What is Rice Paper on Shea?
Rice Paper on Shea is the Scottsdale branch of a midtown Phoenix restaurant, and it tells you so in the name. It sits in Suite 111 of the Village at Shea, 7366 E Shea Boulevard, on the northeast corner of Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard, the busiest intersection of the Shea Corridor. It opened in the spring of 2022; Mouth by Southwest reported it open on April 7, 2022, and the press we found gives no earlier date.
The original Rice Paper opened in 2011 at 2241 N 7th Street in Phoenix, and Phoenix New Times credited it in 2013 to sisters Hue and Lan Tran, whose family also ran Saigon Kitchen in Surprise and Bonjour Vietnam in the Hotel San Carlos, and who that year opened Slanted Rice at the Shops at Hilton Village on Scottsdale Road, their first Scottsdale room. The family’s later ventures include Poki Bar Central. The Shea restaurant’s own website names no owner, so we go with the family; a Tripadvisor reviewer mentions a conversation with “Lon the owner,” which we take to be one of the Trans.
The concept is traditional Vietnamese food in a modern American style, in the restaurant’s words “traditional preparations with modern ingredients.” That means three things on the plate: pho from a broth the restaurant says it simmers for 18 to 20 hours; a fresh spring roll bar of more than 20 varieties, which it claims is the largest in Arizona; and banh mi served with a salad or garlic fries. Around them are house plates (shaking beef, lemongrass chicken, crispy rice in a hot skillet), a short list of cocktails with names like the Lychijito and the 7th Street Gin’let, and Vietnamese iced coffee.
The room is casual and calm, which is how its bartender described it on Check, Please! Arizona in February 2023, with a patio facing the parking lot and the Shea traffic. The crowd is the Shea Corridor at lunch and families at dinner; it is not a date room and does not try to be. Our verdict: the most useful Vietnamese restaurant in central Scottsdale, strongest on rolls and pho, and best on a Sunday afternoon when the pho is half price.
How to eat at Rice Paper on Shea
Order from the roll bar first. The spring rolls are the signature and the reason the menu runs to two pages. They are grouped as Land (Miss Piggy $6.95, Filet Mignon $10.50), Sea (Shrimp $8.95, Chuck Norris $10.75, Pacific Trio $13.50, the three-sauce roll the Check, Please! guests picked), Land & Sea (Traditional $7.95, Surf & Turf $12.50) and Garden (Buddha $7.95, Phat Buddha $8.95). Two rolls and a bowl of pho is dinner. Among the shared bites, Grandma Tran’s Wings ($14.50) and the Crispy Firecracker shrimp ($14.95) are the ones reviewers name.
Then the pho. Pho Ga (chicken) is $15.95, Pho Tai $16.95, Pho Dac Biet $18.50, Pho Bo Mignon $19.95 and Pho Surf and Turf $23.95; a plain bowl is $10.95 and you can add veggies, chicken, tendon or tripe for $6, steak, flank, filet or shrimp for $8. The Pho Chay vegetable bowl ($15.50) comes without tofu unless you ask. These are Scottsdale prices for pho, well above the Vietnamese rooms on McDowell Road, and the Sunday deal exists for that reason: 50 percent off all pho, Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., dine-in only.
The rest of the menu. Banh mi on house bread, $16.50 to $18.50, with grilled chicken, grilled pork, tofu and shiitake, or spicy tempura chicken or shrimp, each with a house salad or garlic fries. The house specialties are Shaking Beef ($27), Lemongrass Chicken ($20), Braised Pork ($20) and Crispy Rice in a Hot Skillet ($23). Drinks: Vietnamese iced coffee $6.75, cocktails $12 to $15, Sapporo, Saigon and Singha in bottles, Canyon Road wines at $9 a glass, and rotating kegs at the Scottsdale location only.
Happy hour and the weekend. Drinks are discounted 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day ($1 off beer, $2 off wine, cocktails and sake bombers) and food 3 to 6 ($1 off rolls, $2 off shared bites), dine-in only. Saturday and Sunday 11 to 3 are Appreciation Days: $4 mimosas, $5 sangria and Bloody Marys, $5 selected rolls on Saturday, the half-price pho on Sunday. See our happy hour guide for how that compares across the city.
Timing and logistics. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily by the restaurant’s site (Yelp lists an 8:30 close; call (480) 410-6881). Reservations run through SevenRooms on the website and are rarely necessary outside Friday night. The Village at Shea lot is large and free. Delivery runs through DoorDash and Uber Eats, and the rolls travel better than the pho.
The Phoenix restaurant that crossed Scottsdale Road
Vietnamese food came late to Scottsdale and mostly stayed on its southern edge. The Valley’s pho houses grew up in Mesa and west Phoenix and along McDowell Road, and for decades a Scottsdale diner who wanted a bowl drove to South Scottsdale or out of town. What changed in the 2010s was a second-generation style, “modern Vietnamese,” that borrowed the full bar, the design and the prices of an American bistro, and Rice Paper on 7th Street, opened in 2011, was Phoenix’s clearest example.
The Tran family’s expansion followed the money north. Slanted Rice, at the Shops at Hilton Village in 2013, tested Scottsdale Road with a combination of Rice Paper and Saigon Kitchen. The Shea restaurant, nine years later, was the fuller bet: a second Rice Paper under its own name, on the corner where Scottsdale Road meets Shea, surrounded by medical offices, HonorHealth traffic and the condos that make the intersection one of the busiest lunch markets in the city. It opened in the spring of 2022, a hard year to open anything, and by February 2023 it was on Check, Please! Arizona, where guest Ed Neilson called it “such a clean looking restaurant” and the spring rolls “warm and crispy.”
What the record does not say is as notable as what it does. No paper covered the Shea opening beyond a short Mouth by Southwest item; the restaurant’s website tells its story in two sentences and names no one. The reviews are good rather than rapturous, around 4.2 on both Google and Yelp, with the recurring complaint that the pho is expensive for pho and the recurring praise that the rolls, the wings and the service are better than the strip-center setting promises. The Sunday half-price pho, the all-day drink discount and the weekend mimosas read as a restaurant that knows exactly which objection it has to answer.
Honest assessment: Rice Paper on Shea is a good, consistent, slightly overpriced Vietnamese bistro whose real product is convenience. If you want the best pho in the Valley, drive to McDowell Road or Mesa. If you want a fresh roll, a decent bowl and a glass of wine within five minutes of Scottsdale and Shea, with a patio and no wait, this is it, and on a Sunday afternoon it is also a bargain.