What is Onyx Bar & Lounge?
Onyx Bar & Lounge is the bar of the Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North, at 10600 E Crescent Moon Drive, the last address on the road before the boulders. It opened in the last week of January 2008 beside Talavera, when the resort replaced its original fine-dining room, Acacia, under executive chef Mel Mecinas, and Phoenix New Times introduced it as the resort’s “new watering hole.” The name is literal: the bar is framed in amber, color-ribboned onyx, backlit, and it is the first thing you see.
The second thing is the view. Onyx has 20 seats inside and 48 on a patio framed in glass that looks west over the Valley and south to Pinnacle Peak, and the resort has sold the room on its sunset since the day it opened. Fire pits run in winter. The design brief in 2007 was “Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired,” which in practice means low horizontal lines, stone and warm light, a nod to the Taliesin tradition that the whole Pinnacle Peak and Troon corridor borrows from.
For its first six years Onyx was a cocktail lounge with snacks. On March 18, 2014 the resort relaunched it with a full menu from Mecinas, housemade charcuterie, steak tartare with caviar, escargot, oysters Rockefeller, a butcher board and four entrée-size plates, and wine in three-, six- and nine-ounce pours. The current menu is lighter and sharper: Onyx Fried Chicken, jamón croquetas, lobster sliders, tuna tostadas, tuna crudo, truffle fries, and a Piñaco Spritz as the house drink. Since 2024 the room has also been the resort’s tearoom, with a weekend afternoon tea from 2 to 4.
It opens at 2 p.m. and closes at 11, every day, and it is for three kinds of people: resort guests, who treat it as the lobby bar; golfers off Troon North, who treat it as the nineteenth hole with a dress code; and locals from the north end who drive up for the one hour a day when the desert turns gold. Our verdict: the best sunset bar in the far north of Scottsdale, with food good enough that you will not need to move for dinner, though you should, because Talavera is next door.
How to drink at Onyx
Book the patio for the sunset. The 48 outdoor seats are the reason to come and the 20 indoor ones are where you sit if you did not plan. Reserve on OpenTable or at (480) 513-5085 for a table 45 minutes before sunset; in January that is around 5, in June closer to 7:30. The resort describes the show plainly, the landscape going “from vibrant gold to deep twilight hues” as the sun drops behind Pinnacle Peak, and it is not exaggerating. The dress code is smart casual, which at Troon North means golf clothes are fine and swimwear is not. Our guide to Scottsdale’s rooftop bars and sunset patios puts this one at the top of the north-end list.
Order the signatures. The Piñaco Spritz is the drink the resort leads with, and the rest of the list runs classic: a Troon Traditional Margarita, a prickly pear margarita, a Negroni, a martini, zero-proof versions, and a back bar heavy on tequila, whiskey and gin. Wine is by the glass in a wide selection, a habit from the 2014 relaunch, when pours came in three sizes so you could taste through the list. On the food side, start with the tuna tostadas or the tuna crudo, share the jamón croquetas and the truffle fries, and order the Onyx Fried Chicken, which the resort calls its signature dish. The lobster sliders are the splurge. Third-party listings put the spend at $30 to $50 a person, which is honest for two drinks and three plates at a Four Seasons.
Tea on the weekend. Afternoon tea started in March 2024 as a two-month Tranquili-Tea, one seating a day at $80 for two (or $125 with bottomless mimosas, Bellinis and Aperol spritzes), built by executive pastry chef Yudith Bustos: smoked salmon and herb Boursin on brown bread, Arizona heirloom tomato with whipped ricotta and grilled peach, prosciutto and fig, Southwest egg salad on brioche, buttermilk-apricot scones with lemon curd and clotted cream, and four sweets named the Beehive, the Onyx, the Cactus and the Sunset. From September 2024 it became a standing weekend service, Friday through Sunday, 2 to 4 p.m., at $80 for adults and $40 for children, reservations required. Listings since have shown the days drifting, so confirm with the resort.
Timing and the drive. Onyx is 30 to 40 minutes from Old Town up Pima Road and Dynamite Boulevard, past the trailhead for Pinnacle Peak Park. Hours are 2 to 11 daily, and the room is quiet before 4, full from sunset to about 9 in season, and empty by 10 in summer. Dinner is next door: Talavera takes the sunset-side tables first, so book both if you want to move from the bar to a steak without losing the view.
The lounge the Four Seasons built for the view it already had
When the Four Seasons opened at Troon North in December 1999, it put a formal restaurant, Acacia, and a formal three-meal room, Crescent Moon, into a resort whose best feature was the desert outside. By the middle of the 2000s that model was failing everywhere in Scottsdale; the Phoenician would close Mary Elaine’s in 2008 and the Hyatt was about to turn the Golden Swan into a bistro. The Four Seasons began a renovation in July 2007, and in November 2007 New Times reported the plan: Acacia would become Talavera, with dramatic colors, tableside presentations, a private wine cellar and, adjacent to it, “a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired lounge called Onyx” for cocktails and small plates. Both opened in the last week of January 2008, by the paper’s February 1 account, with Mecinas running the kitchen.
Onyx’s job was to monetize the sunset. Talavera’s dining room faced it too, but a steakhouse needs a reservation and two hours; a lounge with 48 patio seats needs neither, and it could take the hotel guest at 5, the golfer at 6 and the local at 7. A 2015 travel profile described the room as drinks and small plates with the Sonoran sunset behind Pinnacle Peak, which is the same sentence the resort uses now. The 2014 relaunch was the one attempt to make it a restaurant, with Mecinas’s charcuterie and four entrées and a 4-to-midnight schedule; the menu has since settled back toward what a lounge does best, shareable plates and a signature drink, with the fried chicken as the dish people mention.
The tea is the newer idea. Scottsdale has few afternoon teas; the Phoenician repositioned its Tea Court in its 2017 renovation, and the Four Seasons moved into the gap in 2024, first as a spring special and then as a weekend fixture. Food and beverage director Rita Vale pitched it as “the perfect excuse for an afternoon reset or celebration,” and the Southwest egg salad and prickly pear cheesecake on the stand tell you where it is being served.
What the record does not say: whether Onyx ever had a separate chef, what the design actually borrowed from Wright beyond the press release’s adjective, and when the 2014 entrée menu was retired. The Four Seasons does not publish history, and the Valley press covers Talavera, not its bar; the 2014 relaunch is the last time a critic wrote about Onyx on its own. The resort’s sibling room, Proof, took Crescent Moon’s space in 2012 and gets the casual-dining press; Onyx gets the sunset photographs.
Honest assessment: Onyx is a hotel bar, and a very good one, and the difference between those two statements is the patio. The cocktails are made properly, the small plates are better than they need to be, the tea is a genuine service in a city short of them, and the prices are Four Seasons prices without being absurd. Its only competition for the sunset is the deck at Talavera next door, which is the same view with a steak. If you are already in the far north, this is where to end the day; if you are in Old Town, it is a drive you make once a season, on purpose, with a reservation.