What is Mochilero Kitchen?
Mochilero Kitchen is the Scottsdale half of a two-restaurant family business, at 14850 N Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, Suite 117, in the Scottsdale Horizon center at Frank Lloyd Wright and Thompson Peak Parkway, on the east edge of the Airpark. It opened in June 2023 in the former MAD Greens, three years after siblings Jorge Cota and Meliza Miranda opened the original in Peoria in April 2020, the first week of the pandemic shutdown.
The name is Spanish for backpacker, and it is literal. Cota, a Tucson native who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale in 2009 and cooked at the Ritz-Carlton, The Phoenician and a JW Marriott, spent part of 2019 traveling through Mexico, 23 of its 32 states by his count, from Mérida and Oaxaca to Sonora and Mexico City, eating what each region cooked. Miranda, who had spent more than a decade at Constellation Brands as a state manager, took the bar and the back office. The menu they built is regional rather than Sonoran: a mole from their grandmother’s recipe, Papa Brava tacos modeled on Mexico City’s tacos de canasta, chile en nogada, pork pibil, red snapper zarandeado, birria, and about 40 dishes made from scratch every day. The restaurant has no freezers; someone is in the kitchen at 6:30 a.m. to prep.
The Scottsdale room took about a year to convert. It has a patio, bright wood interiors, a wooden wall whose cutouts resolve into the silhouette of Mexico from one angle, and a mural airbrushed by Daniel “El Faust” Campa. The bar carries more than 30 tequilas and mezcals, and the bartenders squeeze the limes and press the cantaloupe and cucumber juice each morning.
It serves lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday, brunch on the weekend, and is closed Monday. Who it is for: the families of the north Airpark and McDowell Mountain Ranch, the lunch trade from the offices along Frank Lloyd Wright, and anyone who has eaten enough chimichangas. Our verdict: the most serious regional Mexican kitchen in North Scottsdale at neighborhood prices, and the rare second location that feels like a first.
Ordering at Mochilero Kitchen
Hours and brunch. Tuesday through Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday 11:30 to 9, Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Monday. The weekend 10 a.m. open is for brunch: chilaquiles ($13), huevos rancheros ($16), sopes Benedict ($14), machaca and eggs ($14.95), churro waffles ($14.95), and brunch bowls of carne asada or chile negro around $15 and $16. Happy hour at the Scottsdale store is Tuesday through Friday, 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., an hour longer than Peoria’s.
Tacos first. The Mochilero Taco Trio ($17.50) is the order that explains the place: slow-braised short rib, beer-battered rock fish and shrimp diablo, three regions on one plate. On Taco Tuesday every taco goes à la carte, $5 for the Papa Brava, calabacitas or carnitas, $6 for short rib, chicken tinga, al pastor, roasted mushroom, pork chicharrón, ground beef or pork pibil, $7 for shrimp diablo, carne asada, Baja fish or grilled swordfish, and a Tuesday trio is $14.95. The short rib birria tacos with consommé were $6 each when In Business Magazine wrote them up in January 2025, and the quesabirria is the dish regulars photograph.
Then the entrées. Pork pibil is $22, short rib barbacoa $27, the tampiqueña (skirt steak, Oaxaca cheese, charred green chile, rice and beans) was $18 in early 2025, and chile en nogada, stuffed with meat and dried fruit under walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds, $22. The big plate is La Tablita, an 18-ounce bone-in rib eye with garlic shrimp for $65,. The mole is the recipe Cota’s grandmother served; a duck mole with mole negro, pickled vegetables, peanuts and crispy plantain joined the summer 2024 menu alongside agua chile, pulpo achiote (grilled octopus with crispy potatoes and aioli), campechana and an ahi tostada. Vegetarians get the mushroom taco, the chile relleno veggie stack and Oaxaca stuffed poblanos.
Drink. The house list runs through a Spicy Jalapeño Margarita, a Cantaloupe Tajín Martini, a Tamarindo Mule, a barrel-aged Mexico City and the Cucumbrero (jalapeño-infused blanco, cucumber, melon); 2024 added the Agua Loca (watermelon, lime, pomegranate), an Orange Creamsicle margarita with coconut cream and a blood orange margarita. Acoustic music plays some weekend nights.
Logistics. No reservations are offered on the website; online ordering, takeout, delivery and catering are. Parking is the center’s lot off Frank Lloyd Wright. The restaurant sits a mile east of the 101 at the Frank Lloyd Wright exit, below Thompson Peak, so it is the easy stop on the way home to DC Ranch or Grayhawk.
The backpacker’s kitchen that crossed the Valley
The Cotas’ story is the pandemic restaurant story told in the right order. Miranda had wanted to open something in Peoria for four years, she told ABC15, because the family had nowhere to eat out there, and the siblings spent a month in 2019 backpacking Mexico to decide what it would be. They opened in April 2020, a week into the shutdown, rewrote the menu so it would survive a to-go box, and went day by day. “Some people say we’re crazy, but I honestly think we’re really lucky,” Cota said that first week. Miranda called it a roller coaster. By the Peoria store’s third anniversary they were hiring 60 people for a second one.
They considered Avondale before choosing Scottsdale, about 25 miles east on the 101, and the choice says something about where regional Mexican cooking sells in the Valley. The 2020s brought North Scottsdale a run of serious Mexican rooms after years of cantinas: Elvira’s from Tubac at DC Ranch in 2024, The Mission at Kierland, and in the Airpark, Mochilero. Of these it is the least expensive and the most regional. Cota told ABC15 he had been frustrated that Mexican food was so often reduced to fast food and wanted “to show off the beautiful cuisine that Mexico has,” and the menu reads like the trip: Yucatán pibil, Puebla’s chile en nogada, Mexico City’s basket tacos, Oaxaca’s mole negro, the Pacific coast’s zarandeado. Our guide to the best Mexican restaurants in Scottsdale puts it in that company.
The press has been consistent and local: KTAR and ABC15 on the expansion, the Scottsdale Progress on the June 5, 2023 opening (CitySun Times had reported late June), AZ Big Media on the 2024 summer menu, In Business on the food in 2025. Sysco featured the restaurant as a customer, which is how the seasonal-menu plan got announced. What the record does not include is a full critic’s review, a seat count, or any ownership change; the siblings still run both stores and Cota is still executive chef as of 2025.
Honest assessment: Mochilero is not a bargain and not a fine-dining room; it is a scratch kitchen in a strip center charging $22 for pibil, which is fair for what arrives. The weekend brunch is the best in this corner of the Airpark, the taco trio is the right first order, and the mole is the dish to judge it on. If it has a weakness it is the room, pleasant rather than memorable, and the lack of reservations on a Friday. Compared with Los Sombreros or Barrio Queen, it is quieter, more earnest and closer to Mexico.