What was La Fonda del Sol?
La Fonda del Sol was the Mexican restaurant you drove past a thousand times at Shea and Scottsdale Road and, if you were lucky, finally went into. It sat at 7223 E Shea Boulevard, at the north end of the strip center on the southeast corner of Shea Boulevard and Scottsdale Road, the busiest intersection of the Shea corridor, between a vape store and a bicycle shop. By its own account it opened in 1978 and was owned by two families in turn, the second from 1990; its Instagram described it as family owned and operated for 45 years. The press we found never names the owners, and a Yelp commenter’s credit to the Romley family is the only founding claim on the record.
Phoenix New Times gave it the Best Neighborhood Mexican Restaurant, Scottsdale award in Best of Phoenix 2008, calling it an old-fashioned, down-to-earth Mexican joint, and that was the whole brand. The menu ran from cheese crisps to octopus and ceviche, with chile rellenos, cheese enchiladas, chimichangas, flautas, machaca, shrimp fajitas, homemade salsas and free refills of chips, salsa and guacamole. A wall of customer photos by the door included Phoenix native Lynda Carter. From 11 to 3, Monday through Saturday, there was a $9.95 lunch buffet of menudo, cocido, chile rellenos, enchiladas, fajita meats and chicken in red sauce, which New Times’ Jenny Zink wrote up in May 2015 as one of the best lunches under $10 in the Valley.
Who it was for: the Shea corridor’s office lunch crowd, the McCormick Ranch and Scottsdale Ranch families who had been going since the 1980s, and anyone who wanted Sonoran food without the Old Town price. For a run-down of the genre see our best Mexican restaurants in Scottsdale.
In 2023 it left the corner for a suite in the Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch, two miles east. The regulars followed, then complained, then stopped. By early 2026 reviews described a new owner and a shrinking menu, and in May 2026 a neighbor posted that it was closing for good that Friday. Our verdict: for four decades one of the most honest cheap lunches in Scottsdale, undone by a move it did not survive.
What the menu and the room were
The buffet was the institution. Zink’s 2015 review is the fullest description of the Shea room. You walked in, the buffet was on the left, and the wall of photos was on the right. The $9.95 spread ran Monday through Saturday from 11 to 3 and held menudo, the tripe soup, and cocido, the beef soup, cheese enchiladas and cheese chile rellenos (both vegetarian and, she wrote, never-ending), chicken and steak fajita meat, shredded and ground beef, rice and beans, flour tortillas, taco shells and tostadas to build your own, a cold bar of pico, cilantro, limes, lettuce and cabbage, sour cream, a fish dish, and chicken in red sauce, her favorite. No guacamole on the buffet and no salad dressing, which were the two complaints. The regular menu was available alongside it.
The salsa had a rule. Two small unlabeled bottles arrived with the chips. The one with fewer visible spices was the hot one, hot enough to run your nose, and the house move was to mix them. The location page promised free refills of salsa and guacamole, which in the Shea years was true.
The menu was Sonoran and a little more. Chile rellenos were the dish diners named most, with a green chile tamale stuffed relleno as the variation; cheese enchiladas, chimichangas, flautas, rolled tacos, quesadillas, machaca, queso with beef, shrimp fajitas, and, odd for a strip-mall corner, octopus and ceviche. Cadillac margaritas at the bar. New Times’ 2008 award cited the food’s old-fashioned quality rather than any single plate, and that was the point: nothing on the menu had changed in a generation, which is why the chimichanga crowd kept coming.
The Mercado years were different. The Via Linda suite, 3,043 square feet at the corner of Via Linda and Mountain View in the Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch, had high arches, brick walls and a patio, and the patio became the draw; a Valentine’s Day dinner there was offered at $125 a person. But the buffet did not make the move, and longtime customers wrote that the menu had been streamlined, the prices raised and the portions cut, while others found the dishes remarkably consistent. OpenTable took reservations, which the Shea room never needed.
Getting there, then. The Shea strip had its own lot off Shea; the Mercado’s lot off Via Linda was never full. Phone was (480) 991-9282 at both addresses.
The corner, the move and the end
Shea and Scottsdale Road is the intersection where north Scottsdale begins, and in 1978, by the restaurant’s own account, it was still the edge of town: McCormick Ranch was a decade old, Scottsdale Ranch was being graded, and a Mexican restaurant in a strip center on the southeast corner was a neighborhood bet on neighborhoods that did not yet exist. They arrived. By the time the second family took over in 1990 the corner was one of the busiest in the city, and La Fonda del Sol’s survival through the 1990s and 2000s depended on being the opposite of what grew up around it: cheap, unchanged, unfashionable. New Times’ 2008 award put it exactly: old-fashioned, down-to-earth.
The press record is thin because the restaurant never courted it. Two New Times items in 18 years, the 2008 award and the 2015 buffet review, are the whole of it; the rest is 1,100 Google reviews and 700 on Yelp. Nobody wrote a profile of the owners, so this guide cannot name them with confidence. The Yelp business description, which owners write, says two families and a 1990 handover; a customer’s claim that the Romley family founded it is the only name attached to the start, and we could not confirm it.
The move is the mystery. In 2023, after some 45 years on Shea, the restaurant relocated to Suite H134 in the Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch, the space Gabriella’s had vacated. Whether the landlord forced it, the lease ran out or the family wanted a patio is not on the record. Tripadvisor reviewers were reporting the move by April 2023; Nextdoor marked the Shea address permanently closed. The Shea regulars judged the new room harshly, “totally changed, not for the better,” and by February and March 2026 reviews on Yelp and Roadtrippers were describing a new owner. A March 25, 2026, OpenTable review said it was not what it once was and that several staples were gone.
The end came quietly. On May 12, 2026, a neighbor posted on Nextdoor that La Fonda del Sol was closing for good that Friday, and others thanked them for the warning so they could get a last meal in. Uber Eats listed it closed as of June 11; Yelp and Google marked it permanently closed. No newspaper or magazine has written it up, which for a 48-year-old Scottsdale restaurant is its own small scandal. The Mercado suite is back on the leasing flyer. The Shea strip on the southeast corner has been re-let, and the press does not say to whom.
Honest assessment: La Fonda del Sol was never a great restaurant; it was a great neighborhood one, and the distinction matters. The buffet was the best $10 in the Shea corridor for a decade, the rellenos were honest, and the room did not change, which is what the people who loved it wanted. The move broke the contract with those people, the ownership change finished it, and by the time it closed the thing that made it valuable, 45 years in one place, was already gone. It joins Garcia’s and Los Olivos in the story of family Mexican in Scottsdale, as the one that lasted longest on the north side and left with the least notice.