What is Caribbean Palm?
Caribbean Palm is a Jamaican restaurant and bar at 2515 N Scottsdale Road, Suites 2-4, a block north of McDowell Road in South Scottsdale. By its own listings it was established in 2014, and when Phoenix New Times visited in February 2022 the owners, Tony and Mackenzie Brown, were in their eighth year of running it. New Times called it “Arizona’s slice of the Caribbean,” which in a city with almost no Caribbean cooking is simply a description.
The restaurant’s first home was across the intersection, at 7049 E McDowell Road in Papago Plaza, the 1962 pueblo-style center on the southwest corner of Scottsdale and McDowell that spent its last years half empty while the city argued over its redevelopment. A reviewer around 2018 described finding it tucked in there. The plaza came down in 2019, and on November 25, 2019 the Scottsdale City Council took up a Series 12 restaurant liquor license for Caribbean Palm Restaurant & Bar at the present address, with Lesford John McKenzie as the applicant for Caribbean Palm LLC; the city’s report noted the suites had been a licensed restaurant location since 2015. The Yelp page says the restaurant is owned and operated by McKenzie and that the owner is Jamaican-born. The press does not reconcile that with the Browns, and we do not pretend to.
What it serves is the Jamaican canon: patties, jerk chicken, curry goat, braised oxtail with lima beans and spinner dumplings, ackee and saltfish, callaloo, steamed whole fish, curry conch, rice and peas, plantains, coconut rum cake, Kola Champagne and Ting from the cooler. The room is small, there is a full bar and no patio, and takeout is a big share of the trade; that is how it survived 2020, moving from takeout only to partial capacity to a full house.
Our verdict: the only serious Jamaican kitchen in Scottsdale, run by people who, in Tony Brown’s words, “put a lot of love in our food, and we try to make it right,” and worth the drive from anywhere in the city for the goat alone.
Ordering at Caribbean Palm
Start with the fritters. The saltfish and conch fritters were $10.79 in 2022, pan-seared, seasoned with fresh herbs and served with a coconut-and-curry sauce; New Times named them the must-try. A patty, beef or curried chicken, is $4.99 to $5.49 depending on the platform and comes with coco bread if you ask. Sautéed spinach and callaloo with garlic was $7.79.
Order the goat. Curry goat (about $23.99) is the owner’s favorite and ours: tender cubes on the bone in a fragrant, mildly hot curry. Braised oxtail with lima beans and spinners is the priciest plate at $29.99, and it sells out. The jerk chicken platter with two sides is $18.99; jerk pasta and fricassee chicken are the gentler routes. From the sea: ackee and saltfish, callaloo and saltfish, grilled snapper, steamed whole fish, shrimp ragout, curry conch, and salmon or shrimp done curry or jerk. A vegetarian plate comes in coconut sauce. Sides are rice and peas, fried plantains and green beans with bacon. Dessert is coconut rum cake or carrot rum cake.
Drinks. There is a full bar, a Series 12 license since 2019, and the cooler holds Jamaican sodas (Kola Champagne, pineapple, Ting) and Tropical Rhythm juices in fruit punch, mango carrot and pineapple ginger.
Timing. Hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, 11 to 9 Saturday, and 2 to 6:30 Sunday. Listings disagree by a half hour at closing, so call. Weekday lunch is the quiet time; Friday and Saturday evenings fill the small room, and reservations are taken by phone at (480) 947-4343. Sunday is an early dinner, and the oxtail will be gone by the end of it.
Getting there. The suites face the lot off Scottsdale Road, two blocks south of Oregano’s original adobe and a short walk north of the rebuilt Papago Plaza corner and SkySong. There is no patio, so summer is a dining-room meal. Delivery runs through DoorDash from the restaurant’s own site, and the most-ordered items on the delivery apps are the beef patty, the oxtail and the jerk chicken, which is the right order of priorities.
The restaurant that outlived Papago Plaza
Scottsdale has never had a Caribbean community to speak of, which is why Caribbean Palm has had the field to itself. When New Times surveyed the Valley’s best Caribbean restaurants in 2022, the Scottsdale entry was this one, and it still is. The owners’ decision to open in Papago Plaza in 2014 put them in the cheapest retail at the city’s southern gateway, a center whose landlord had been planning to tear it down since 2015, and the move to 2515 N Scottsdale Road at the end of the plaza’s life kept the restaurant within a block of its original customers. The license record is the clearest marker we have: the November 2019 council action, “an existing location with new owner,” for suites that had held a restaurant license since 2015.
The ownership story is thinner than we would like. New Times’ Cyrus Guccione named Tony and Mackenzie Brown in 2022 and quoted Tony on the food; the city named Lesford John McKenzie in 2019; Yelp says the restaurant is owned and operated by McKenzie. One reading is that “Mackenzie” and “McKenzie” are the same person differently spelled, and that the Browns and McKenzie are partners or family; the record does not say. A reviewer in 2018 mentioned a Tempe location that had closed without notice, which no other source confirms.
What the record does show is a restaurant that held on through the 2020s without the cushion a chain has. It never closed in 2020; it went to takeout, then to a few tables, then to a full room, and the owners’ account of that to New Times is the only interview we found. Its ratings are steady rather than spectacular, a 4.0 on Yelp from 239 reviews in July 2026, and the complaints are the ones small kitchens get: waits when the room is full, dishes that run out. It is listed on EatOkra as a Black-owned business.
The corner it sits on has changed around it. Papago Plaza’s replacement brought apartments, a hotel and a Sprouts; SkySong filled in the old Los Arcos Mall site to the south; the dealerships and strip centers of south Scottsdale Road in the 2010s have given way to mid-rises. A one-room Jamaican restaurant surviving that turnover, a block from where it started, is the kind of continuity this end of the city rarely gets.
Honest assessment: Caribbean Palm is not a destination room; it is a small dining room with a bar, inconsistent hours and a kitchen that runs out of its best dishes. It is also the real thing, at prices that have climbed with everything else but still put a full plate of goat and two sides under $25. For the food in our South Scottsdale guide that you cannot get anywhere else in the city, it is on the short list.