What is Kyoto Scottsdale?
Kyoto Scottsdale is the Japanese restaurant at 7170 E Stetson Drive, on the corner of Scottsdale Road where Stetson Drive runs east into the bar district, with the Waterfront at its back. Chef Masa Kudo opened it in 1982, when, in the restaurant’s own telling, Old Town was “developing rapidly.” He chose the name because Kyoto, in Japanese, signifies the heart or capital of a region, and he built the menu on seasoned family recipes: teriyaki sauces, soups and dressings made from fresh herbs and imported spices. The restaurant calls itself Arizona’s oldest operating Japanese restaurant, and for a generation of Scottsdale residents it was the first place they tried teppanyaki, sushi, sake or a Kirin.
The man running it now learned the place from the founder. Erik Yee started at Kyoto in 1997 and, by his account, Kudo taught him every part of the operation over the next two decades. When Kudo retired, roughly nine years before the April 2025 Arizona’s Family profile that recorded the handover, Yee became owner. “It really is a legacy and I’m very proud to be able to carry it on,” he told the station. The recipes did not change. Everything but the soy sauce and sriracha is made in house, the teriyaki sauce takes three days, and the house ginger dressing sells by the bottle to customers who want it at home.
The room is two restaurants in one: a sushi bar turning out house rolls such as the baked Salmon Volcano and the Point Break, and teppanyaki grills where chefs cook at the table with knife tricks, a squawking rubber chicken (Chef Armando) and an egg slide (Chef Ricky) that regulars ask for by name. It serves lunch bentos at 11, a daily happy hour from 3 to 6, and dinner until 9 or 10.
Who it is for: families and birthday tables at the grills, sushi regulars at the bar, and, as Phoenix Magazine put it in December 2025, the “20-somethings who party their way through dinner before hitting the clubs.” Our verdict: an honest, unfashionable, forty-year-old neighborhood Japanese restaurant that happens to sit at the loudest corner in Scottsdale, and the better for it.
Ordering at Kyoto
Pick a side of the room. The teppanyaki tables are dinner and a show; each meal comes with a ginger-dressing house salad, miso or beef soup, vegetable stir fry, a shrimp appetizer and dessert, and the posted menu prices it by protein at lunch and dinner: misoyaki tofu $15 and $20, chicken breast $18 and $23, Alaskan cod $18 and $24, Scottish salmon or prime New York strip $20 and $30, colossal shrimp or filet mignon $25 and $35, jumbo scallops $28 and $42, twin lobster tails $28 and $46. Combos add a smaller portion of a second meat for $4 to $14, fried rice is a $1 or $2 upgrade, and OpenTable notes a $10 split-plate charge at the grill. Lunch pricing runs 11 to 5.
Or sit at the sushi bar. The 2026 sushi menu runs from traditional rolls, California or tuna at $10 and spicy tuna at $12, up to the signature rolls: Candy Cane $20, Dynamite Roll $24, and the Salmon Volcano, Point Break and Slice of Heaven at $25 each. Nigiri is $9 to $17 for two pieces, toro $25, and the Kyoto Sashimi Mishmash, eighteen pieces across six fish, is $45. The kitchen menu is the old-school side: chicken teriyaki $20, salmon teriyaki $23, New York steak in garlic sauce $25, katsu chicken $19, Kyoto ribs $16, dynamite scallops $16, a poke bowl $18 and a chicken ramen at $17 that grew out of Yee’s trips to Japan.
Lunch is the value. The summer lunch menu prices every bento at $10, teriyaki chicken, steak, shrimp or salmon, cutlet katsu, white fish, pork and ginger, or a sushi-roll bento, each with miso soup, house salad, orange slices and steamed rice.
Happy hour. Every day from 3 to 6: edamame $5, Kyoto ribs $10, gyoza, spring rolls, shishito peppers and jalapeño poppers $7 to $8, spicy tuna, spicy salmon, spicy yellowtail, California and veggie rolls at $7, salmon roll $5, drafts $5 and $8, well drinks and house wine $7, a sake bomber $10. Signature cocktails such as the Spirited Away (yuzu vodka, nigori sake, lavender) are $16 at full price, and parties of five or more pay a 20 percent service charge.
Getting there. Hours are 11 to 9 Monday through Thursday and Sunday, 11 to 10 Friday and Saturday; AAA and some listings show an hour later, so trust the website. Reserve online or at (480) 990-9374. The Scottsdale Trolley stops in front, the Waterfront garages are a block away, and the lot behind the building is small. For what surrounds it after dark, see our guide to Old Town nightlife.
The Japanese restaurant that outlasted the corner it stands on
When Kudo opened in 1982, the 1980s Old Town around him was galleries, western shops and the first wave of resort-era restaurants; Stetson Drive was not yet a name anyone outside the neighborhood knew. Japanese food in the Valley then meant a handful of hibachi houses and a few sushi bars for the adventurous, and Kyoto was both at once, which is why so many locals date their first sushi to it. The site’s own history page leans on that memory rather than on dates, and the record is thin: we found no 1980s review, no account of whether the restaurant has always occupied this exact building, and no story about Kudo beyond the title “master chef.” The oldest-in-Arizona claim is the restaurant’s; the nearest comparison in our own guides is Sushi on Shea, which opened in 1994, and the teppanyaki palace Sapporo on north Scottsdale Road, which dates to about 2000.
What changed was everything around it. The Scottsdale Waterfront rose on the canal behind the restaurant in the 2000s, and Stetson Drive became the spine of the Entertainment District, with clubs, hotels and later the big-money Japanese rooms, Nobu at Fashion Square among them. Kyoto did not chase any of it. It kept its $10 bentos and its rubber chicken, and the district came to it: Phoenix Magazine’s 2025 guide describes a room “slammed with 20-somethings” by 6 p.m. who “party their way through dinner before hitting the clubs,” and draws the practical conclusion that high turnover means fresh fish. The restaurant’s own marketing now calls it “Kyoto Scottsdale at the Waterfront,” which tells you which neighbor it wants to be associated with.
The succession is the real story. Restaurants of this age usually end when the founder does; Kyoto’s founder spent twenty years training his replacement from inside the building. Yee joined in 1997, took over around 2016, and has added rather than replaced: a ramen program, the Ramen Express food truck that works local festivals with a planned permanent spot by the canal, seasonal specials such as half-price rolls on summer Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a cocktail list with Japanese whisky and yuzu that the 1982 room would not have recognized. The sauces are still Kudo’s.
Honest assessment: Kyoto is not where Scottsdale’s best sushi is served; the omakase counters and the hotel rooms do that. It is where the city’s Japanese dining habit started, it is cheaper and friendlier than anything else at this corner, and the teppanyaki is a genuinely good family night or bachelorette dinner before the bars. Judge it as a 44-year-old neighborhood restaurant with a loud address, and it is one of the most reliable tables in Old Town.