What is Sexy Roman?
For fifteen years the restaurant inside the W Scottsdale was Sushi Roku. When it closed in the summer of 2023, the space sat empty for more than a year while Alliance Hospitality Group, the Los Angeles company behind Flint by Baltaire in Phoenix, rebuilt it. In 2025 it reopened as Sexy Roman, and the name is an accurate description of the brief.
The room is the first thing you notice. Its 5,500 square feet are designed as a grand salon for a bon vivant home from Italy: olive wood and black marble, a wall of green velvet drapery, a wraparound bronze-and-glass wine cellar, a moody lounge, a bar trimmed in embossed Italian leather, and red-and-white marble tables with wine-colored booths.
The kitchen is led by Jason Franey, a James Beard Award nominee who cooked at Eleven Madison Park and Canlis. The menu is Italian in the modern steakhouse mold: house-extruded pastas, crudo and seafood towers, a large chicken parmesan, and a full prime steak section. The bar’s set piece is a martini cart that chills glasses at the table.
It opened for dinner only; it now runs from 6 a.m. breakfast through late dinner, and it is the W’s main restaurant again.
Ordering, timing and the dress code
Lead with the pasta. The spicy lobster fettuccine in Calabrian chili sauce is the dish the opening press singled out. The burrata-stuffed tortellini with short rib ragu, Lumache alla Vodka, and bucatini cacio e pepe are the others to know. Starters include Roman-style meatballs, rosemary focaccia with stracciatella and tomato jam, crispy artichokes and an octopus tonnato.
Go big only if the table wants to. The steak section runs from an 8-ounce filet to a 32-ounce Tomahawk alla Romana, and “The Glow Up” adds burrata tortellini in black truffle fonduta on top. Chicken parmesan, rotisserie chicken for two and branzino are the shared-plate alternatives. A 20 percent service charge applies to parties of six or more.
Use the happy hour. Daily from 3 to 6 p.m. in the bar and lounge, first come, first served, with small plates, spritzes, martinis and an Espresso Martini. It is the best way to see the room without a full dinner bill.
Breakfast is a real option. Mornings bring Roman pancakes with pistachio praline, a Gladiator Breakfast with prime flat iron steak, and La Colombe coffee. It is a calmer side of the W than most visitors see.
Dress up. Business casual or date-night attire is recommended, and the code is enforced. Reservations are the norm at dinner. Upstairs, Cottontail Lounge and the WET Deck carry on after dinner.
The W gets a new restaurant
When the W Scottsdale opened in 2008, it brought Los Angeles nightlife hospitality to Old Town, and its restaurant fit the model: Sushi Roku, from LA’s Innovative Dining Group, a sushi room that worked as a pre-party. It lasted fifteen years and ranked among the Valley’s best sushi restaurants until its owners let the lease expire in 2023 and left the Phoenix market.
Alliance’s COO Travis Strickland has said the group had wanted a second Valley concept since Flint by Baltaire opened at the Esplanade in 2019, and waited for the right space. When Sushi Roku closed, they took it, describing the move as part of a broader redevelopment of the entertainment district. The timing put Sexy Roman in the same 2025 wave as Riot Hospitality’s Shiv a block east, both club-adjacent rooms that put dinner first.
The swap from sushi to Italian steakhouse follows a wider Old Town trend. Old Town’s most ambitious recent openings have been large, theatrical rooms with prime steaks, crudo and cocktail showmanship, from Maple & Ash, which arrived on the Waterfront in 2019, to Shiv. Sexy Roman brings that style into a hotel, and adds breakfast.
The honest assessment: the name tells you a lot about the tone, the prices are high, and the room is designed for photos. But the chef has real credentials, the pasta is the focus rather than an afterthought, and with a spot on Phoenix Magazine’s 2026 list of top independent restaurants, it has earned a place on Old Town’s short list for a big night.