What is AGAVE SW Bar & Grill?
AGAVE SW Bar & Grill is the restaurant at the Scottsdale Marriott at McDowell Mountains, 16770 N Perimeter Drive, the all-suite hotel in the Scottsdale Perimeter Center office park where the Airpark business district runs into the two courses of TPC Scottsdale. The hotel opened in 1999; the restaurant’s patio looks west across the TPC Champions Course toward the sunset, and that view, rather than the kitchen, is what the room is known for.
It is the hotel’s only restaurant, and it works the hotel’s hours: breakfast 6:30 to 11 a.m., lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m., every day. Marriott describes it as comfort classics with a modern twist, crafted cocktails, sunset views and big-screen sports; Experience Scottsdale’s listing calls it an American grill with “familiar favorites with an Arizona twist” and a chef’s menu written for both conservative and adventurous tastes, with entrées averaging $10 to $20. An adjoining bar runs day and night with an 85-inch screen, and the restaurant can seat a group of 66 indoors. The direct line is (480) 502-3836, and reservations go through OpenTable.
The name is a rebrand. Booking-site listings from the early 2010s describe the hotel’s restaurant as Zambra Grille, serving Mediterranean food on the patio with TPC views, with a separate Agave Bar for light appetizers; Tripadvisor’s listing for the current room, under the longer name Agave Southwest Bar & Grill, dates from the same decade. At some point the bar’s name took over the restaurant and the menu went from Mediterranean to Southwestern-American. The press we found does not record when, and the hotel does not say.
Who eats here: the hotel’s guests, which in the week means the Airpark’s corporate travelers and in season means golfers and families, plus the occasional Perimeter Center office lunch. It is not a restaurant Scottsdale drives to, and it does not try to be. Our verdict: a sound hotel grill with one of the better sunset patios on the TPC side of the Airpark, best used for breakfast and a drink, with dinner better found a short drive around the course.
Using AGAVE well
Breakfast is the meal. The 6:30 a.m. opening is the earliest full breakfast on the Perimeter Center side of the Airpark, and the dishes reviewers single out are breakfast dishes: eggs Benedict, avocado toast, a Belgian waffle. The lobby Starbucks (5:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays, to noon on weekends) handles coffee and pastries for people in a hurry; the restaurant handles the sit-down meal. Marriott’s own FAQ confirms breakfast is paid, not included, and that room service is available.
Lunch is short. The lunch window runs only 11:30 to 2, and the lunch card is the grill side of the menu: sandwiches, salads and burgers with the Arizona accents the listing promises. The sweet potato fries are the one side reviewers consistently recommend. If you are working in the office park and want a lunch meeting, the 66-seat group capacity and the patio make it a more usable room than the lobby.
Dinner means the bar and the patio. From 5:30 the adjoining bar is the better seat: the 85-inch screen for the game, the cocktail list, and the west-facing patio for the sunset over the Champions Course, which the hotel’s own listings rightly make the pitch. Order a drink and an appetizer, watch the light go off the McDowells, and decide about dinner afterward. The restaurant closes at 10.
The Wanderer, Friday to Sunday. The hotel’s third outlet is a retro camper parked by the pool that serves craft cocktails from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday and is closed Monday through Thursday. In pool season it is the better daytime drink; AGAVE’s bar takes over after five.
When to eat elsewhere. The same golf complex holds Toro in the TPC clubhouse above the 18th green, and the Fairmont Princess across the course has Bourbon Steak and La Hacienda, all under ten minutes by car. During the WM Phoenix Open, the hotel is one of the closest big properties to the Stadium Course, and the restaurant, like everything on Perimeter Drive, is overrun; book the room months ahead and expect the roads to close.
Getting there. Perimeter Drive loops through the office park east of Hayden Road, south of Bell. Hotel parking is paid and there is a nightly destination fee for guests; the restaurant itself has motor-coach parking for groups. From Old Town it is a 20-to-30-minute rideshare outside rush hour, and our guide to hotels near the Scottsdale Airpark puts the Marriott in context.
The grill at the edge of the office park
The Scottsdale Marriott at McDowell Mountains exists because of a lease. In 1985 the city signed an agreement with the PGA Tour for federal land north of the CAP canal, and TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course opened on it in time for the 1987 Phoenix Open, with the Scottsdale Princess beside it. The business park that grew up on the city side of the courses, the Scottsdale Perimeter Center, became “one of the fastest-growing office parks in the Phoenix area,” in the words of Host Marriott when it bought this hotel in September 2004 for $57.5 million. The hotel had opened in 1999 as an all-suite Marriott of about 270 two-room suites on roughly ten acres, and its restaurant was built facing the course that was then TPC’s Desert Course, redesigned and reopened as the Champions Course in 2007.
The restaurant’s own history is mostly a change of name. Through the early 2010s it was listed as Zambra Grille, a Mediterranean room with a year-round patio, paired with an Agave Bar for appetizers. Reviews on Foursquare from 2012 to 2014 still use the Zambra name; Tripadvisor’s listing for Agave Southwest Bar & Grill was created in the same period. The present “AGAVE SW Bar & Grill” billing on the hotel’s pages and in the visitor bureau’s listing is the shortened form. We did not find a press release, a chef announcement or a review marking the change, and the hotel’s dining page names no chef now. The restaurant’s record is its listings, which is normal for a corporate hotel grill and unusual for a room with this view.
That view is the point and the market. Perimeter Center is Airpark office space, the TPC courses are municipal, and the Princess and its restaurants are a cart ride away. A business hotel’s grill cannot compete with Toro or Bourbon Steak for dinner, so it competes on hours and on the patio, and on the one week a year, the Phoenix Open, when every table within a mile of the 16th hole is full regardless. Our Phoenix Open survival guide covers that week; the rest of the year AGAVE is a quiet room with a sunset.
Honest assessment: AGAVE is a competent Marriott restaurant with a better patio than its menu, and we would not send a visitor across town for it. We would send a guest down to breakfast, out to the patio at six with a drink, and around the course for dinner. The rename from Zambra tells its own story: the hotel decided a bar with a view would outlast a Mediterranean dining room in an office park, and it was right.