What is Alo Cafe?
Scottsdale’s best-kept breakfast secret for kringel, the Estonian sweet bread, is a converted garage on First Street. Alo Cafe opened in 2013 at 6960 E 1st St, in an expanded 1960s-era garage in Charles Miller Square, the cluster of older buildings west of Goldwater Boulevard. Its owners, Steve and Hilja Martinez, are an American-Estonian couple, and they named it after Alo Mattiisen, the Estonian composer.
The menu is a travelogue. Steve’s trips through Argentina, South Africa, Namibia, Spain, France and Estonia shaped a scratch-cooked breakfast-and-lunch list that sits alongside American and Canadian classics. In practice that means kringel with cinnamon, raisins, almonds and a hint of saffron; tortilla española, the Spanish potato omelet, with romesco or garlic aioli; Belgian waffles with a hot fruit compote; and South African rusks, twice-baked dunkers built for coffee.
The room is small and the feel is deliberately homey. The cafe’s own line is that it should feel like being in someone’s home, and Phoenix New Times found it had “the European cafe vibe you’d find on the streets of Madrid or Amsterdam”: country flags on the counter, soft rock overhead, a corner table for a quiet brunch. The shaded patio, which is dog-friendly, has more room than the inside.
It is a small, owner-run place a few minutes’ walk from the Main Street galleries, and it has outlasted a good number of louder Old Town openings since 2013.
How to eat at Alo
Go for breakfast. Alo is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily, and breakfast is served all day on Friday and Saturday. Weekday mornings are the quiet ones; New Times found a near-empty room on a Wednesday.
Order across the map. Start with kringel, and take the waitstaff’s advice to pair it with the hot fruit compote, made to order from butter, brown sugar, strawberries and blueberries. The tortilla española is the savory pick. The Belgian waffle is the one New Times called spectacular. With coffee, order the rusks.
Sit outside. The dining room is compact and not ideal for a big group; the shaded patio is the better seat for most of the year, and dogs are welcome there.
Park on the street. The handful of spaces in front of and behind the building go fast. From here it is a short walk to the Main Street galleries, and for an afternoon coffee and a glass of wine, Grounds on 2nd is a block south. More morning options are in our brunch guide.
A cafe in Charles Miller Square
The name on the square belongs to Charles Miller, the farmer and civic founder who bought 80 acres at Scottsdale and Indian School roads from Winfield Scott’s family around 1913, co-founded Scottsdale Light and Power and gave the land for Scottsdale High School. His Craftsman bungalow was moved twice to survive redevelopment and since 2000–01 has stood at 6938 E 1st St, the Charles Miller House, now on the city’s historic register. The city calls the cluster of relocated and older buildings around it Charles Miller Square.
Alo’s building is younger, a 1960s garage the Martinezes expanded for the cafe. It sits on the west side of the Goldwater Boulevard couplet, where Old Town’s gallery and restaurant district gives way to smaller streets. When Alo opened in 2013, New Times noted it was brewing Cartel coffee, the Tempe roaster then helping lead the Valley’s specialty-coffee wave, which now has its own Fifth Avenue shop.
The cafe arrived in the 2010s, as Old Town’s restaurant scene was filling with chef-driven brunch rooms and party patios. Alo went the other way: no alcohol when New Times reviewed it, no music you have to shout over, and a menu of family and travel food that few Scottsdale kitchens attempt.
Honest assessment: Alo is a modest cafe, and its charm depends on its owners and its quiet. It is not where you take a big group or a bachelorette party. For a slow breakfast of kringel and coffee on a shaded patio a few minutes from the galleries, there is nothing else like it in Old Town.