
James Beard winner Tyson Cole's acclaimed Austin sushi house opened its Arizona outpost at Scottsdale Road and First Street in February 2024, instantly joining the top tier of Scottsdale sushi with its non-traditional, chef-driven Japanese cooking.
$$$$ Since 2024
Velvet Taco
The Dallas taco chain's first Arizona store opened on November 4, 2024 in the building that held Second Story Liquor Bar for a decade. Expect globe-trotting tacos built from scratch, a weekly special called the WTF, frozen margaritas, red velvet cake, and a kitchen that runs until 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.
$ Since 2024
Veneto Trattoria
A quietly excellent Venetian trattoria at Hilton Village that has served fegato alla veneziana, salt cod and proper risotto to a devoted crowd since 1997 — the last of Scottsdale's old-guard regional Italian rooms still going.
$$$ Since 1997
Village Coffee Roastery
Roasting its own beans in the same McCormick Ranch plaza since 1996, Village Coffee is the rare independent that predates — and outlasted — every specialty coffee wave around it, a neighborhood institution in the fullest sense.
$ Since 1996
Virtù Honest Craft
Chef Gio Osso's intimate Mediterranean restaurant inside the Bespoke Inn courtyard made Esquire's best new restaurants list in 2013 and has kept him a perennial James Beard semifinalist — the most romantic chef-driven room in Old Town's arts district.
$$$ Since 2013
Voila French Bistro
A genuinely French neighborhood bistro tucked into a Via Linda shopping plaza in east Scottsdale — escargot, duck confit, and classic technique from French owners, without resort pricing. One of the city's last true French dining rooms.
$$$ Since the 2010s
Wally's American Gastropub
Wally Collins planted a Phoenix pub in the Shops at Gainey Ranch in the late 2000s; his son Christopher bought it, renamed it a gastropub in 2016, kept the S'Mac and the meatloaf, and added house-made pasta — the neighborhood bar Gainey Ranch treats as its dining room.
$$ Since the late 2000s
Wasted Grain
Wasted Grain stacks three venues into one Old Town address on Stetson Drive — a gastropub kitchen, a tree-shaded patio, and the upstairs Old Town Ski Lounge dance club — with national touring bands giving it more substance than its party-district neighbors.
$$ Since the 2010s
Wayward
The brick-and-wood house on Fourth Avenue that was Liquor Pig, one of 2025's most praised Old Town openings, reopened in June 2026 as Wayward — same chef, CJ Kahley, same globe-trotting kitchen, now built around binchotan charcoal, handmade corn tortillas and a cocktail list named for spaghetti westerns.
$$$ Since 2026
Weft & Warp Art Bar + Kitchen
The Andaz Scottsdale's signature restaurant cooks Sonoran Desert flavors over a custom mesquite hearth in a room named for weaving, with an art-bar concept that channels the Cattle Track Arts Compound next door.
$$$ Since 2017
Wine Girl
Amy and Trevor Johnston opened Wine Girl on Scottsdale Road in 2020, mid-pandemic, as a wine bar for people who find wine bars intimidating. It's pastel pink, built for photos, pours rotating wines on tap, and hosts thousands of bachelorette parties a year, and it has since grown into a small brand with locations in Napa Valley and San Diego.
$$ Since 2020
Wok 'N Roll
Scott Stuart's rock-themed Asian fusion spot on Miller Road mixes Chinese favorites, sushi and build-your-own bowls with crystal chandeliers, rock memorabilia, checks delivered in 8-track tapes, late-night karaoke and drag bingo; Phoenix Magazine named it one of the top new restaurants of 2017.
$$ Since the late 2010s
Yellow Spruce Roasters Coffee & Wine Bar
Air Force veteran and retired police officer Brian Fernandez roasts his own coffee and pours it from a Brown Avenue storefront he opened in 2020, then added a wine bar next door in 2023, so the same room does 5:30 a.m. drip and 8 p.m. espresso martinis.
$ Since 2020
Zinc Bistro
Chef Matt Carter's first restaurant, a faithful Parisian brasserie anchoring Kierland Commons since 2002 — zinc bar, garden patio, moules frites, and onion soup that have made it the Valley's benchmark French bistro for over twenty years.
$$$ Since 2002
Zipps Sports Grill
A Valley institution since the 1980s, Zipps is Arizona's definitive neighborhood sports grill — famous wings, the cult 'golden' buffalo sauce, and an Old Town location that turns into a clubhouse every game day.
$ Since the 1980s
ZuZu
The mid-century-modern restaurant of the landmark 1956 Hotel Valley Ho, reborn in 2005 — turquoise banquettes, retro American classics, and the famous rotating Show Stopper milkshake make it the most photogenic slice of Scottsdale's Hollywood-hideaway history.
$$ Since 2005
5th & Wine
For seven-plus years, the unpretentious wine bar of the 5th Avenue shops — weeknight bottle deals, patio tables, and low-stakes charm that made it Old Town's default first-date and Wine Wednesday spot until it closed in 2017.
$$ Closed 2017
8700 at the Citadel
Named for its own address, 8700 was the big-ticket, big-view dining room of the late-1980s Citadel complex — the restaurant that taught Scottsdale fine dining could live at Pinnacle Peak, years before the Troon resorts arrived.
$$$$ Closed
Alto Ristorante e Bar
The Hyatt Regency Scottsdale's sleek Italian dinner room paired handmade pastas, a salumi-and-formaggio cellar, and homemade limoncello with a complimentary gondola ride through the resort's waterways — a Gainey Ranch ritual that ended when the $115 million Grand Hyatt renovation replaced it with Richard Blais's La Zozzona.
$$$ Closed
Anderson's Fifth Estate
For 25 years, Anderson's Fifth Estate on Fifth Avenue was downtown Scottsdale's restaurant-nightclub hybrid — burgers by day, packed dance floors and live acts by night — evolving with every era of Valley nightlife before its 2007 rebranding ended the run.
$$ Closed 2007
Asia de Cuba
The China Grill Management import inside the ultra-hip Mondrian Scottsdale brought big-city Asian-Cuban fusion and scene dining to Indian School Road during the boom years — and was gone by February 2010, when the recession-squeezed hotel swapped it for a casual Italian room.
$$$ Closed
Avanti of Scottsdale
The Scottsdale sibling of Benito Mellino and Angelo Livi's continental-Italian institution — black-lacquer art deco glamour, piano music, career waiters, and tableside fettuccine Alfredo that made it a see-and-be-seen anniversary room for decades.
$$$ Closed 2010
Ayako of Tokyo
For three-plus decades, Scottsdale Fashion Square's teppanyaki steakhouse — communal grill tables, knife-flipping hibachi chefs, and the onion volcano that headlined a generation of Scottsdale birthdays, proms, and anniversaries.
$$$ Closed 2019
Bandera
The Hillstone Group's rotisserie-driven American grill on Scottsdale Road was a quarter-century neighborhood default — wood-fired chicken, ribs, and famous skillet cornbread with a bar that filled nightly — until the March 2020 shutdown ended it for good.
$$ Closed 2020
Barcelona
Barcelona was north Scottsdale's two-act night out in the 2000s — a steak-and-seafood dining room at Scottsdale Road and Greenway-Hayden Loop that flipped into a live-music dance club with two full bars after 10 p.m., until it closed for a makeover on June 27, 2009 and never came back the same.
$$$ Closed
Bloom
Bloom was Fox Restaurant Concepts' third restaurant and its first in the Valley — a white-walled, blue-banquette New American room at the Shops at Gainey Village that poured 70 wines by the glass for a decade before serving its last dinner on November 26, 2011.
$$$ Closed 2011
BLT Steak
Laurent Tourondel's New York steakhouse brand took over the Camelback Inn's storied Chaparral Room space in October 2008, serving Gruyère popovers, sashimi starters, and dry-aged beef to the Paradise Valley border for eight years before closing on September 9, 2016, to make way for Lincoln.
$$$$ Closed 2016
Bobby McGee's Conglomeration
Nightclub impresario Bob Sikora's campy supper-club-meets-disco, founded in Scottsdale in 1971, where servers dressed as pirates and superheroes, the salad bar filled a claw-foot bathtub, and the formula spawned a chain of two dozen locations from Arizona to Australia.
$$ Closed
Buster's Restaurant, Bar & Grill
For two decades, the polished-casual seafood grill on Hayden Road was McCormick Ranch's de facto clubhouse — mesquite-grilled fish, strong martinis and a bar full of regulars — before closing in the late 2000s.
$$ Closed 2009
Cafe Terra Cotta
The Scottsdale outpost of Donna Nordin's pioneering Tucson restaurant brought founding-document contemporary Southwestern cuisine — and a cult-favorite garlic custard — to the Borgata's Italian-village shopping center before both faded in the mid-2000s.
$$$ Closed 2005
Carlos O'Brien's
A Phoenix family's 1978 Mexican-with-an-Irish-name institution opened its Scottsdale branch at Scottsdale Road and Bell in 1998 — three dining rooms, a pub, a patio, and pollo fundido — and ran there for more than two decades before the 'Scottsdale' Carlos O'Brien's moved across the line to Mayo Boulevard in Phoenix.
$$ Closed
Chaparral Room
The celebrated continental dining room of Marriott's Camelback Inn — for decades one of the Valley's premier special-occasion rooms, where tuxedoed captains carved chateaubriand tableside until a resort renovation retired it around 2008.
$$$$ Closed 2008
Chart House
For 41 years, the Chart House occupied one of the Valley's dreamiest settings — a lakeside pavilion on McCormick Ranch's Camelback Lake — serving prime rib, fresh fish, and mandatory mud pie until it closed in 2025 to make way for a new Mastro family steakhouse.
$$$ Closed 2025
Chez Louis
Louis Germain's French restaurant opened on Brown Avenue in 1958 and reigned for more than 30 years as Scottsdale's fine-dining landmark — famous for flying in fresh seafood and hosting stars like Jimmy Stewart before closing around 1990.
$$$ Closed 1990
China Lil's
A memorable name from mid-century Scottsdale dining — the Chinese-American restaurant remembered alongside Hobo Joe's and Trader Vic's from the era when Scottsdale Road was lined with themed dining rooms. Its dates are hazy; its place in local nostalgia isn't.
$$ Closed
Deseo
For nearly two decades, the Westin Kierland's signature restaurant brought Nuevo Latino cooking to north Scottsdale — a ceviche bar shaped by Douglas Rodriguez, the godfather of the genre, with muddle-your-own mojitos as the opening act.
$$$$ Closed
Digestif
Payton Curry's rustic Cal-Italian kitchen in Peter Kasperski's SouthBridge cluster paired house-cured salumi and handmade pasta with one of the Valley's first serious craft-cocktail bars — short-lived, but quietly influential.
$$$ Closed 2009
Distrito
Iron Chef Jose Garces' colorful Mexico City-inspired cantina inside the Saguaro hotel gave Old Town's Drinkwater curve a jolt of jet-set energy in December 2011 — and closed mid-decade when the hotel reworked its dining lineup.
$$$ Closed 2016
Dos Gringos
Brian Roerich mortgaged his house to open a Rocky Point-style beach cantina on Craftsman Court in 1996, and for nineteen years its patio and rooftop bars were where Scottsdale day-drank — until a Chicago group bought it in November 2015, rebranded it Old Town Gringos, and lost the building to the landlord in 2019.
$ Closed 2015
Drift Lounge
Scottsdale's early-2000s tiki outpost — a moody Polynesian lounge of vintage decor, scorpion bowls, and late-night DJs that predated the national tiki comeback, then closed in the early 2010s and seeded the scene that followed.
$$ Closed 2013
Eddie Merlot's
An Indiana-based prime steakhouse chain planted a big, polished dining room at Scottsdale Road and Pinnacle Peak in the late 2010s, sold USDA Prime and Australian Wagyu to the Troon and DC Ranch crowd, and quietly disappeared in the early 2020s, leaving the corner to Mastro's up the road.
$$$$ Closed
Eddie's House
Celebrity Valley chef Eddie Matney brought his exuberant personality and Lebanese-influenced American comfort cooking to Old Town for nine years — surviving a 2014 bankruptcy before closing in 2017, when Blue Clover took over the space.
$$$ Closed 2017
Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour
The Scottsdale outpost of the turn-of-the-century-themed ice cream chain, where birthday kids got free sundaes, drums banged, sirens wailed, and The Zoo arrived on a stretcher carried by sprinting servers — a Los Arcos-era memory that vanished with the 1980s.
$ Closed
Francine
Laurent Halasz's glamorous French Riviera dining room at Scottsdale Fashion Square's luxury wing brought Cote d'Azur polish, bouillabaisse, and a see-and-be-seen patio to the mall's Nobu corner from 2020 until its abrupt closure in May 2026.
$$$$ Closed 2026
Frasher's Steakhouse & Lounge
George Frasher's independent, St. Louis-flavored steakhouse held down Scottsdale Road between Thomas and McDowell for nearly sixteen years — three concepts under one roof, a lounge full of regulars, and the gooey butter cake that put a Missouri bakery staple on an Arizona dessert menu — before closing in spring 2015.
$$$ Closed 2015
French Quarter (Safari Hotel)
Paul Shank's famed supper club inside the modernist Safari Hotel brought New Orleans nightlife to Scottsdale Road for nearly four decades, drawing John Wayne and Bing Crosby before dying with the hotel itself in 1998.
$$$ Closed 1998
Garcia's of Scottsdale
Before Garcia's became a multi-state chain that regulars swear lost its way, its Scottsdale room on the southeast corner of Camelback and Scottsdale Road was the busiest Mexican restaurant in the area in the mid-1970s — half-hour waits, margaritas on the sidewalk, a roving mariachi band, and the recipes of Olivia Garcia.
$$ Closed
Geisha A Go Go
For 17 years, this poster-plastered sushi den brought Harajuku energy to Old Town — rock-and-roll rolls, pop-art walls, and birthday-party chaos — before closing in June 2024 as its block of Old Town turned over.
$$ Closed 2024
Golden Swan
The Hyatt Regency Scottsdale's signature restaurant for over two decades — a canopied dining room at the edge of the Gainey Ranch water gardens where anniversaries, proposals, and legendary champagne brunches played out until the resort retired it around 2009.
$$$$ Closed 2009
Grabbagreen (the original)
Childhood friends Keely Newman and Kelley Bird opened the first Grabbagreen in 2013 at Loop 101 and Frank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale, franchised the healthy-fast-food concept nationally, and sold it to Kahala Brands — though the original location has since closed.
$ Closed
Grazie Pizzeria & Wine Bar
For nearly two decades, Grazie was the Main Street arts district's pizzeria-enoteca — wood-fired thin-crust pies and Italian wines poured for gallery browsers and date nights until it closed at the end of 2019.
$$ Closed 2019
Hobo Joe's
Arizona's homegrown answer to Bob's Big Boy opened its Scottsdale coffee shop in September 1965 on the corner of Scottsdale Road and First Avenue, a cartoon hobo statue out front and a Goldwater on the ownership papers — before embezzlement and scandal sank the whole chain within a decade.
$ Closed
Il Terrazzo
The Phoenician converted its all-American Terrace restaurant into a regional Italian room in June 2008 — the same year it closed Mary Elaine's — and Il Terrazzo served handmade gnocchi, saltimbocca, and Sunday brunch on the resort's terrace for nine years before a 2017 renovation turned the space into Mowry & Cotton.
$$$ Closed 2017
Italian Grotto
A red-sauce fixture at Main Street and Scottsdale Road for 42 years, the Italian Grotto fed spring-training crowds and family celebrations from the heart of Old Town until May 26, 2019 — joining Don & Charlie's and the Pink Pony on the list of lost Cactus League hangouts.
$$ Closed 2019
Jewel of the Crown
The Tuli family opened Jewel of the Crown on the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall in 1986 and served North Indian food there for nearly forty years, one of Old Town's longest-running independent restaurants. Its listings flipped to temporarily closed in summer 2025 and it never reopened.
$$ Closed 2025
Jokake Inn Tea Room
The Jokake Inn began as Sylvia Evans's tea parties in a 1926 adobe house below Camelback Mountain and grew into a winter resort whose dining room fed Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ava Gardner until the inn closed in the late 1970s and The Phoenician rose on its ground.
$$$ Closed
Kazimierz World Wine Bar
Peter Kasperski's candle-lit, speakeasy-style wine bar hid behind Cowboy Ciao with an unmarked door reading only 'the truth is inside' — 15 years of cave-like rooms, live music, and a 3,000-bottle global list that anchored Old Town's grown-up nightlife.
$$ Closed 2018
Kelly's at SouthBridge
An 8,000-square-foot gastropub on the canal side of SouthBridge that opened in 2012, won Best Burger in the Valley from two magazines in 2013 for its Four Cut Burger, and owned one of Old Town's best people-watching patios before closing quietly. The space anchored the 6th Avenue stretch between the Waterfront and Stetson Drive.
$$ Closed
Kitchen West
Destination Hotels' 2015 remake of the old conference resort at McCormick Ranch produced Kitchen West — an open wood-fire kitchen behind glass walls facing the golf course, cooking chef Rick Dupere's modern Western American food — until the property's $40 million Curio renovation swapped it for the Pan-Latin La Fogata in 2024.
$$$ Closed
Kona Grill (the original)
Kona Grill was born at Scottsdale Fashion Square on September 18, 1998, grew into a NASDAQ-listed national chain on macadamia nut chicken and mall sushi, and quietly closed its original location in April 2024 after a 25-year run.
$$ Closed 2024
L'Ecole (Scottsdale Culinary Institute)
The white-tablecloth teaching restaurant of the Scottsdale Culinary Institute — later Le Cordon Bleu Scottsdale — where student brigades served bargain-priced classical French menus under instructor supervision, until the school's December 2017 shutdown closed it for good.
$$ Closed 2017
La Champagne
The formal French dining room of the Registry Resort at Scottsdale and Indian Bend was, in the 1980s, the kitchen where a young chef de cuisine named Christopher Gross drew national critics to the desert — a launching pad for Arizona's most decorated chef, in a resort that has since been razed for condos.
$$$$ Closed
La Chaumière
One of old Scottsdale's fabled French restaurants — a snug, formal cottage near the Fifth Avenue shops where duck à l'orange, tableside classics and maître d' ceremony defined 'fancy dinner' for a generation of Phoenicians.
$$$ Closed 1995
Latilla
The Boulders' signature restaurant in its main lodge — a semi-circular room roofed in ocotillo branches, with picture windows on the resort's twelve-million-year-old boulder pile — served modern American tasting menus from its own organic garden until the resort closed it in 2015 and turned the room into a ballroom.
$$$$ Closed 2015
Lulu Belle
An internationally known Main Street bar and restaurant whose Old West-meets-Gay Nineties-meets-riverboat styling made it THE place to see and be seen in 1950s and 60s Scottsdale, drawing celebrities and tourists through the city's formative resort decades.
$$ Closed
Mabel Murphy's
Bob Sikora's 1972 follow-up to Bobby McGee's — a Scottsdale drinking-and-dancing spot built to soak up his flagship's overflow crowds, which outlived the fern-bar era as a beloved Main Street watering hole before closing in the late 2000s.
$$ Closed 2009
Mancuso's at the Borgata
The Mancuso family's grand Italian-continental dining room anchored the Borgata's faux-Tuscan towers for over two decades — tuxedoed service, veal scaloppine, and every prom and anniversary on the books — until redevelopment forced it out in 2005.
$$$ Closed 2005
Market Street Kitchen
Keeler Hospitality's DC Ranch social house opened in September 2012 with James Beard winner Robert McGrath consulting and a wood-fired rotisserie on display — six years of Lobsterfest Thursdays and Sunday suppers before the same owners rebranded it Liberty Station in 2018.
$$$ Closed 2018
Marquesa
The Scottsdale Princess resort's opulent Spanish colonial dining room held AAA Five Diamond and Mobil Four Star honors for its Catalan cuisine, and its lavish market-style Sunday brunch was voted the Valley's best — before regular service ended around 2010.
$$$$ Closed 2010
Martini Ranch
For nearly two decades, Martini Ranch and its Shaker Room stage anchored Stetson Drive nightlife — martinis by the dozen, touring bands before they were famous, and every bachelorette party in Scottsdale — until it poured its last in October 2013.
$$ Closed 2013
Merkin Vineyards Old Town
For five years, Maynard James Keenan of Tool poured a 100 percent Arizona wine list on Stetson Drive, pairing it with housemade pastas built on his own Verde Valley produce — Scottsdale's highest-profile case for Arizona wine until the tasting room closed in April 2024.
$$ Closed 2024
Michael's at the Citadel
Chef Michael DeMaria's elegant dining room in the Citadel complex below Pinnacle Peak was north Scottsdale's premier special-occasion restaurant of the late 1990s and 2000s, famous for its romantic waterfall courtyard and chef's-table cooking classes.
$$$$ Closed 2008
Modern Steak
Sam Fox's short-lived reinvention of the steakhouse at Scottsdale Fashion Square traded dark wood for pink leather and chandeliers — a recession-era Fox Restaurant Concepts experiment aimed at a younger crowd that lasted roughly three and a half years.
$$$ Closed 2012
Molise Cucina Italiana
Anthony and Filomena Di Franco's 120-seat mom-and-pop Italian room in a Scottsdale Road shopping strip south of Thomas — antique furniture, homemade pasta, a family working every station — fed south Scottsdale for a decade before the family sold it around 2005 and opened the smaller Tesoro up on Via Linda.
$$ Closed
Mosaic
Chef Deborah Knight and her husband, wine director Matt Rinn, ran Mosaic on Jomax Road near Troon from July 2001 until 2009 — an inventive, globally minded fine-dining room with a commissioned tile floor, an award-winning cellar, and menus that changed constantly, closed by choice rather than failure.
$$$$ Closed 2009
Nellie Cashman's Monday Club Cafe
The Westin Kierland's three-meal signature restaurant for more than two decades, named for Tombstone's 'Angel of the Mining Camp,' served Southwest-inspired American cooking and Arizona-raised Prime beef from an open kitchen until it was rebuilt as Faro & Brag in early 2024.
$$$ Closed
Nonna Urban Eatery
A matchbox-size courtyard room at the east end of Main Street where chef Gian Franco Brugaletta, formerly head sushi chef at Buddha-Bar Monte-Carlo, cooked handmade Italian pasta with Japanese instincts while his wife Valentina Huerta ran a wine list heavy on Arizona bottles. It closed in 2022 and Gio Osso's Piccolo Virtù took the space.
$$$ Closed 2022
Old Town Tortilla Factory
Set in an 85-year-old adobe home with one of Old Town's prettiest patios, the Tortilla Factory served Southwestern-Mexican dinners and premium tequila for three decades — until ownership announced in summer 2026 that it would not reopen.
$$ Closed 2026
Orange Table
A beloved, slightly eccentric breakfast-and-lunch cafe on Scottsdale's Civic Center mall, where locals lingered over coffee, board games, and chimichurri corned beef hash until it closed on September 7, 2014.
$ Closed 2014
Palm Court
The formal continental dining room of the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch, where tuxedoed captains finished Caesar salads, steak Diane, and flaming desserts tableside for four decades — a grand-hotel time capsule that vanished around 2016.
$$$ Closed 2016
Papago Brewing Co. Taproom
Tucked into Papago Plaza at Scottsdale and McDowell, Papago Brewing's taproom pioneered Arizona craft beer — 30 taps, a legendary bottle cooler, and the famous Orange Blossom ale — until the aging plaza was razed for redevelopment in 2019.
$ Closed 2019
Petite Maison
Chef James Porter's shoebox French bistro on Shoeman Lane won critics over with soulful onion soup, escargots, and charcuterie in a converted little house — one of Old Town's most charming chef-driven rooms until its final service in November 2014.
$$$ Closed 2014
Piccolo Virtù
The third restaurant from Virtù Honest Craft chef Gio Osso opened in December 2022 in the former Nonna Urban Eatery courtyard on Main Street, serving crudo, handmade pasta and large-format entrees a la carte. Osso closed it with 'mixed emotions' after one year, in December 2023, and folded his attention back into Virtù and Pizzeria Virtù.
$$$ Closed 2023
Pig & Pickle
A chef-driven gastropub at Hayden and Thomas that gave unglamorous south Scottsdale a legitimate craft kitchen — whole-animal butchery, house pickles, serious burgers, and local beer — before closing in the mid-2010s, still mourned by the neighborhood.
$$ Closed 2016
Pischke's Paradise
Chris Pischke's funky, memorabilia-crammed comfort-food joint opened on Columbus Day 1986 and fed downtown Scottsdale's cops, city workers, and hungover locals for two decades — a beloved institution whose run ended not long after its founder's death in 2007.
$$ Closed 2008
Posh Improvisational Cuisine
Chef Josh Hebert's sleek downtown Scottsdale dining room flipped fine dining on its head — diners checked off ingredients they hated and the kitchen improvised a multi-course menu on the spot, making Posh one of the Valley's most adventurous tables for eight years.
$$$$ Closed 2017
Preston's Steakhouse
Preston's Steakhouse held the northwest corner of Pinnacle Peak and Pima roads at The Citadel through the late 2010s and early 2020s, earning a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 2019 and carrying the building's fine-dining lineage — 8700 at the Citadel, Michael's — until it closed in 2025.
$$$$ Closed 2025
Pubblico Italian Eatery
Owner Danny Quinn and chef Danny Garcia brought their Phoenix Italian room to the Scottsdale Seville at Scottsdale Road and Indian Bend in 2020 — house-made pasta, wood-fired pizza, an Italian-forward wine list — and ran it for six years before closing abruptly on August 31, 2026, citing circumstances beyond their control.
$$ Closed 2026
RA Sushi (the original)
Born in October 1997 at Scottsdale Road and First Street, RA Sushi invented the party-sushi happy-hour formula, got bought by Benihana, went national — and the Old Town original closed in August 2025 after 28 years, replaced by an STK Steakhouse.
$$ Closed 2025
Rancho Pinot
Chef Chrysa Robertson's kitschy-chic bistro at Scottsdale Road and Lincoln championed Arizona farmers for 27 years before farm-to-table was a phrase, closing in May 2021 as one of the Valley's most mourned pandemic-era losses.
$$$ Closed 2021
Rawhide Steakhouse
The 1880s-style steakhouse at Rawhide Western Town, the faux-frontier attraction that served mesquite-grilled steaks, rattlesnake, and gunfight shows to millions of visitors in north Scottsdale from 1971 until land values pushed it out in 2005.
$$ Closed 2005
Razz's Restaurant & Bar
Flamboyant Venezuelan-born chef Erasmo 'Razz' Kamnitzer — trademark braid, early Food Network appearances, boundless charm — ran his eclectic namesake near Scottsdale and Shea for a quarter century, cooking globe-trotting food years ahead of its time.
$$$ Closed 2016
Reata Pass Steakhouse
A cowboy steakhouse built on an 1880s stagecoach stop between Phoenix and Fort McDowell, run for decades by 'Doc' Cavalliere's family alongside Greasewood Flat — one of the trio of Old West eateries that ruled far-north Scottsdale until 2012.
$$ Closed 2012
Red Dog Saloon
Bill Bird and Don Stewart's Red Dog Saloon & Restaurant opened on Scottsdale Road in 1959, a full-throttle Old West saloon built for the West's Most Western Town — nude portrait of saloon girl Red Dog Rosie included — and poured for sixteen years before closing in 1975.
$$ Closed 1975
Remington's
For thirty years, the clubby American dining room and jazz lounge at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort — rack of lamb, prime rib, live jazz five nights a week, and every Easter brunch of a generation. It closed in May 2017.
$$$ Closed 2017
Restaurant Hapa
James and Stacey McDevitt's intimate Asian-fusion dining room at Lincoln Village earned Food & Wine Best New Chef honors and James Beard nominations, proving in the late 1990s that Scottsdale could cook at a national level.
$$$ Closed 2005
Salty Señorita
A tacos-and-tequila patio that spent ten years in its original Old Town spot, moved up Scottsdale Road into the old Billet Bar in December 2013 with a new chef and sixteen margarita flavors, and served nearly another decade before closing in summer 2023. The building has sat empty since.
$$ Closed 2023
Sandolo
The Hyatt Regency Scottsdale's lagoon-side Italian trattoria, where the point wasn't the pasta — it was the complimentary gondola ride afterward, poled across the Gainey Ranch waterways by your singing server.
$$$ Closed 2009
Sapporo
For about eighteen years, three gas torches marked the entrance to Sapporo, an 11,000-square-foot Japanese restaurant near Scottsdale Road and Acoma Drive that split itself between hibachi theater, a busy sushi bar, and a weekend lounge scene before its owners rebranded it as Kasai in November 2018.
$$$ Closed 2018
Sassi
For 14 years, a purpose-built Mediterranean stone villa in the Pinnacle Peak foothills served refined southern-Italian cooking and hosted half of Arizona's dream weddings — until its owners retired and closed the restaurant in June 2018.
$$$ Closed 2018
Sea Saw
A tiny 28-seat Japanese tapas counter on Stetson Drive where chef Nobuo Fukuda cooked some of the most acclaimed food in Arizona history, winning the 2007 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest before closing in 2009.
$$$$ Closed 2009
Searsucker
Top Chef finalist Brian Malarkey and nightlife partner James Brennan brought their San Diego gastrolounge to a 9,500-square-foot room at Camelback and Goldwater in fall 2012; a year later the group pulled out to refocus its portfolio. Leather, cowhide, cheddar puffers and a nightclub pulse, gone before most locals found it.
$$$ Closed 2013
Second Story Liquor Bar
For a decade, Old Town's craft-cocktail pioneer hid up a staircase off Scottsdale Road, pairing speakeasy rigor with fine-dining plates until owner Tommy Plato closed it in May 2024 to launch The Ends.
$$$ Closed 2024
Sonata's Restaurant
Lithuanian-born Sonata Molocajeviene Tuft and her family opened a lavish Eastern European dining room at Scottsdale Road and Gold Dust in October 2016 — pierogi, potato pancakes with salmon, roast duck, a wall of vodka and live music four nights a week — and ran it for nearly a decade before it closed.
$$$ Closed
Stax Burger Bistro
A modern slider lounge at Scottsdale and Camelback from the team behind the Breakfast Club, Stax let you build mini burgers from beef, turkey, salmon, lamb, veal, buffalo or ostrich with dozens of toppings including foie gras and pineapple. It closed quietly around the turn of 2018 with a note promising a new concept.
$$ Closed
Stingray Sushi
A small, loud, stylish sushi bar on Scottsdale Road that opened in 2003, spun off a four-location Valley brand, and closed its Old Town original in fall 2014 when the lease ran out and the owners admitted they had outgrown the room. Farm & Craft took the space.
$$$ Closed 2014
Sun Dial Coffee Shop
When the Executive House Arizonian opened on Scottsdale Road in fall 1961, its Sun Dial coffee shop stayed open until 2 a.m. and became a locals' room as much as a hotel one — the casual counterpart to the Fountain Room supper club and La Roca lounge in the property that is now The Scott.
$ Closed
Super Chunk Sweets & Treats
Cowboy Ciao's pastry chef Country Velador and her husband Sergio ran a small-batch candy shop, bakery and lunch counter on 6th Avenue for eight years — duck-fat toffee, mesquite chocolate chip cookies, house-made licorice and fruit roll-ups — until the lease ran out in February 2022.
$ Closed 2022
Sushi on Shea
From 1994 until the mid-2020s, Sushi on Shea was the neighborhood Japanese restaurant at Scottsdale Road and Shea — a calm, slightly upscale sushi bar with a real cooked menu, soba, udon and hot pots, that outlasted three waves of Scottsdale sushi fashion before quietly going dark.
$$ Closed
Sushi Roku
The high-style LA sushi import inside the W Scottsdale paired inventive rolls and Japanese small plates with a nightlife-adjacent crowd for 15 years, ranking among metro Phoenix's best sushi rooms before pouring its last sake on July 31, 2023.
$$$ Closed 2023
SWB, A Southwest Bistro
The Hyatt Regency Scottsdale's warm-wood Southwestern bistro took over the Golden Swan's lakeside spot around 2009 and served three meals a day beside the resort's water gardens for fifteen years — corn-and-poblano soup, green mole, tequila-paired tasting dinners — until the Grand Hyatt renovation replaced it with Mesa Centrale.
$$$ Closed
Taco Bell No. 31
Store No. 31 on McDowell Road near Hayden was the last mission-style Taco Bell in Arizona and one of fewer than ten in the country — a brick cantina with a tile roof and a bell-less belfry that served south Scottsdale for nearly sixty years before closing in April 2025.
$ Closed 2025
Tapino Kitchen & Wine Bar
Chef James Porter's north Scottsdale small-plates-and-wine spot rode the mid-2000s tapas wave for five years before the recession and a landlord dispute forced an abrupt May 2009 closure — a loss that promptly gave Old Town the French gem Petite Maison.
$$$ Closed 2009
The Bamboo Club
The Bamboo Club Asian Bistro was the Shea Corridor's answer to the P.F. Chang's era — a roughly 100-seat pan-Asian room at 8624 E Shea Blvd with a patio, a fireplace lounge, a busy happy hour, and a private-party trade that made it a Scottsdale Ranch standby before it closed, along with its Desert Ridge sibling.
$$ Closed
The Bourbon Cellar
Veteran and butcher Doug Smith ran a four-year reservation-only steakhouse in north Scottsdale before opening The Bourbon Cellar at Scottsdale Road and Pinnacle Peak in late 2018 — hand-cut beef, elk and bison from his own shop, seafood flown in daily, and 300 bourbon labels — until the brick-and-mortar closed in the early 2020s.
$$$ Closed
The Drunk Munk
Old Town's flagship modern tiki bar — a dark, bamboo-lined hideout on Stetson Drive serving flaming rum drinks in ceramic monkey mugs with Polynesian-fusion bites, for most of a decade before closing around 2024.
$$ Closed 2024
The Impeccable Pig
A quirky Scottsdale institution of the 1970s and '80s that fused restaurant and antiques shop — you lunched on continental fare and wine surrounded by purchasable furnishings and art — before quietly fading from the scene by the late 1990s.
$$$ Closed
The Other Place
Dale Anderson's dependable American restaurant at the Smoke Tree Resort on Lincoln Drive, named by accident when regulars of his first restaurant kept calling it 'the other place' — a Scottsdale-Paradise Valley border institution for decades.
$$ Closed
The Quilted Bear
For 35 years, Dale Anderson's old-school American eatery near Scottsdale and Lincoln was the Valley's quintessential ladies' lunch: stained-glass windows, an epic salad bar, and models strolling among the tables in informal fashion shows.
$$ Closed 2009
Tuba City Truck Stop
A tongue-in-cheek 'truck stop' planted in the middle of Scottsdale's boutique district, where 1970s shoppers and night owls ate chili and diner grub in a room done up like a highway pit stop — a cult favorite remembered in every local nostalgia roundup.
$ Closed
Twisted Grove Parlor + Bar
The Scottsdale sibling of the Grassroots Kitchen & Tap family served modern comfort food on Hayden Road from 2015 until 2022, when owner Christopher Collins converted the space into Collins Bros. Chophouse.
$$ Closed 2022
Voltaire
For more than 30 years, a defiantly traditional French dining room at McDonald and Granite Reef served escargots, Dover sole, and soufflés to a devoted clientele — until chef-owner David Antonelli conceded to changing tastes and closed it in July 2013.
$$$ Closed 2013
Wandering Horse Buffet
Talking Stick Resort's casino buffet grew out of the Wandering Horse Café that fed gamblers in Casino Arizona's tent days — four cuisines, live cooking stations, a brick-oven pizza kitchen, Sunday champagne brunch and weekend crab legs — before the pandemic closed it in March 2020 and the resort never brought it back.
$$ Closed 2020
Wildfish Seafood Grille
The Eddie V's founders' sibling seafood concept held the corner of Camelback and Scottsdale Roads at the Waterfront for over a decade — a huge circular bar, nightly happy hour and ninety-minute waits — until Darden closed it in March 2018 because its own Eddie V's was a few miles away.
$$$ Closed 2018
Windmill Dinner Theatre
The Windmill Dinner Theatre at Scottsdale Road and Shea was a mainstay of the national dinner-theater circuit — imported television stars, more than a hundred productions, singing waiters called the Barnstormers — and the stage Bob Crane was playing in June 1978 when he was murdered a few blocks away.
$$ Closed
Windows on the Green
For nearly three decades, the Phoenician's elegant Southwestern dining room overlooked the resort's fairways, serving refined chile-driven regional cooking — and quietly outlived its famous sibling Mary Elaine's by almost ten years.
$$$ Closed 2017
Z'Tejas Southwestern Grill
The Austin-born Southwestern grill was a Scottsdale fixture for decades, first at Fashion Square and finally on Hayden Road in McCormick Ranch, before its last Arizona rooms shuttered quietly in spring 2025 and the whole chain closed for good on June 30.
$$ Closed 2025
Zinqué
The LA-born French-inspired cafe brought all-day lounging, natural wine and le grand plate to Scottsdale Fashion Square's luxury wing in 2020, then shut down in mid-2026 with California bistro Porta Via announced as its replacement.
$$ Closed 2026
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“Gone but not forgotten” entries cover restaurants that shaped how Scottsdale eats but have closed. They’re kept here as local history — and as an argument for going to the good ones while they’re still open.