What was Indulge Burgers & More?
Indulge Burgers & More was a burger shop with a pencil. It opened in 2008 at 10392 N Scottsdale Road, in the strip on the east side of Scottsdale Road just south of Shea Boulevard, the center now called Scottsdale Commons, and it belonged to owner Lee Klein. Phoenix New Times put it plainly: Klein did not want just another burger joint.
So he made the menu a form. Diners took a sheet and checked off what they wanted, the way a sushi bar takes orders: a patty of beef, chicken or veggie (and, on the full list, turkey, buffalo, salmon or Kobe beef), a bun of brioche, wheat or English muffin, then cheeses, toppings and sauces. For anyone who did not want to design dinner, there were signature burgers, the cheese-stuffed Vesuvius Volcanic and the Sonoran Burger, plus sandwiches and salads. The room was simple: industrial ceiling, concrete floors, dark wood tables with clean lines.
The rest of the menu was diner comfort done carefully. Arizona Foothills Magazine’s Taste Test, around 2011, found sweet potato fries with a cinnamon-marshmallow dip, onion strings, homemade chili, fried pickle chips, about a dozen milkshakes (peanut butter was the favorite), chocolate chip cookies with milk, and chocolate and red velvet cakes. The chef then was Omar Hernandez. Hours ran from 11 a.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. on weekends, to 9 or 10 at night.
It was for the Shea Corridor: the medical offices and shoppers at Scottsdale and Shea, families from both sides of the Paradise Valley line, and anyone who had opinions about buns. It closed in May 2013 after four and a half years, and Klein’s farewell said only that the cause was beyond his control. Our verdict: a smart, friendly neighborhood idea that arrived a little ahead of the burger-bar wave that would have suited it.
What the menu and the room were
The sheet. Everything started with the check-off menu. The Arizona Foothills reviewer built a burger of beef on brioche with jalapeño jack, jalapeños and red peppers under an apricot-chipotle sauce, and called the patty juicy and sizable on a buttery bun. The format’s weakness was the same as its strength: you got exactly what you asked for, including the mistakes. The black bean and rice veggie patty did not hold together well, the reviewer found, and it was the one item they would skip.
The signatures. For the indecisive there were the Vesuvius Volcanic, stuffed with cheese, the Sonoran Burger, and a 100 percent Kobe beef burger, plus sandwiches and salads. New Times named the Vesuvius and the Sonoran in the restaurant’s obituary, which is as close as the record comes to saying what sold.
The sides and shakes. Fries were usually ordered separately rather than included, so regulars checked them on the sheet: plain, or sweet potato with cinnamon-marshmallow dip. Starters ran to onion strings, homemade chili and fried pickle chips. The shake list had about a dozen flavors, including coffee and Oreo, and the peanut butter shake was the house favorite. Dessert was cookies and milk or a slice of chocolate or red velvet cake. The record we found does not give the prices.
Timing and getting there. Around 2011 the hours were Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday to 10, Saturday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the phone was 480-998-2222. Parking was the strip-center lot off Scottsdale Road, shared with the rest of the Scottsdale and Shea cluster, from New York Bagels ‘N Bialys up the block to Butterfield’s Pancake House around the corner on Shea.
A build-your-own burger at the wrong end of the burger boom
Indulge opened in 2008, the year of the financial crisis. By Klein’s count of four and a half years, it would have started serving around the end of 2008, and its own business listing gives that year. That was a hard time to open anything, and an early time to open a gourmet burger restaurant: the local wave that produced Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers in 2011 and a run of chef-driven burger bars later in the 2010s had not yet arrived. Indulge was early, it was independent, and it was in a strip center on the north side of town.
The record of how it ended is one Facebook post. New Times quoted it in full on May 20, 2013: “To our loyal customers… Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, we have closed Indulge Burgers.” Klein thanked the clientele for four and a half years, wrote that “our goal was to make the best burger in town and I think we succeeded,” and signed it. He gave no reason. It was a heavy month for Scottsdale; the same New Times year-end list put Cask 63 at Gainey Village and X-Tapa Joe’s among May’s closings.
What came next at the address is muddier than the closing. 10392 N Scottsdale Road covers several storefronts in Scottsdale Commons. Porkopolis Bar-B-Que opened in the center in 2016, and Green Corner, a Syrian and Lebanese counter, opened in the former Porkopolis suite in May 2022; our guide to Green Corner Restaurant covers it. None of the coverage we found says which business took the Indulge storefront, so we do not claim one.
Honest assessment: Indulge was a neighborhood restaurant with a good gimmick and, by the one detailed review, a good burger, and it disappeared with nothing on the record but its menu and its owner’s goodbye. It deserves a place in the lost column because the idea it sold, your burger your way from a printed sheet, became ordinary in Scottsdale only after it was gone.