What is Karsen’s Grill?
Old Town is full of bars that were built to be found. Karsen’s Grill is one you mostly hear about. It is a small bar and grill on a short stretch of First Street, between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue, and by its own account it has been serving pub food there since 1991, which makes it older than nearly everything in the entertainment district to the north.
The format has not changed much. There is a bar, a handful of tables, TVs for whatever game matters that day, and a patio. The menu is burgers, sandwiches, salads and bar food, and the site’s own tagline is “neighborhood bar and grub house,” which is accurate. Travel guides have spent years calling it a good lunch stop near Scottsdale Stadium with a better burger than its size suggests.
The owner is Jacob Finley, who has worked in Old Town’s bars and restaurants since 1999 and has owned Karsen’s since the middle of the 2010s. In May 2026 he opened a much bigger place, Ponderosa House, in the old Frank & Lupe’s at Marshall Way and Indian School Road. He said at the time that he hoped it would become a staple the way Karsen’s had. Karsen’s itself stayed put, and stayed open.
It is not a scene and it is not trying to be one. It is the bar a local takes you to when you ask where they actually eat.
How to use it
Order the burger first. It is what the place is known for, and recent reviews keep naming a double wagyu burger and the fries. The French dip, Reuben and Cuban are the sandwich alternatives, and the chicken tenders and salads cover the rest of the table. Prices are Old Town prices, not dive prices, but the portions match.
Pick your hour. Weekday lunch is the easy window, with room at the bar and the regulars who keep the place going. Evenings bring the after-work crowd and the games. The kitchen generally runs until about 10 p.m.
Use it for baseball. Scottsdale Stadium is about a half mile away. During spring training in March, eat here before the Giants game and walk over; afterward, the room fills fast. In October and November the Arizona Fall League brings a smaller, quieter version of the same pattern.
Walk the block. First Street is short and has more history than it looks. Bootleggers Smokehouse is across the street, and Brown Avenue, with the Old Adobe Mission and the Rusty Spur Saloon, is a block east. The Civic Center lawns are a few minutes beyond that, and the Civic Center garage is the easiest place to park.
A neighborhood bar that outlasted the neighborhood
When Karsen’s opened in 1991, the blocks south of Indian School Road were a quieter downtown of City Hall, Western-wear stores and saloons on Brown Avenue, and galleries on Main Street. The 1990s were the decade before Old Town became a nightlife brand. The bar-and-club strip around Stetson Drive took its modern shape in the years that followed, from Martini Ranch in 1994 to the ultra-lounges of the 2000s, and a different kind of bar arrived with it.
Karsen’s stayed what it was. A small room on a side street, with a kitchen and regulars, is a modest thing to keep going for thirty-five years in a district where leases turn over constantly. That longevity is the case for it. Plenty of Old Town restaurants from the same era now exist only as closed listings in this guide.
Finley’s path also reflects how the district works now. He came up inside it, starting in 1999, bought Karsen’s around the mid-2010s, and then used it as the base for a bigger bet. When Frank & Lupe’s closed on Marshall Way in 2025, he joined about a dozen restaurateurs bidding for the space, and won it. Ponderosa House is the result: a cantina, a patio and a restored 1920s house. Karsen’s is the smaller business that made it possible.
The honest assessment: Karsen’s is not a destination for anyone chasing the newest opening, and the room is too small for a big group on a busy night. But it is one of the last of a kind in Old Town, an owner-run neighborhood grill that predates the entertainment district, and the burger is still the reason people go.