What is George & Son’s Asian Cuisine?
George & Son’s Asian Cuisine is a sit-down Chinese and pan-Asian restaurant at 11291 E Via Linda, in the Ancala Village center on the north side of Via Linda, where Scottsdale Ranch gives way to the foothills of the McDowells. It opened in the fall of 2000, and its creator, by Phoenix New Times’ account, was George Yang, who put his own name and his sons’ on the sign. When critic Carey Sweet reviewed it on January 4, 2001, under the headline “Chop Shop,” she noted that the tables were set without chopsticks, that there was no sushi, and that the wine list was ambitious for an Asian restaurant in a strip center.
The menu was the point then and still is: primarily Chinese, with dishes borrowed from Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Singapore. The 2001 review ran through spring rolls, potstickers, chicken lettuce wraps, green-lip Asian mussels in a ginger-lemongrass broth, tom yum, a Burmese curry noodle called Mandalay Nungyi, Singapore chow fun, Mongolian beef and a steamed salmon in black bean sauce so large she thought it excessive. The signature, then and now, is George’s Seafood Pocket, a crisp folded scallion pancake stuffed with shrimp, crab and scallops, listed at $10.95 on the posted menu.
The room Sweet described had mustard-toned walls, gray vinyl booths, suspended lights, boxy wood ceiling accents, white tablecloths, a coppery concrete floor and a small bar in the entry, with the space divided into cozy nooks around a central dining room. That fall New Times named it Best Contemporary Chinese in its 2001 Best of Phoenix issue, for “superior quality, and ample choice.”
A quarter century later it is still there, with a second location in Deer Valley, online ordering, catering and a $7.95 weekday lunch, serving the families of Scottsdale Ranch, the Mayo Clinic campus two miles south and the winter residents of the foothills. Our verdict: the east side’s reliable Asian dining room, better than its strip-center address suggests, and the seafood pocket is still worth the drive.
Ordering at George & Son’s
Start with the 2001 dishes. The seafood pocket ($10.95) is the one plate everyone who has written about the restaurant agrees on, from the 2001 review to the location page’s advice to order it. The Asian mussels in ginger and lemongrass were praised in the Best of Phoenix entry, with the caveat that the broth ran salty, and tom yum ($8 and up) has survived from the opening menu. Crab puffs are $6.95 for six. Spicy crackling calamari and chicken lettuce wraps are the starters reviewers name now.
Then pick a region. The Chinese side is the familiar one: orange chicken ($11.95), Mongolian beef ($13.95, and in 2001 the critic found it dry), pork with eggplant, sweet and sour, lo mein. The reason to come is the other side of the card: Mandalay Nungyi ($11.95), Burmese rice noodles with chicken, onion, lemon and curry seasoning; Singapore chow fun ($12.95), curried vermicelli with pork and shrimp; Thai curry shrimp; and Kung Pao 3 Seas ($14.95), shrimp, scallops and fish in kung pao sauce. The honey-glazed walnut shrimp ($14.95) is the dish diners on the review sites mention most. These prices come from a posted menu that warns it may be out of date, so treat them as a range, roughly $11 to $15 for a dinner entree.
Lunch is the deal. Weekday lunch combinations are $7.95 for chicken, beef, pork, vegetable and noodle dishes (orange chicken, Mongolian beef, Szechwan string beans, pad thai, chow mein) and $8.95 for shrimp (walnut, black bean, Thai curry), each with soup of the day, a crab puff, a vegetable roll and steamed rice. Directory listings also describe a weekday lunch buffet; we could not confirm from the restaurant itself that it still runs, so ask.
Timing and the room. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily per Yelp’s 2026 listing, with some directories showing 11:30 openings and a 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday close. The nooks around the central room are the quieter tables; the bar in the entry is small. Reservations are not the custom, but the number is (480) 661-6336 and a call is wise for a party of eight.
Getting there. Ancala Village is on Via Linda just west of 112th Street, two miles east of the 101 and a short drive north of Shea Boulevard. Parking is the center’s free lot. Pickup and delivery run through the restaurant’s own ordering site, and the Deer Valley store at 3049 W Agua Fria Freeway has its own.
The pan-Asian room that beat the odds on Via Linda
Sweet’s 2001 review ended with a warning: opening an Asian restaurant in the Valley was a tough business, with competitors everywhere. That year the fashionable version of the idea was a few miles west, where P.F. Chang’s had turned “Chinese bistro” into a national chain from a Scottsdale start, and the strip centers of the 2000s filled with takeout rooms that copied its orange chicken. George & Son’s was something else: an owner-named, family-run room with a Burmese noodle on the menu, mustard walls, tablecloths and a wine list, in a center at the edge of the city that had been desert ten years earlier.
The press file after 2001 is almost empty, which is the normal fate of a neighborhood restaurant that does its job. New Times kept a location page recommending the seafood pocket and the tom yum. Directory listings over the years mention a lunch buffet and Saturday live music, neither of which we could confirm with the restaurant. At some point the family opened a second George & Son’s in Deer Valley, at 3049 W Agua Fria Freeway in north Phoenix; the company site lists both, with separate ordering pages, Facebook accounts and catering, and describes the food as “craveable Chinese and pan-Asian dishes made fresh to order.”
What the record does not say is who the sons are, whether George Yang is still in the kitchen, and when the Phoenix store opened. Neighborhood posts describe an owner who is often present and greets regulars, and one Yellow Pages entry claims 33 years in business, which does not square with the fall-2000 opening the newspaper recorded. We trust the newspaper.
What the record does say, through more than 500 Yelp reviews running into 2026, 99 on Tripadvisor and more than a thousand delivery ratings, is that the restaurant is open, busy and consistent, with the walnut shrimp, kung pao and Thai curry shrimp as the current favorites and the service generally praised. For a restaurant that opened the year the Scottsdale Ranch build-out was finishing, that is a long run. Its nearest peers on this side of the city are the old-school Chinese rooms like Flo’s and Hao Hao, and like them it survives on neighbors, not tourists.
Honest assessment: this is a good neighborhood Asian restaurant, not a destination, and the menu’s reach across six cuisines means some dishes are ordinary versions of things you can get anywhere. Order from the Burmese and Singaporean corners and the seafood starters and it is the best Asian meal between Shea and the mountains. The room has aged, the prices have not run away, and the lunch combinations are among the best values on Via Linda. Twenty-six years in, it has earned its name on the sign.