What was Cuttlefish Ocean Kitchen?
Cuttlefish Ocean Kitchen was the seafood restaurant that stood where Hash Kitchen stands now. It opened in late November 2013 at the Shops at Gainey Village, 8777 N Scottsdale Road, in Gainey Ranch, and it was the first Scottsdale restaurant of Joey Maggiore, son of Tomaso Maggiore, who had opened Tomaso’s in Phoenix in 1977.
Joey came back to the Valley from California. He had trained at Scottsdale Culinary Academy and in the family restaurants, opened Joey’s California Bistro in San Diego in 1999, and in 2010 starred with his sister Melissa in Food Network’s six-episode Family Style, which followed the siblings opening Tommy V’s in Carlsbad. “This is a concept that my whole family has always wanted to bring to life,” he told New Times when he announced Cuttlefish, which he ran with his wife.
The concept was coastal Italian seafood with a sustainability pitch: fish flown in daily, “classic and contemporary dishes with Italian influences.” The announced executive chef was Michael Dei Maggi, who had cooked at Le Bernardin and worked on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. According to Phoenix Magazine, his tenure lasted three days after opening, and Maggiore took over the kitchen himself.
The room was the memorable part. It seated 100, with a 25-seat bar and a corner patio, and the raw bar’s stools were eleven Vespas, complete with decorative license plates and working taillights. Glossy teal tile mimicked water, booth upholstery and metal room dividers picked up a fish-scale pattern, and at dinner live musicians played on the bar side while the lights dimmed.
It lasted less than two years. In early July 2015 Maggiore closed it and reopened the space on July 18 as The Hash Kitchen, the brunch concept that became a chain. Our verdict: a serious, sometimes uneven seafood room that the critics liked more than the neighborhood needed, and whose real legacy was the restaurant that replaced it.
What the menu was
Start raw. The opening menu put crudo first: shrimp with Sicilian lemon ($12), pine-smoked California albacore ($11), which Phoenix Magazine critic Wynter Holden said tasted “as pure and clean as spring rain,” and raw Verlasso salmon ($11), the farm-raised Chilean fish Seafood Watch rated a good alternative. The namesake crispy cuttlefish ($12) came in chickpea-flour breading with lemon aioli, and an octopus soppressata ($14) came with grape tomatoes and Bloody Mary gelée.
The mains were the strength. Housemade pastas included spaghetti with Dungeness crab ($24), Santa Barbara sea urchin and tomatoes. The cooked Verlasso salmon ($26), with Roman artichokes and crispy capers, won over both critics. Holden praised seared scallops with bacon and sweet corn risotto ($26), a two-inch prime New York strip ($29) plated with marrow, Zinfandel-braised short ribs ($24) and a crab mac and cheese made with hand-rolled strozzapreti, one of the $7 sides. The menu changed weekly.
What the critics split on. New Times critic Rachel Miller, an East Coaster, called it “a mixed bag” with “a lot to love” in May 2014. Her favorites were scallops with gnocchi, the clam chowder “pot pie” under a slab of pastry, and the Adriatic fish stew ($18 at lunch, big enough for two). Her misses were a $19 maccheroni alla chitarra with two prawns, lobster ravioli too small for an entrée, spicy tuna pops in a store-bought cuttlefish-ink cone, slow service on a busy night, and most desserts. The exception was a $5 blackberry Cabernet sorbet.
Where to sit. At the raw bar, on a Vespa, for the photograph alone, or in a booth at dinner when the musicians played. Holden found it “slower and more refined” than Sam Fox’s Little Cleo’s Seafood Legend, its obvious comparison in town.
The neighbors. Gainey Village was adding restaurants fast in 2013 and 2014: the relocated Pomo Pizzeria, the Mediterranean Naya, and Maggiore’s own Notorious Burgers next door. Asked whether the center could sustain the growth, Maggiore told New Times, “That’s the only reason I came in.”
From oyster bar to Bloody Mary bar
Cuttlefish was the first Scottsdale move of the second Maggiore generation, and it shows how that generation found its footing. The family’s reputation was Italian fine dining, built over 35 years at Tomaso’s. Joey’s plan for Gainey Village was a restaurant group in miniature: an upscale seafood room, a Prohibition-themed burger joint next door, and an Italian market at Scottsdale Marketplace that he previewed to New Times in January 2014. The seafood room got the attention. Both Phoenix Magazine (March 2014) and New Times (May 2014) gave it full reviews, and New Times’ headline said it “ups the ante of fish options in Phoenix.”
The business was harder than the reviews. The opening chef’s three-day tenure, a menu Maggiore cooked himself, prices that pushed a lunch pasta to $19, and a strip-center location without an ocean view were a lot to carry. Notorious Burgers next door did not last either; by spring 2015 it had become Hogs N’ Hops BBQ. The press we found gives no stated reason for closing Cuttlefish, only that Maggiore shuttered it in early July 2015, “less than two years” after opening.
What replaced it changed the center. The Hash Kitchen opened in the Cuttlefish room on July 18, 2015, designed by Maggiore’s wife, with a do-it-yourself Bloody Mary bar of more than 50 toppings, from sliders and egg rolls to king crab, six kinds of mimosa, and build-your-own hashes. It became one of the defining brunch restaurants of the 2010s in Scottsdale, the first location of a multi-state chain, and the reason Gainey Village fills on weekend mornings. In 2015 the family company, Maggiore Culinary Concepts, also counted Tomaso’s, Vivo! Ristorante and Tommy V’s Urban Kitchen and Bar on Indian School Road.
Honest assessment: Cuttlefish was a real attempt at a chef-level seafood restaurant in the desert, and the reviews show it had dishes worth driving for. It also had the problems the reviews named, uneven portions, slow service and soft desserts, and it never escaped the arithmetic of expensive fish in a strip center. Maggiore’s decision to replace it with brunch looked like a retreat in 2015. In hindsight it was the best business call he made at Gainey Village; for the morning that followed, see our brunch guide.