What is Liz Modern Asian?
Liz Modern Asian is the one family-run Chinese restaurant inside Scottsdale Quarter, the open-air shopping district on the east side of Scottsdale Road at Greenway-Hayden Loop. It sits at 15323 N Scottsdale Road, Suite E-145, on the Quarter’s interior pedestrian street, in a small space that had been Le Macaron French Pastries. WhatNow reported the new state liquor license in January 2022, the restaurant opened in February 2022, and by March 8 Mouth by Southwest had it serving traditional and modern Hong Kong-style dishes.
The owners are a family identified in listings and reviews only as Liz and Howard; a Yelp reply from the business is signed Howard N., and neither the opening coverage nor the restaurant’s own website prints a surname or a back story. What they say about themselves is on the website’s original tagline: great Hong Kong-style food, made from scratch. In practice that means a menu built around steamed buns, soft white bao split and stuffed with crispy chicken, char siu pork, salt-and-pepper shrimp, barbecue brisket or roast pork belly, alongside roast pork fried rice, shaking steak, Mongolian beef, salt-and-pepper shrimp, orange chicken, pork potstickers, beef empanadas, wonton soup, a sushi section and a whole Peking duck that has to be ordered ahead. Some listings call it American-style Chinese, and the orange chicken and lo mein make the case; the buns, the char siu and the duck make the Hong Kong case.
Who eats here: Quarter shoppers at lunch, the Kierland and Quarter apartment crowd on weeknights, families who have found the orange chicken, and, on December 25, a large share of the north side’s Jewish community, because Liz keeps Christmas Day hours of 11 to 6 when almost everything else in the Quarter is dark. The room is small and warm rather than designed, which in a district full of national brands counts as a feature.
Our verdict: the best casual Chinese meal in the Quarter or Kierland Commons, with buns worth the trip, uneven portions, and a kitchen that is better in person at lunch than it is through a delivery app at 8 p.m.
Ordering at Liz Modern Asian
Order the buns first. The steamed buns are the signature and the reason the restaurant has a reputation at all. Five fillings: crispy chicken, char siu pork, salt-and-pepper shrimp, BBQ brisket and roast pork belly. Reviewers single out the brisket and the crispy chicken; the restaurant’s catering menu on ezCater lists them at roughly $5 to $7 apiece, and the dine-in price is in the same range. Order two a person. The consistent complaint, on Yelp and Google alike, is a bun with too little filling, so if yours arrives thin, say so; the staff are known for hospitality and the kitchen is a few feet away.
Then build the table. Roast pork fried rice is the starch to share. Salt-and-pepper shrimp and the shaking steak (a wok-seared cubed beef in the Vietnamese style) are the two plates that read most like Hong Kong. Mongolian beef and orange chicken are the American side of the menu and the family favorites; one Google reviewer called Liz’s orange chicken the best she and her son had ever had. The pork potstickers, steamed or fried, the beef empanadas, the chicken-filled spring rolls and the cheese puffs are the starters people reorder. Wonton soup and lo mein round out the comfort end. The whole Peking duck is a pre-order; call a day ahead. There is a short sushi list, customizable, which is a convenience for mixed groups rather than a destination. Prices are not posted on the website; expect $15 to $30 a head, with delivery marked up through DoorDash and Toast.
Timing. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 to 6 Sunday, and the restaurant keeps 11 to 6 hours on Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Lunch on a weekday is the best version of the restaurant: hot buns, a calm room, the Quarter’s fountains outside. Friday and Saturday evenings bring the pre-theater crowd from the Quarter’s cinema, and the holidays fill the book; see our holiday season guide for the Christmas-dinner logic.
Book and park. Reservations are through the Reserve link on the website; walk-ins are fine outside the holidays. The restaurant recommends the Quarter’s northeast garage near Eddie V’s, close to 73rd Place and North Street, and the walk is a minute. All of the Quarter’s garages are free. The restaurant also does catering and pitches itself for private holiday parties, and it has appeared on Arizona Restaurant Week’s list of participants, which is a cheap way to try a three-course version of the menu.
A small family kitchen in a district built for chains
Scottsdale Quarter was never designed for a restaurant like Liz. The district opened in 2009 as the bigger, newer answer to Kierland Commons across the road, and its restaurant row was leased to the national and regional names that could carry a 6,000-square-foot room: Dominick’s, True Food Kitchen, Eddie V’s, a succession of concepts in the big corner boxes. The small suites on the interior street went to franchises and dessert counters, which is how Le Macaron French Pastries came to occupy E-145. When it left, the landlord’s choices were another franchise or an independent, and the independent that signed was a family promising Hong Kong-style scratch cooking.
The record on the family is thin, and we have not padded it. WhatNow’s Nadine Blanco reported the liquor license on January 20, 2022, reached the owner, and got only that the restaurant was coming soon and the owner was busy preparing the grand opening. Mouth by Southwest noted the opening on March 8 without naming anyone. Listings and reviews call the owners Liz and Howard; a Yelp reply is signed Howard N. There is no profile, no interview, no origin story in print. What there is instead is four years of reviews, several hundred of them, that agree on two things: the buns and the hospitality are the draw, and the portions are smaller than at the Chinese-American places people grew up with. A reviewer who called the food among the best Asian fusion in the Valley and another who said the portions were half the size of other Asian restaurants were both describing the same kitchen.
The restaurant’s smartest decision was the calendar. By staying open on Christmas Day, Thanksgiving and Labor Day, it became one of a handful of Chinese restaurants north of the 101 that the Valley’s Jewish families can count on for December 25, a tradition Copper Courier’s annual guide now lists it in alongside Jade Palace on Shea. In a district where most tenants are closed on the holiday, that one shift a year is worth a month of ordinary Tuesdays and a great deal of goodwill. For the rest of the Quarter’s eating options, see our guide to the Quarter.
Honest assessment: Liz Modern Asian is a good neighborhood Chinese restaurant in a place that does not have neighborhoods, and the mismatch cuts both ways. It gets foot traffic and holiday business no strip-mall restaurant could dream of, and it gets judged by shoppers expecting chain portions at chain speed. Eat there at lunch, order the buns and the fried rice, accept that the duck needs a phone call and the sushi is beside the point, and it is one of the better small kitchens to open on the north side in the 2020s. Order it cold through an app at 8 p.m. on a Saturday and you will write the other kind of review.