What is Blue Coyote Cafe?
Blue Coyote Cafe is the three-meal restaurant at Talking Stick Resort, 9800 E Talking Stick Way, on the tower’s Garden Level, where its tables look out over the resort’s main pools. It opened with the resort on April 15, 2010, when the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community replaced its tent casino at the Loop 101 and Indian Bend with a 15-story, 496-room hotel, and it has been the room that feeds hotel guests at 7 a.m. ever since. By the resort’s own description on its Yelp listing, a sister restaurant operated in the earlier gaming tents, and the hotel version added American dishes and a sushi menu.
The food is American with what the resort calls a Southwestern flair: omelets and breakfast plates in the morning, specialty sandwiches, soups and salads through the day, and a separate sushi menu served daily from 4 p.m. to close. Hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. It takes no reservations; it is walk-in and waitlist only, which on a spring-training Saturday means a wait.
Its sibling is Blue Coyote Cantina, a dinner-only Southwestern and Mexican room a few steps from the casino floor, with modern furniture, warm tones and low light. The Cantina serves tacos, burritos, nachos, enchiladas and tortas, names the quesabirria taco as the chef’s favorite, and builds its bar around tequila: build-your-own margaritas and sangria made to order with fresh fruit. It is open 4 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, also walk-in only. The two rooms share a name and a kitchen philosophy, and we treat them as one guide because that is how the resort runs them.
Neither is a destination the way Orange Sky on the fifteenth floor or Tash are. They are the reliable rooms: the breakfast before a day at Salt River Fields, the late sushi after a show, the margarita before the casino. Reviews across Tripadvisor, Yelp and Birdeye settle in the mid-threes out of five, praising the drinks, the chips and salsa and the pool view and complaining about slow service at peak hours. Our verdict: the Cafe is the resort’s most useful room, the Cantina its most underrated, and neither is worth a drive from elsewhere in Scottsdale unless you are already here.
Using the Blue Coyote rooms well
Breakfast is the Cafe’s best meal. It opens at 7 a.m. every day, earlier than anything in the Pavilions across the road, and the omelet-and-skillet side of the menu is what the pool-facing tables were built for. Hotel guests fill it between 8 and 10 on weekends; come at 7 or after 10:30 and you will be seated on arrival. The patio, which the Community’s newspaper uses as a landmark for outdoor events held between the pools and the cafe, is the seat to ask for from November through April.
Sushi after four. The Cafe’s sushi bar runs daily from 4 p.m. to close, which on Friday and Saturday means midnight. It is the only sushi in the tower, and the late hours are its argument: after a Showroom concert or a fight night, this and the 24-hour Black Fig Coffee Bistro off the casino floor are what is open. Do not expect an omakase; expect rolls, nigiri and a hotel kitchen that is better at the former.
The Cantina for dinner and drinks. Open at 4 p.m., the Cantina is the room to use before a show or before the casino. Order the quesabirria taco first, then work through the tacos, enchiladas and tortas; the menu the resort publishes is dated October 2023 for its 2024 fiscal year, so expect prices to have moved since. The bar is the point: build-your-own margaritas, made-to-order sangria with fresh fruit, Mexican beer and a tequila list that local directories call extensive. The resort does not publish prices online; budget for a casino-resort cantina, not a taqueria.
Nobody takes reservations. Both rooms are walk-in and waitlist only, per OpenTable’s listings, so time your arrival. The Cafe’s peaks are weekend breakfast and the hour after a show lets out; the Cantina’s are Friday and Saturday from 6 to 9. During Cactus League March, with the Diamondbacks and Rockies next door, add 30 minutes to every estimate. The resort also runs holiday promotions through the Cafe: a Thanksgiving menu and a Veterans Day buy-one-get-one dinner with a flag pin.
Parking and the rest. Self-parking is free in the garage and lots; valet is at the main entrance. The Cafe is on the Garden Level, one floor below the lobby, past the pool doors; the Cantina is on the casino level. The general line is (480) 850-7777 and the resort’s reservations line, for rooms, is (866) 877-9897. If you are staying nearby rather than in the tower, our guide to hotels near Talking Stick and Salt River Fields covers the walk and the shuttle.
From the tent casino to the tower
The Blue Coyote name predates the building. The Community opened its first casino at McKellips in August 1998 and a second, in a sprung tent structure at the 101 and Indian Bend, in March 1999; that tent is where, by the resort’s account, the original Blue Coyote operated as a casual cafe for gamblers. When the tower replaced the tent in April 2010, the name moved into the Garden Level with a pool view, a sushi bar and a three-meal American menu, and the tent itself was auctioned off to the public. Among the restaurants in the 2010 lineup, the Cafe was the workhorse: the Wandering Horse Buffet handled volume, Orange Sky handled the view, and Blue Coyote handled breakfast.
The Cantina came later, and the record does not say exactly when. It does not appear in the opening coverage, and the earliest dated material we have is its own menu, stamped October 2023. It was among the rooms that returned in the spring 2021 reopening wave, after Casino Arizona and Talking Stick closed in March 2020, reopened on June 1 with grab-and-go food, and brought the full-service restaurants back in stages through April 2021; the buffet never came back. By then Talking Stick’s dining had been rebuilt around chef-led rooms and bars, and the Cantina, a tequila-first Southwestern dining room next to the slot floor, fits that plan better than a buffet ever could.
The current lineup is eight: Orange Sky and its lounge, Tash, Ocean Trail, the two Blue Coyotes, the Palo Verde Lounge and the 24-hour Black Fig Coffee Bistro. The Blue Coyote rooms are the only ones that carry the Community’s pre-2010 casino history in their name, which is not nothing in a building otherwise dressed in O’odham and Piipaash art and named for the calendar stick.
What the press does not cover is the kitchen. No chef is named on either room’s page, no reviewer from New Times or AZCentral has filed on them, and the resort’s own descriptions are the record. We have treated them accordingly: as hotel rooms, described from the menu and the hours, with the review sites as the only outside voice.
Honest assessment: the Cafe is a competent hotel restaurant with an unusually good breakfast seat and a sushi bar that exists mainly because it is open late. The Cantina is better than its lack of press suggests, especially at the bar. Neither is on our list of the best Mexican restaurants in Scottsdale or the best breakfasts, and both are exactly what a 496-room casino hotel needs at 7 a.m. and at 11 p.m. In the Talking Stick district, that is their job, and they do it.