What was Pulque Fine Mexican Cuisine?
Pulque Fine Mexican Cuisine was a 48-seat white-tablecloth Mexican restaurant that opened with almost no notice and closed a week after it finally got some. It stood at 9619 N Hayden Road, Suite 108, in a strip center on the southeast corner of Hayden Road and Mountain View Road in McCormick Ranch, and it lasted from December 2020 to September 30, 2021.
Its chef was Danny Medina, who is from Chihuahua and had lived in Arizona for 35 years. He had cooked in some of the most expensive dining rooms in the Valley, among them Dominick’s Steakhouse and The Capital Grille, and at Pulque he cooked the food of Puebla and Oaxaca, built around mole. Neighbors who wrote about it on Nextdoor described it as run by the chef and his wife.
The room was one room: 48 seats, white tablecloths, a modest bar stocked with agave spirits, a painting of Frida Kahlo on one wall and a few plants. Lunch was tacos and tortas. Dinner was the point: soups, salads, ceviche and a handful of mostly grilled entrées in yellow, red or green mole, with a $35 ribeye in yellow mole at the top of the menu.
Phoenix New Times critic Chris Malloy reviewed it in September 2021, writing that there had been no influencer bonanza and no press, but “quietly, though, there has been quality eating,” and that Pulque added “a high-end restaurant that leads with substance rather than lavish style” to Mexican dining north of Via Linda. It closed a week later, on September 30, after nine months, and the restaurant’s farewell statement gave no reason. Our verdict: Pulque was one of the most serious Mexican kitchens McCormick Ranch has had, and too few people found out in time.
What the menu was
The moles. Medina’s cooking was organized around three moles. The yellow mole, smoky and fiery with guajillo and chile de árbol yet restrained enough to let its spices come through, was poured under the bistec mole amarillo ($35), a ribeye no thicker than an inch with picture-perfect grill marks, and over the flautas doradas ($8), crisp rolled chicken tacos zigzagged with crema. The green mole, built chiefly on serrano, jalapeño and poblano, had a sharp, clean heat and went with an arc of grilled scallops. A red mole rounded out the set.
Order the calamari. The calamari ($14) came breaded in blue corn, light enough that Malloy compared it to tempura, showered with parsley and sliced chile and served with a tangy apricot and chamoy dip; he called it one of the most unusual calamari dishes in town. Even the chips were fried to order, with the hot, oily sheen that tells you so.
The margaritas. Drinks were made by the servers rather than a bartender, which did not stop them from being good. The house Cadillac-style margarita used Codigo Blanco tequila, Cointreau and agave syrup infused with lavender ($16), in a glass rimmed with black lava salt, and Malloy gave it space in a story he wrote that year on the tequila cocktail. A neighbor on Nextdoor reported paying $7 for the lavender margarita in July 2021.
Lunch versus dinner. At lunch the menu was tacos and tortas at prices neighbors called reasonable, and the reviews on Nextdoor from that summer are mostly about lunch: the salsa, the al pastor tacos, the enchiladas, the guacamole. At dinner the tacos disappeared and the menu moved to plate meals.
Booking. With 48 seats, neighbors recommended reservations. Pulque sat in a small center at Hayden and Mountain View, with a Starbucks for a neighbor, a long way in spirit from the Old Town cantinas in our guide to Mexican food in Scottsdale.
A fine-dining chef’s own room, for nine months
Danny Medina’s résumé is a familiar one in the Valley: decades in Arizona, much of it in high-end steakhouse kitchens whose menus had nothing to do with the cooking of Chihuahua, Puebla or Oaxaca. Pulque was his chance to cook his own food at the prices he had learned to charge for other people’s, and he opened it in December 2020, in the worst year for restaurants in living memory, in a 48-seat room in a neighborhood strip center. The New Times review dates the opening to the first days of 2021; the paper’s closing report says December, and we follow it.
For nine months it ran on word of mouth. The surviving traces are neighbors on Nextdoor in July 2021 calling it a great neighborhood find, praising the homemade chips and the lavender margarita and the friendliness of the chef and his wife. Then, on September 23, 2021, Chris Malloy paired it with Testal Mexican Kitchen on Grand Avenue in a review about regional Mexican cooking, opening with the line that if you think Mexican food is supposed to be cheap, he had bad news for you, and concluding that each dish was worth every penny.
On September 30, Pulque closed. New Times reported it on October 5, quoting the restaurant’s statement: “With our dearest sincerity, we would like to thank all of you for coming in and sharing a smile as you enjoyed our slice of Hispanic cuisine.” No reason was given. The record we found does not say what has occupied Suite 108 since, and we have not guessed. It belongs with the 2020s openings that launched into the pandemic and could not wait for the crowds to come back.
Honest assessment: on the evidence of the one full review it received, Pulque was cooking at a level few Mexican restaurants in Scottsdale attempt. A $35 ribeye in yellow mole is a hard sell in a strip mall off Hayden Road, and a one-room restaurant with no publicity budget has no margin for a slow summer. If the review had run in March instead of September, it might still be open. What remains is a short, well-documented case that Scottsdale can support regional Mexican cooking at fine-dining prices, if anyone hears about it.