What is Belle’s Nashville Kitchen?
Some Old Town addresses are haunted by better-known ghosts. Belle’s Nashville Kitchen sits in one of the most famous: the Main Street storefront that, from 1953, was Lulu Belle, the Gay Nineties-meets-riverboat saloon where 1950s Scottsdale went to be seen. Belle’s is a smaller, louder thing, a honky-tonk with hot chicken, and it kept the best piece of the old bar: the vintage backbar.
The owner, Mike Haley, had worked in local restaurants and bars for a couple of years when a trip to Nashville gave him the idea for his own place: a honky-tonk-themed bar and restaurant selling Southern-inflected comfort food, built for Old Town’s nightlife. He opened it in late 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, because, as he told Phoenix Magazine, “the perfect intimate space was available, and I just jumped headfirst for the opportunity.” He added wood, rustic metal and burgundy wallpaper around the old backbar. A later profile named Nick Esposito as his co-owner.
The opening menu came from chef Samantha Roberts, who had developed most of the menus for Riot Hospitality Group’s Old Town bars. It was affordable and built for drinking: the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich on brioche with slaw and pickles, Honky Tonk Fries topped with bacon, hot sauce, blue cheese and green onions, Kool-Aid fried pickles, jambalaya, a mac and cheese sandwich griddled between garlic bread, and Goo Goo Cluster brownie bites for dessert. The bar skewed toward bourbon and whiskey, with a house old fashioned made on George Dickel 12.
The point, though, is the room. Belle’s calls itself a locally owned honky-tonk, with live music most nights and a weekend country brunch, on the stretch of Main Street east of Scottsdale Road where Old Town still does saloons.
How to do Belle’s
Pick your heat. The hot chicken is the reason to come, and Nashville-style heat escalates fast. Order one level milder than your pride suggests, and order the Kool-Aid fried pickles for the table either way; they are the menu’s most talked-about oddity.
Choose brunch or night. The weekend Honky Tonk Brunch runs Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with live country music, hot chicken and brunch cocktails, and it is the easiest way to get a table and hear the band. Evenings are the bar’s other personality: a small room, a full bar and live music, busiest late on Fridays and Saturdays.
Check the weekly calendar. Belle’s has run a Tuesday open mic, Whiskey Wednesdays with rarer bourbons, and a weekly ladies’ night with food and cocktail discounts. The schedule shifts, so check the bar’s social media before planning around one.
Make it a saloon crawl. Belle’s sits on the most western stretch of Old Town. The Rusty Spur Saloon, the 1921 bank-turned-bar with live country every day, is a few doors east; Native Art Market and Kactus Jock are across the street for daytime browsing; and Beginner’s Luck is a few doors east in a courtyard, for coffee and brunch. For a bigger, glossier honky-tonk, Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row is in the entertainment district, and our country bars guide covers the rest.
Lulu Belle’s room, a second time around
The space Belle’s occupies is one of the most storied in downtown Scottsdale. Lulu Belle opened in 1953 on Main Street just east of Scottsdale Road, precisely as the town was branding itself “The West’s Most Western Town,” and its mash-up of Old West saloon, Gay Nineties parlor and Mississippi riverboat made it the room where celebrities and tourists went in the 1950s and 60s. It cycled through formats, jazz club, ice cream parlor and Mexican cantina, before fading out in the 1990s, and other businesses came and went in the building after it.
Haley’s 2020 concept brought the address back to its original job: a themed bar on Main Street selling a version of America to visitors. The theme just moved east, from cowboy Scottsdale to Nashville. That fit the decade. Nashville hot chicken spread across the Valley in the late 2010s and 2020s, from counters like The Hot Chick on 75th Street to the big Old Town honky-tonks. Belle’s took the smallest, most personal version of that trend and put it in the oldest saloon space on the street.
It also made the east end of Main Street a little more of a music block. With the Rusty Spur a few doors away pouring live country every day, Belle’s gives the stretch between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue two rooms with a band most nights, a reminder of the 2020s Old Town that still has room for small, owner-run bars between the clubs.
The honest assessment: Belle’s is a small bar with a theme, and its press dates mostly from its opening, so the menu and calendar have surely evolved since. But the hot chicken is the real thing, the music is live, and anyone who wants to drink under the backbar where 1950s Scottsdale drank can still do it.