What was J. Alexander’s at The Borgata?
J. Alexander’s was a Nashville chain grill that tried Scottsdale for four and a half years and left without much fuss. It opened in fall 2008 in a freestanding building at 6186 N Scottsdale Road, just south of Lincoln Drive on the border with Paradise Valley, right beside The Borgata, the replica Italian hill town of a shopping center. Phoenix New Times was careful to note that it was not technically part of the Borgata, though everyone described it that way.
The company behind it traces to Volunteer Capital Corporation, which three Nashville businessmen founded in 1971; the first J. Alexander’s opened in Nashville in 1991. By the time the Scottsdale restaurant closed, the chain ran restaurants in twelve states, and New Times summed up its food in three words: straightforward American fare. In Scottsdale that meant aged prime rib, buttermilk onion rings, burgers and sandwiches, and a white chocolate cheesecake that was the one dessert the paper bothered to name.
It was a restaurant for the neighborhoods on both sides of the line: Central Scottsdale families, Paradise Valley couples who wanted a booth and a steak without a resort bill, and guests from the Hilton across the road. It arrived at the worst possible moment, in the fall the financial crisis broke, and it closed in April 2013, months after its parent company was sold and the Borgata’s owner announced plans to turn the center into condominiums.
The building did not stay empty. Paul Martin’s American Grill, the chain of P.F. Chang’s and Fleming’s co-founder Paul Fleming, opened there in 2014 and is still serving. Our verdict: a well-run chain room that did nothing wrong in Scottsdale, and whose closing tells you more about the Borgata’s long decline than about its own kitchen.
What the menu and the room were
The menu. J. Alexander’s sold a short, confident American list: a grill, a prime rib, a cheeseburger, salads and sandwiches, and a few desserts made in house. The Scottsdale items New Times remembered at the closing were the aged prime rib, the buttermilk onion rings and the white chocolate cheesecake, with burgers and sandwiches filling out lunch. When the chain came back to the Valley in 2025, Phoenix Magazine described it in nearly the same terms: wood-fired fare, hand-crafted cocktails and signature American cuisine. The record we found does not give the Scottsdale prices, hours or seat count, and we will not guess at them.
The room. The building is the best-documented part of the story. Its next tenant, Paul Martin’s, put it at 6,552 square feet, with a bar of communal seating, a dining room of booths and tables, two private rooms and a covered, heated patio. The press we found never described the J. Alexander’s interior, but a freestanding grill of that size with a bar and a patio is the shape the chain builds everywhere.
Where it fit. It was the mid-priced, everyday choice on a stretch of Scottsdale Road that otherwise ran from resort dining rooms to the Borgata’s faded courtyard. Its closest neighbor in spirit was Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse at the same intersection, a pricier room for the same customer. No critic’s review of the Scottsdale restaurant turned up in our search, so what regulars ordered beyond the dishes New Times named is not on the record.
Getting there today. The address now belongs to Paul Martin’s, open Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday to 10, Sunday to 9, with happy hour from 3 to 6 Sunday through Thursday and 2 to 5 on Friday and Saturday, and valet or a free lot. If what you want is J. Alexander’s itself, the nearest one is in Chandler, at 7111 W Ray Road, which opened in November 2025.
The grill next to a shopping center that was always about to change
J. Alexander’s picked the Borgata corner because of what the Borgata had been: the 1981 village of towers and courtyards where Scottsdale celebrated at Mancuso’s for two decades. By 2008 that Borgata was already gone. Mancuso’s and Cafe Terra Cotta had been forced out in 2005 by redevelopment plans, and the center was a beautiful shell with a farmers market. That same fall, Fox Restaurant Concepts was opening Blanco Tacos + Tequila inside the Borgata in the space of P.F. Chang’s short-lived Taneko Japanese Tavern, which had closed that July.
The closing came in two pieces of news. In October 2012, Fidelity National Financial completed its purchase of J. Alexander’s Corporation, after a tender offer at $14.50 a share; the restaurants now belonged to a title-insurance company with a portfolio of dining chains. That same fall, the Borgata’s owner, Scottsdale homebuilder AV Homes, said it planned to redevelop the center into luxury condominiums. New Times reported the restaurant closed on April 26, 2013, and suggested the closing may have been indirectly related to the condominium plan. The company itself gave no reason that we found. The paper’s year-end list put it among April’s closings with Buster’s on the Lake and The Breakfast Joynt.
The building found a quick successor. Paul Martin’s American Grill, which Paul Fleming founded with Brian Bennett after building Fleming’s and helping create P.F. Chang’s, announced its first Arizona restaurant for spring 2014 and was open by July. It is still there. J. Alexander’s moved on through Fidelity’s 2015 spinoff and a later sale to SPB Hospitality, and came back to the Valley in Chandler in November 2025.
Honest assessment: J. Alexander’s was a good chain restaurant in a city that already had plenty, opened at the bottom of the 2000s and closed while its landlord was rethinking the whole block. Nobody wrote a long review of it and nobody wrote a lament. It belongs in the lost column mostly as a marker: the Borgata’s restaurant row has been rebuilt more than once since, and this building is the one part of it that has never stopped serving dinner.