What is Pistoleros Parrilla?
A parrilla is a grill, and the one at Pistoleros Parrilla burns mesquite. The restaurant at 4333 N Civic Center Plaza is a wood-fired Mexican steakhouse, and it is built on a friendship more than a concept. Luke Kory, who runs Old Town’s Boondocks Patio & Grill with his brother Jake, grew up alongside Marco Garcia in the borderland orbit of Nogales. Years later, after Garcia became a chef, the two reunited with a plan to bring Scottsdale the Sonoran cooking they grew up on.
The building tells you this is not a typical Old Town bar. It is a former office building, about 5,000 square feet, reconfigured for a restaurant and bar, with a second-story patio. Downstairs the kitchen works over live wood. Every steak is mesquite-grilled and sliced to order and served with local flour or corn tortillas: an arrachera skirt steak, a filet, a 16-ounce bone-in New York, an 1855 ribeye and, for the table, the 40-ounce bone-in Vaquero Tomahawk of Local Stock Yards beef.
Around the steaks is a menu that reads like a tour of northern Mexico: mochomos (shredded, crisp-fried beef), mesquite-grilled octopus in achiote-citrus, a Sonoran shrimp cocktail and aguachile, Nogales Entomatadas, and Pacifico-braised Sonoran short ribs in chile garlic sauce. The tequila and bacanora list completes the picture.
The project was announced in 2025 for a fourth-quarter opening. By 2026 it was taking reservations on OpenTable and appearing in Arizona Restaurant Week, the newest sit-down room in a corner of Old Town better known for patio bars.
The order, the lounge and the timing
Start Sonoran. The mochomos with tomatillo salsa and avocado are the plate that most clearly says “border,” and the toritos de camarón (güero chiles stuffed with shrimp and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon) are the rich, salty counterweight. The mariscos section is worth exploring: ceviche, a green aguachile, ahi crudo with chiltepin oil and the tomato-heavy Sonoran shrimp cocktail.
Build the table around the grill. Two people can share the arrachera or the La Sonorense plate (petite filet with cauliflower relleno and rajas). Four should order the Vaquero Tomahawk and add sides: frijoles charros with bacon, black beans with chipotle, rajas con crema and mesquite-grilled vegetables. A surf-and-turf add-on of shrimp brochetas is available with any steak. Non-steak eaters have the Dorado mahi-mahi, a half chicken with salsa verde, or the entomatadas.
Save room for the Pisto Lounge. The bar runs later than the dining room, until midnight Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday and 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, with its own small-plates menu: filet tacos on blue corn, octopus tacos, taquitos and a bacon-wrapped Sonoran dog on a bolillo. Cocktails come in flights (four margaritas, including a smoked watermelon with mezcal, or four martinis) plus bacanora drinks and a jalapeño-smoked old fashioned.
Know the calendar. Dinner is Wednesday through Sunday from 4 p.m.; the restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday. Reserve on OpenTable, especially in high season and around spring training weekends. The Scottsdale Civic Center lawns are a short walk south for a stroll after dinner, and Boondocks and The Hot Chick are just around the corner on 75th Street if the evening keeps going.
A border steakhouse in Old Town
Old Town has plenty of steakhouses and plenty of Mexican kitchens, from long-running family cantinas to modern rooms like The Mission. What Old Town lacked was the restaurant that combines them the way the Arizona-Mexico border does, where carne asada, mesquite and good beef are one tradition.
That tradition is specific. Sonora is ranching country, and its cooking centers on beef grilled over mesquite, flour tortillas, beans and simple salsas. Nogales, the twin city that straddles the border sixty miles south of Tucson, is where many Arizonans first ate it. Pistoleros Parrilla builds its menu on that experience: the restaurant’s own account says every dish “reflects the soul of Northern Mexico,” and the names on the menu (Sonorense, Nogales Entomatadas, Sonoran short rib, Sonoran dog) bear it out.
It is also a sign of how this corner of Old Town has grown. The blocks of 75th Street and Civic Center Plaza on the eastern edge of the Entertainment District were long a patchwork of offices and patio bars. The Kory brothers built a following there with Boondocks, then converted an office building into a destination steakhouse with a second-story patio, a bet that the 2020s Old Town diner will walk a few blocks past the clubs for a serious dinner.
The honest assessment: Pistoleros is new, and prices at the top of the steak list are pure Scottsdale. But a kitchen that cooks over mesquite, puts mochomos and capirotada on the menu and names its dishes after Nogales offers something Old Town has not had: a steakhouse that tastes like Arizona’s border rather than a national chain.