What is Moxies?
Moxies is the Arizona flagship of a Canadian chain that has spent four decades perfecting the upscale-casual formula, and it sits at 7014 E Camelback Road, Suite B120, on the ground level of Scottsdale Fashion Square, facing the mall’s Camelback Road side. It opened on Thursday, August 10, 2023, in the former Thirsty Lion, as the brand’s first restaurant in Arizona and its seventh in the United States.
The company behind it is Eatz Inc., a franchisee whose president and CEO Paul Randle called the room the company’s new flagship, and the kitchen belongs to executive chef and director of culinary and beverage Brandon Thordarson. The brand itself started in Calgary in September 1986 as a 96-seat deli called Muncie’s; the name changed within two months because customers kept saying Munchie’s. It became a premium-casual chain in 2004, grew past 50 locations across Canada under Northland Properties, the Gaglardi family company, and came to the U.S. in 2016 after Northland’s president, Tom Gaglardi, bought the Dallas Stars.
The Scottsdale room is 12,000 square feet with about 350 seats indoors and out, built around a large island bar. Outside is a shaded patio with misters, fire tables and heaters; inside are indoor greenery, patterned wallpaper, gold fixtures and more than 20 TVs in the lounge. The menu is what the chain calls modern American and globally inspired: a Tuna Sushi Stack, a Salmon and Avocado Cobb, Steak Bites with horseradish aioli, a Chipotle Mango Chicken on lemon quinoa, a short rib Bolognese, a miso ramen, a beef vindaloo and a 16-ounce prime ribeye, with margaritas, a sommelier-picked wine list and a lineup of shooters that includes a peanut butter and jelly shot.
It is for mall shoppers, the Old Town visitor who wants a table without a scene, and anyone who needs dinner after 10 p.m. at the one end of Old Town that otherwise closes early. Our verdict: Moxies is the most useful restaurant at Fashion Square rather than the best, a big, well-run, late-closing room that does exactly what its hours promise.
How to use Moxies
Order the signatures. The Tuna Sushi Stack is the dish the chain leads with, and the Salmon and Avocado Cobb, with sushi-grade salmon, seasoned rice, mango, soy-ginger glaze, spicy mayo and prawn crackers, is its companion. The Steak Bites (marinated sirloin, horseradish aioli) are the right bar snack. For a main, the Chipotle Mango Chicken with lemon quinoa, avocado and salsa was $30 when Mouth by Southwest priced the opening menu, the short rib Bolognese $23, the miso ramen $17, the beef vindaloo $22 and the 16-ounce prime ribeye $54. Experience Scottsdale singles out the desserts: the Mile High Mocha Pie and the Sticky Toffee Pudding.
Drink the Fusion Fashioned. The bar’s opening list built three signatures: the Fusion Fashioned (Toki Japanese whisky, Knob Creek rye, cane syrup, double bitters, orange and lemon peel), the Millionaire Margarita (Herradura Legend añejo, Grand Marnier Cuvée Louis Alexandre, agave, lime) and a Spicy Mango Margarita on Ghost tequila. There are 12 beers on tap and about six shooters.
Timing. Hours are 11 a.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday, with brunch Saturday and Sunday until 3 p.m. Happy hour is Monday through Friday, 3 to 6 p.m., with specially priced cocktails and shared plates, and bottles of wine are half price on Wednesdays. The late close is the real feature: the kitchen runs an hour or two past every other room at the mall, which is why the late-night guides list it. See our late-night food guide and the happy hour guide.
Book ahead on weekends. Reservations are online, by phone or through OpenTable, and with 350 seats you rarely need one Monday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday nights, weekend brunch and any weekend the mall is full are the exceptions. The patio is first come, first served, and it is the seat to take from November to April; in summer the misters do their job.
Getting there. Park in the garage off Camelback Road rather than the surface lot; Suite B120 is on the ground level facing the street. The mall’s newer restaurants, Catch, Élephante and Din Tai Fung, are in the south wing a few minutes’ walk inside, and Moxies is where you go when those three are booked.
The chain that arrived first and closed last
When Fashion Square announced Moxies in the summer of 2023, it did so in the same breath as Catch and Élephante, two of the most expensive restaurants ever built in Scottsdale. The three names made an odd set. Catch is a flashy seafood house from New York, Élephante a Santa Monica coastal-Italian room, and Moxies a Canadian chain whose busiest stores sit in Alberta office parks. But Moxies was the one that opened first, in August 2023, and for sixteen months, until Élephante arrived in December 2024, it was the only evidence that the mall’s restaurant row was growing.
The brand’s story is a very Canadian one. It started in Calgary in 1986 as a deli, became a family restaurant, and in 2004 made the jump to premium-casual, the segment it now shares with Earls and Cactus Club. Its parent, Northland Properties, is the Gaglardi family’s Vancouver company, which also owns the Sandman hotels and, since 2011, the Dallas Stars; the hockey purchase is the reason the first U.S. Moxies opened in Dallas in 2016, and Texas and Florida got the next ones. Scottsdale was the seventh. The franchise model is how it got here: Eatz Inc. and Paul Randle hold the Arizona rights, and there are ten U.S. restaurants today, from Boston Seaport to West Palm Beach, with no second Arizona store yet.
Thordarson’s menu is the chain’s menu, which is a point for and against. It is broad enough that a table of six with six appetites can all eat, and the house-made pastas, sushi stacks and curries are better than the format suggests. It is not a chef’s restaurant and does not pretend to be one. What Scottsdale added was the room: the island bar, the misted patio, the wall of greenery and the TVs are an Old Town design, not a Calgary one, and the hours are an Old Town idea too. Nothing else at Fashion Square, including Nobu and Ocean 44 on the Camelback side, serves past midnight.
The press record is thin by design. AZ Big Media and In Business ran the opening announcement, Mouth by Southwest priced the menu, Experience Scottsdale praised the desserts and the late-night guides added it to their lists; nobody has written a full review, and the record does not say how the room has performed since. It is a chain restaurant in a mall, and the trade papers treat it as one.
Honest assessment: Moxies is the mall’s utility player, and we mean that kindly. It will not be anyone’s favorite meal in the 2020s restaurant boom at Fashion Square, but it seats 350, pours a proper old fashioned, costs half what its neighbors do and is open when they are dark. If you are at the mall after ten, or need a table of eight without a month’s notice, it is the right answer.