What is Edo Japanese Grill?
Edo Japanese Grill is the teppan counter in Palm Court, the lower-level food court of Scottsdale Fashion Square at 7014 E Camelback Rd, between Panda Express and Fired Pie. It opened in the second week of December 2025; KTAR reported on Thursday, December 11, that it had opened that Tuesday. It is the second Arizona store, and the second in the United States, of Edo Japan, a Calgary, Alberta, chain that has more than 200 restaurants in Canada and that most Canadians know as the teriyaki place at the mall.
The chain’s origin is unusual for a food-court brand. Reverend Susumu Ikuta, a Japanese-born Jodo Shinshu Buddhist minister, opened the first Edo in Calgary in 1979 to help establish and support the Calgary Buddhist Temple, and named it for Tokyo’s old name. It began franchising in 1986, grew to about a hundred food-court stores across Canada, the United States and Australia under Ikuta, and then pulled back to Canada after Tom Donaldson, a former Moxie’s president, bought it outright in 2006. The return to America came under CEO Dave Minnett, who took over in 2016: a first U.S. store at Chandler Festival in early 2025, then Scottsdale, with a third planned for The Gilmore in Gilbert in late 2026. In Arizona the stores run with a local owner-partner, Melissa Goudreau, a longtime Edo customer in Canada.
The food is cooked to order on a 450-degree teppan in full view of the counter and finished with the house teriyaki sauce. The core is a teriyaki chicken or shaved beef bowl over rice, cauliflower rice or yakisoba noodles with stir-fried vegetables; around it are build-your-own bento boxes with two sides, poke bowls, Tokyo fried chicken, gyoza, spring rolls, miso soup, hand-rolled sushi made in the store each day, and bubble tea. It is for shoppers, the Old Town lunch crowd and families who want a hot meal that is not fried and not a sandwich.
Our verdict: a well-made, fast, mildly sauced food-court teriyaki that is better than it needs to be, and the most interesting corporate story in the food court by a wide margin.
Ordering at Edo
Order the bowl or the bento. The chain is built on one move: meat and vegetables on the hot teppan, teriyaki sauce at the end. The teriyaki chicken bowl and the shaved beef bowl are that move over rice; choose yakisoba noodles instead if you want the sauce to cling, or cauliflower rice if you are counting. The build-your-own bento adds two sides to a protein, and Minnett, the CEO, has called it the best value for a single meal. Tokyo fried chicken and an orange chicken are the fried options, and the poke bowls are the cold ones.
The sides and the sushi. Gyoza, spring rolls and miso soup are the sides worth adding. The hand-rolled sushi is made in the store daily, in the California and dynamite roll style; it is clean and mild, and it is not the reason to come. There is bubble tea at the counter.
On prices. The company does not publish prices on its website, and none of the Arizona press coverage we found listed them. Delivery apps listed a build-your-own teriyaki bento at about $19 in 2026, which carries app markup, so count on counter prices in the mid-teens for a bowl or bento and less for a side. That is food-court money, a step above the chains on either side and far under Nobu upstairs.
Hours and timing. The mall directory lists 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Those are the mall’s hours, and the food court empties out in the last hour. Weekday lunch between noon and 1:30 is the crush; 11:15 or 2 is calm. The grill is open to the counter, so if you have children with you, let them watch.
Getting there. Palm Court is on the lower level in the middle of the mall. Park in the garage off Camelback Road by Nordstrom or the one on the Goldwater side, take the escalator down, and the court is in front of you. The mall has said Palm Court is due for a renovation in 2026, so expect construction walls at some point. It is on our Scottsdale with kids and Scottsdale on a budget lists for exactly those reasons: fast, hot, cheap by the mall’s standards, and nobody minds a stroller.
The temple fundraiser that became Canada’s mall teriyaki
Edo’s story is a Canadian one and it bears telling, because nothing else in Palm Court has one. In 1979 the Reverend Susumu Ikuta, a Buddhist minister from Japan, needed a way to sustain the Calgary Buddhist Temple, so he opened a small Japanese counter and called it Edo. The food was simple on purpose, teriyaki chicken and beef on a flat grill for people walking by, and it worked. Franchising began in 1986, and by the time Ikuta stepped away in 1998, when he was made Bishop of the Buddhist Churches of Canada, the chain had 102 food-court locations in Canada, the United States and Australia and about $10 million in annual sales.
The American stores of that era were the generic mall kind, and they did not survive the next owner. Tom Donaldson, a former president of Moxie’s, became CEO in 1999 with a small equity stake, bought the company outright in 2006, and over the next decade pulled Edo back to Canada, where it opened its first stand-alone street-front restaurants and grew the sales figure to roughly $92 million by 2015. Dave Minnett took over in 2016, and under him the count passed 140 restaurants in 2020 and 200 in 2025.
The second American attempt is being run the way a cautious company runs a test. The company told KTAR in December 2025 that Scottsdale gave it a “flagship presence” that would let it validate the concept with U.S. guests, and that it would take a measured approach to new sites with local franchisees and suppliers. Western Retail Advisors, the brokerage that placed it in the 1.9-million-square-foot mall, called Arizona “an exceedingly popular proving ground” for restaurant brands, which is true: Fashion Square was where Nobu, Toca Madera and Tocaya tested the Arizona market in 2019, and where RA Sushi began in Old Town in 1997 before it became a national chain. Chandler Festival came first in early 2025; Scottsdale followed in December, with Melissa Goudreau as the Arizona owner-partner telling What Now Phoenix that “Arizona feels like home”; The Gilmore in Gilbert is next.
What the record does not say is how the Scottsdale store has done, or exactly what it charges. The coverage we found is opening press from October through December 2025 plus a mall directory entry; there is no critical review and no published menu with prices, and the opening day rests on KTAR’s “Tuesday,” which places it on December 9, 2025.
Honest assessment: this is good food-court food, hot and fresh off a visible grill, with a teriyaki that is sweet and mild in the Canadian way. It will not replace SumoMaya or any sushi room in Old Town for anyone who cares about sushi, and it is not trying to. What it is, in the 2020s, is a quiet corporate experiment conducted on the lower level of a Scottsdale mall, and whether Edo ends up with fifty American stores or three may be decided by how many of you buy a bento here.