What is Kuza?
Kuza is the Japanese robata grill and raw bar that Clive Collective opened on September 16, 2026, at 17767 N Scottsdale Road, Suite 100, on the corner of Chauncey Lane just south of the 101. The suite had been Chauncey Social, the Corieri family’s restaurant-nightclub, from December 2019 until April 1, 2025, and the new tenant is the neighbor: Clive Collective already ran The Americano and the jazz speakeasy Tell Your Friends a few doors up at 17797. Kuza is the group’s sixth restaurant and its third on this short stretch of Scottsdale Road.
The group belongs to co-founders Justin Massei and Mikis Troyan, with chef Beau MacMillan as a partner and director of culinary operations, and the kitchen here belongs to executive chef Erik Davila. The centerpiece is an open robata grill burning binchotan charcoal, which the restaurant describes as hotter, cleaner and longer-burning than wood, and a raw bar whose fish, according to AZ Big Media and Axios, arrives twice a week from Toyosu Market in Tokyo. Around those two stations the menu runs to charcoal-grilled meats and seafood, crudos, nigiri, hand rolls, a few comfort dishes (garlic noodles, Iberico pork dumplings, Korean pork ribs) and large plates built for sharing: a 40-ounce prime porterhouse, a whole roasted branzino, king crab fried rice.
Troyan told the press the room was built around “the theater of live fire” and is meant to build energy as the night goes on, which is a polite way of saying it is loud after 8. Davila’s line was shorter: “Let the fire do the work.” The crowd is the same one that fills The Americano, North Scottsdale dressed up for dinner, plus the Grayhawk and DC Ranch residents who used to drive to the Quarter for sushi.
It is for people who want the Old Town version of a Japanese night out (a scene, a cocktail list, a sashimi platter as a centerpiece) without crossing the 101 southbound. Our verdict: a serious grill and a serious fish program in a room that wants to be a party; go early for the first, late for the second.
How to eat at Kuza
Start with the first hour. Kuza is open Wednesday and Thursday 4 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 4 to 11 p.m., Sunday 4 to 10 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday, and the only prices it publishes are for the happy hour from 4 to 5 p.m.: $5 shishitos, spicy edamame and chicken negima; $10 Korean pork ribs, garlic noodles and Taiwanese crispy chicken; $15 chef’s-choice sashimi and hamachi or zuke akami hand rolls; $5 wine and house sake, $6 Japanese beer, $10 highballs, $12 martinis. For the whole district, see the Scottsdale happy hour guide.
Order from the robata. The chicken negima is the signature, glazed repeatedly and rotated over the coals until the sauce caramelizes. The market robata prawns (New Caledonia prawns on the opening menu) come with a red kosho-yuzu glaze and house-smoked sea salt, and the Spanish octopus is slow-cooked, charred over the grill and served with harissa honey and a Japanese-style aguachile. The rest of the grill list is lamb chops, skirt steak, tsukune meatballs, pork belly, Hokkaido scallops, a three-ounce cut of A5 Miyazaki wagyu, and vegetables (purple potato, lion’s mane mushroom, asparagus) that are easy to skip in favor of the fish.
Then the raw bar. The nigiri and sashimi list runs akami, chutoro and otoro, shima aji, hirame, medai snapper, Hokkaido uni and scallop, with aburi versions and gunkan of otoro and ikura. The Kuza Nigiri Experience sets (a four-piece bluefin tasting, a five-piece Toyosu Market selection, a three-piece aburi plate, a seven-piece market selection) are the efficient way in, and the chef’s-choice sashimi platter comes in 18, 27 or 36 pieces and is designed to sit in the middle of the table. Crudos include chutoro tataki, hamachi crudo, spicy tuna crispy rice and an A5 wagyu tartare.
Drink the list, not the martini. The cocktails are the group’s strength: the Lychee Collins (rose-infused Haku vodka, St-Germain, lychee), the Shikoku Marg (El Tesoro reposado, mezcal, yuzu, togarashi rim), The Way of the Flowers (junmai ginjo sake, Carpano Bianco, white peach) and the low-proof Kodama Kami (soju, grapefruit, buckwheat tea), which was written to go with sushi. Sake runs from Gekkeikan to a Sakari junmai daiginjo, and there are four zero-proof drinks. Desserts, made in-house, are a matcha nameraka pudding, a chocolate ube cake and a sudachi lime tart.
Getting there. Reservations are on OpenTable; parties of nine or more book through Clive Collective’s events team. Parking is the surface lot shared with The Americano, and the three rooms make a natural progression: drinks here, dinner at The Americano, jazz at Tell Your Friends, or the reverse.
The block Clive Collective built below the 101
The corner of Scottsdale Road and Chauncey Lane was supposed to be north Scottsdale’s answer to Old Town. Evening Entertainment Group, the Corieri family company behind Maya and the Old Town clubs, opened Chauncey Social there on December 12, 2019, a 130-seat restaurant and lounge with 30 TVs and a giant LED wall, and it ran for just over five years before closing on April 1, 2025. Three weeks later, on April 22, What Now Phoenix (citing AZCentral) reported that the suite already had a tenant. Clive Collective, which had opened The Americano next door in February 2020 with Scott Conant’s menu and then replaced Conant with Beau MacMillan in May 2024, had taken it for a Japanese robata concept called Kuza, with udon, ramen, sashimi, wagyu and grilled seafood cooked over coal in front of diners, targeted for late August or early September 2025.
That was one of five concepts the group announced at once: Kuza; Ada, a coastal seafood restaurant, and Love Call, a lounge, in the Stoddard-Harmon bungalow at 801 N First Avenue in downtown Phoenix; Kuza Tori, a casual street-food version of Kuza through the bungalow’s alley; and a second Cala in the Paradise Valley Mall redevelopment. The plan was to turn a three-restaurant group into an eight-restaurant one in two years.
Kuza took a year longer than promised, which is normal for a build-out that includes a charcoal grill and a raw bar. The opening was announced on September 10, 2026, and the doors opened the following Wednesday, September 16. The coverage in AZ Big Media, Arizona Foothills and Axios was launch press, not criticism; Troyan called Kuza “the next stage of Clive Collective’s growth.” No independent review had appeared by October 2026, and the restaurant publishes no prices beyond happy hour, so the record is thinner than it will be in a year.
What the opening does settle is the shape of this block. Between The Americano, Tell Your Friends and Kuza, Clive Collective now owns a dressed-up dinner, a jazz speakeasy and a Japanese grill within a hundred yards of each other, all in the 2020s and all on a stretch of Scottsdale Road that had nothing of the kind before 2020. This is the only place above the 101 where three ambitious rooms share a parking lot; The Belmont at Pinnacle Peak and the DC Ranch rooms stand alone.
Honest assessment: Kuza is five weeks old as we write, and we are describing a plan more than a track record. The plan is good. A real binchotan grill and twice-weekly Toyosu fish are rarer in Scottsdale than the marketing makes them sound, and Clive Collective has already proved on this corner that it can run a room. The risks are the ones the group’s rooms always carry: a dining room that wants to be a lounge by 9, and prices you learn at the table. The first hour, at $5 negima and $15 sashimi, is the hedge.