What is Elvira’s at DC Ranch?
Elvira’s is a 98-year-old Mexican restaurant that has lived in three places. Elvira Rivera opened it in 1927 in Nogales, Sonora, where it was a tourist landmark for 82 years; her grandson Ruben Monroy moved it to Tubac, Arizona, in 2009 (New Times says 2010); and in January 2025 Monroy and Scottsdale restaurateur Tom Kaufman opened a second branch at 20825 N Pima Road, Suite H110, in Market Street at DC Ranch, the shopping village at Pima and Thompson Peak Parkway in DC Ranch.
The building is the two-story, 3,600-square-foot former Jalapeño Inferno, directly across from Kaufman’s The Living Room. Inside it is candlelit and dark, with limewashed walls, a cluster of chandeliers, antique mirrors, velvet seating areas, a communal table, a private room upstairs and a walk-in, temperature-controlled wine cellar and tasting room. Phoenix Magazine’s Nikki Buchanan called the palette Modern Gothic; a local blogger called it vampy. Patios wrap two sides of the building.
The food is what Monroy calls Mexico City-style cooking: six moles, some with up to 28 ingredients, each served with chicken, refried beans and rice; molcajetes, grilled meat or seafood brought bubbling in a hot stone bowl; dry-aged beef; chile en nogada; and tortillas pressed and cooked to order. Monroy, who studied in Guadalajara and went to culinary school in Mexico City, commutes between Tubac and Scottsdale, so Christopher George, Kaufman Hospitality’s culinary director, is executive chef and Luis Hernandez chef de cuisine. Kaufman, a sommelier, built the wine list, though Buchanan found most tables heading straight for the margaritas.
The press was quick: Buchanan’s review ran May 1, 2025, and in November the magazine named Elvira’s its Best Import from in the State, noting that a restaurant this old did not quite fit a best-new list. Our verdict: it is the most serious Mexican kitchen in North Scottsdale, in the most theatrical room on Market Street, and the only place in the city that will braise you a beef tongue in two moles if you ask a day ahead.
How to eat at Elvira’s
Book ahead, and ask for the tongue. Reservations run through OpenTable from the restaurant’s site, and the room stays full on weekends. The Tubac original is famous for beef tongue in two moles, and DC Ranch left it off the menu; Buchanan, who requested it in advance, found the braised tongue ultra-tender under a smoky three-chile mole coloradito and a nutty mole almendrado. It is a $45 special order. Make the request when you book.
Order the molcajete for two. The tequila-grilled seafood molcajete ($59) brings shrimp and scallops in a bubbling broth with whole peppers, melting panela cheese and cilantro; the prime flank steak molcajete is $35. Then pick a mole: the hazelnut mole ($34) is the one the opening coverage singled out, and the six-mole lineup with chicken is the menu’s spine. The guajillo shrimp is $38. Among starters, Buchanan’s picks were the taquitos de papa, filled with potato and Menonita cheese, the panko-fried shrimp tacos ($19), the mochomos ($22) and the guacamole, studded with pumpkin seeds, pomegranate and cotija. Cuitlacoche chicken tacos are $25, lobster enchiladas are market price (the review saw $79), and the sweet potato flan ($13) is the dessert.
Drink the margaritas. Half a dozen come in oversize glasses with different salt rims; the Xalisco, with Cointreau, cilantro, jalapeño, cucumber and lime, was the critic’s favorite. Kaufman’s wine list is good and largely ignored, which makes it a value if you know what you want. The restaurant’s site lists a 4 to 6 p.m. happy hour, something early reviewers said did not exist, so confirm when you book.
Timing. Hours on the site are 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Monday; the May 2025 review listed it closed Tuesday as well, so the week has lengthened. The first seating is the quietest and the best time to see the room before the candles have done their work. Weekend prime time is DC Ranch and Silverleaf on date night, with golf-season visitors from the Silverleaf Club and DC Ranch Country Club side.
Getting there. Market Street is at the southeast corner of Pima Road and Thompson Peak Parkway. Park in the lots behind and beside the building rather than hunting on the street. If you want a drink after, Kaufman’s The Peacock and The Living Room are steps away. For the rest of the city’s Mexican rooms, see our guide to the best Mexican restaurants in Scottsdale.
From the border to Tubac to Market Street
The story the restaurant tells, and the press has repeated, begins with Elvira Rivera plating a chile relleno in Nogales, Sonora, in 1927. For most of the twentieth century Elvira’s was one of the restaurants Arizonans walked across the border for, and it stayed in Nogales for 82 years. Ruben Monroy grew up in it. He studied graphic arts and interior design in Guadalajara, ran a nightclub for several years, then went to culinary school in Mexico City, and the combination explains the restaurant he built when he moved Elvira’s north to Tubac, the artists’ village 40 miles south of Tucson. That room, opened in 2009 by Phoenix Magazine’s account and 2010 by New Times’, is strung with glass pendants and Mexican tin lanterns, sells its decor from an attached boutique, and became a reason to drive to Tubac.
The Scottsdale chapter came through wine. Buchanan reports that a Riedel representative introduced Monroy to Tom Kaufman, the sommelier who over 32 years has opened more than twenty restaurants and wine bars in the Southwest, including The Living Room, which was marking ten years on Market Street. Kaufman knew the empty Jalapeño Inferno building across from his own and proposed a partnership: Monroy the artist, Kaufman the operator. They announced it in October 2024 for late November, slipped to January 3, 2025, and opened that month. Monroy told New Times the Scottsdale clientele was well traveled, so the room would be more elegant than Tubac’s, and the bigger kitchen and large patio would let him play with the menu.
The restaurant arrived in a neighborhood that had been waiting for it. Market Street opened in the early 2000s as DC Ranch’s village center, and its dining has cycled through Market Street Kitchen, two Liberty Stations and a run of casual Mexican rooms, Jalapeño Inferno among them. Kaufman’s cluster, The Living Room, The Peacock and now Elvira’s, turned the block into the evening destination that the DC Ranch and Silverleaf residents on the other side of Pima Road had otherwise driven to Kierland for.
Buchanan’s review was a rave with one complaint: the tongue’s absence from the menu, which she blamed on “persnickety” DC Ranchers. Her November Best New Restaurants list made Elvira’s the Best Import from in the State and called the cooking essentially identical to Tubac’s. What the record does not say is how the kitchen runs when Monroy is in Tubac, which is often; George and Hernandez carry it, and the reviews we have found do not report a drop.
Honest assessment: Elvira’s is expensive for Mexican food and cheap for what it is, a serious mole kitchen in a room built for occasions. The margaritas get more attention than the wine list deserves, the tongue should be on the menu, and the happy hour is a recent and welcome concession. It is the best reason since The Living Room to eat on Market Street, and the first restaurant of the 2020s to give North Scottsdale a Mexican dining room that its guests from Tucson recognize.