What is Raven Gastropub?
The Pinnacle Peak and Troon side of Scottsdale has golf clubhouses, a steakhouse or two, and almost nowhere to simply have a beer and a burger with the people who live there. Raven Gastropub has filled that gap since July 2018 from a suite in the La Mirada center at 8900 E Pinnacle Peak Road, Suite B1, on the northeast corner of Pima and Pinnacle Peak.
It is owned and run by two people. Brian Vogel cooks; he has worked in restaurants since he was 18, in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Chicago, and before opening this was senior general manager of the iPic Theaters at Scottsdale Quarter. Adele Donovan runs operations and the social accounts. They met at Rock Bottom Brewery in Chicago, married in 2003, moved to Scottsdale in 2014 to be near family, and now live in Cave Creek. Vogel found the empty suite, bought the rights to it from the owners of Lamp Pizzeria next door, and opened in the old Lamp Cafe space.
The theme is darkness. The name comes from the German word for the bird, and Vogel’s explanation is that ravens are dark and mysterious; there is no Poe shrine, though the cocktail list winks at one. The Black Raven is cherry vodka and lemonade turned black with activated charcoal, the Nevermore is blueberry vodka, elderflower, mint and boba pearls, and the slushed brandy is Vogel’s mother’s recipe. The food is what Phoenix New Times, reviewing it that September, called slightly elevated comfort food: the Raven Burger with bourbon glaze, blue cheese, fried pickles and candied bacon, a Reuben, fish and chips, blackened fish tacos.
Our verdict: a real neighborhood pub with owners on the floor, which up here is rare enough to be worth the drive, as long as you know it closes early.
An early pub for a late neighborhood
Know the hours before you go. Raven opens at 11:30 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and is closed Sunday. That is a lunch-and-early-dinner schedule, and it has tightened since 2018, when the pub ran daily from 11 to 9. If you want a 10 p.m. drink in Pinnacle Peak, this is not it; if you want a 3 p.m. one, it is exactly it.
Happy hour is the sweet spot. It runs 3 to 6 p.m. every day the pub is open, with discounted alcohol and appetizers. Fried pickles, wings and the blackened fish tacos with roasted corn salsa are the right happy-hour order; the Black Raven is the drink to photograph and the slushed brandy is the one to finish. Our happy hour guide has the rest of the north end.
What to eat. Burgers and sandwiches are the biggest category, with eight burgers on the menu at one count, from the Raven Burger down to one with peanut butter and jelly and one stacked with pulled pork, candied bacon and pork belly. The Reuben is a regulars’ favorite, half sandwiches are offered, and the kitchen makes almost everything in house. Beyond sandwiches there have been short ribs with orzo, flank steak with chimichurri, shrimp scampi, a grown-up cavatappi mac and cheese and a chicken souvlaki pita. Vegetarians get a black-bean veggie burger, a roasted vegetable pita and a quinoa and kale salad.
The room and the crowd. Booths along one wall, tables in the middle, the bar at the back, a patio out front and plenty of parking in the La Mirada lot. Weekday lunch is contractors and retirees from the Troon and Pinnacle Peak subdivisions; Friday night is couples who would rather not drive to Scottsdale Road. It takes reservations by phone or online, does catering and private parties, and delivers through DoorDash.
Around it. Pinnacle Peak Park is five minutes east for a sunset hike before happy hour, and the Citadel, with the Preston’s space being remade as Alma, is across the intersection.
Lamp Cafe, La Mirada and the pub Pinnacle Peak needed
La Mirada is a small center with a big address, and its history is mostly pizza. Lamp Pizzeria has been the anchor, and the suite that became Raven was its sibling, Lamp Cafe. When that closed, Vogel bought the rights to the space from the Lamp owners, who remain his neighbors, and converted it in the first half of 2018. He had spent his Scottsdale years running the iPic at Scottsdale Quarter, a job that taught him the north-side customer, and the pub he built is aimed squarely at that person: comfort food that is slightly better than it needs to be, drinks with a gimmick, and a room where the owner remembers your order.
Phoenix New Times reviewed it in September 2018 under a “Now Open” headline, praised the fish sandwich’s lacy fry and brioche bun, noted the $17 cavatappi mac and cheese, and made the point that still defines the place: the area needed more worthwhile sit-down options, and Raven was looking to catch the hungry crowds. A February 2019 Live Better in Scottsdale piece found Donovan greeting tables herself; an Images Arizona profile the same year gave the couple’s backstory and the recipe credits for the cocktails.
Where it fits in the city’s bar history is as a holdout of the owner-run neighborhood pub in the part of Scottsdale that the 2010s built for golf members and the 2020s filled with cocktail-first rooms like Belmont a few doors down. The older Pinnacle Peak drinking tradition, Pinnacle Peak Patio, Reata Pass and Greasewood Flat, is gone; Raven is nothing like those, but it is the only place up here where a regular can still walk in alone at 3 p.m. and be known.
Honest assessment: the hours are the weakness, and the Sunday closure is a real one in a neighborhood that watches football at home for lack of a bar. The food is good pub food, not a destination. What earns Raven its spot on our list of every bar and club in Scottsdale is scarcity and sincerity: two owners, eight years, one room, and a happy hour that the Troon side of the city would be poorer without.