What was Pink Taco?
In 2006 the Scottsdale Waterfront, the new towers and shops on the Arizona Canal at Scottsdale and Camelback, got a restaurant whose name the mayor didn’t want. Pink Taco was Harry Morton’s cantina brand, born at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, and Scottsdale was its second location. That spring, Mayor Mary Manross asked the company to change the name. It said no, the City Council recommended its liquor license unanimously anyway, and the argument went national: Morton defended the name on The Daily Show the week the restaurant opened in June 2006.
Inside it was a loud, bright cantina of tacos, margaritas and a patio, the kind of place the Waterfront had been built to attract. It lasted a little under three years. It closed on April 1, 2009, in the year the recession emptied a string of Scottsdale bars.
Sam Fox rebuilt the room and opened the first Culinary Dropout in it in January 2010.
The name fight
The Arizona Republic broke the story in April 2006: the mayor had asked Pink Taco to choose another name, and the company had refused. The city had little to work with. The name wasn’t illegal, and on May 15 the council recommended the liquor license to the state without a dissent. CBS, the AP and the East Valley Tribune picked up the dispute. On June 27, Morton went on The Daily Show, and the restaurant opened to the public the same week. Phoenix New Times’s columnist reported that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of all people, held a press conference on its patio.
Three years
Whatever the publicity did, it didn’t keep the restaurant open. On April 1, 2009, the Republic reported the Scottsdale Pink Taco closed, and New Times wrote that the company was shutting its three-year-old Scottsdale store to concentrate on Southern California. It went in the same months as SIX, Sugar Daddy’s, Lyte Lounge and Maloney’s.
Culinary Dropout
Fox Restaurant Concepts, headquartered around the corner, took the space. New Times reported in January 2010 that Sam Fox’s 13th concept would open in the “completely revamped space that used to house Pink Taco” on January 27. Culinary Dropout is still there, and the brand has spread around the country.
The sources, and the gaps
Main sources: Wikipedia’s Pink Taco article, which cites the Arizona Republic (April 22, 2006, and April 1, 2009), CBS and the AP (May 2006) and the East Valley Tribune; Phoenix New Times’s June 2006 column, its January 2010 Culinary Dropout announcement and its list of 2009 closings; Sunset’s Waterfront guide for the address; and Hoodline on the Boston closing in 2026.
What’s unsettled:
- The opening day. The week before New Times’s June 29, 2006 column; we haven’t found the date.
- The suite. We have the Waterfront’s 7135 E. Camelback address, not the unit number.
- The mayor’s words. We’ve seen the dispute summarized but not her letter.
Why it matters
Pink Taco is a small story about a bigger change. The Waterfront was Scottsdale’s bet on a denser, younger downtown in the mid-2000s, and it attracted national brands and some edgier ones. The city’s officials could object to a name but not stop it. The space did better with a local operator: Fox Restaurant Concepts was based nearby, and its Culinary Dropout is still in the room.