What is Shiso?
Some Old Town corners turn over so often that nobody remembers the last tenant. The corner of Stetson Drive and Sixth Avenue is the opposite. Everyone remembers. It was Cowboy Ciao for two decades, then, from 2019, The Drunk Munk, Old Town’s tiki bar of monkey mugs and flaming garnishes, until that closed around 2024. In 2026 the build-out finally came down and Shiso opened in the suite.
The pitch is sushi with a second passport. The restaurant calls itself Korean and Japanese fusion, and the menu reads that way: sushi, sashimi and fully dressed nigiri on one side, deconstructed kimchi fried rice and karaage fried chicken on the other, with crudo plates like the Crimson Crush in between. Signature rolls carry local names, the Scottsdale Sunset among them, and the top of the menu is an A5 Miyazaki striploin, the kind of wagyu that is sold by the ounce and shared by the table.
It is a dinner room, opening at 3 p.m. and running late on weekends, when DJs play Thursday through Saturday. That puts it squarely in the 2020s Old Town tradition of restaurants that keep going after dessert, though the cooking is the reason to come.
The honest read: Shiso is new, and it is still building a reputation on a block whose history sets the bar high. The menu has the ambition for the address. The room will need a few seasons to prove it has the staying power too.
How to eat here without overspending
Use the happy hour. From 3 to 6 p.m. every day it is open, Shiso runs small plates from $3, all eight signature cocktails at $10 and house wine and beer at $6. That window is the cheapest way to taste the kitchen and the easiest time to land a seat at the sushi counter, before the dinner and DJ crowds arrive. Happy hour also makes this a sensible stop before an evening at the Waterfront or across the canal.
Order in two passes. Start cold: a crudo and a signature roll, plus nigiri if the fish looks good that night. Then go warm and Korean with the kimchi fried rice or karaage. Only then decide on the A5 striploin, which is a splurge best shared among three or four people.
Mind the calendar. Shiso is closed Monday and Tuesday, and the late shifts on Friday and Saturday run to midnight with a DJ. If you want conversation, book Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday. For weekend prime time, reserve on OpenTable. Shiso took part in Arizona Restaurant Week in fall 2026, and those weeks fill the room fast.
Park once. Stetson has almost no street parking. Use the Waterfront garage across the canal or the public garage on the Fifth Avenue side and walk. Neighbors on the row include Marcellino Ristorante, Barrio Queen and The Ends, so a nightcap is never more than a few doors away.
Sushi returns to the Sea Saw block
There is a small symmetry in a serious sushi kitchen opening on this corner. In 2002, chef Nobuo Fukuda and Peter Kasperski opened Sea Saw, a 28-seat Japanese counter next door to Cowboy Ciao, and in 2007 Fukuda won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest there. That room closed in 2009, and for most of the years since, the block’s Japanese cooking lived only in memory while Kazimierz, Merkin Vineyards and the tiki bar came and went around it.
The corner’s own history runs through the whole arc of Southbridge. Cowboy Ciao opened at 7133 E Stetson in 1997 and turned the street into a destination. The recession thinned the row, Cowboy Ciao itself closed in 2018, and a looser, more nightlife-shaped generation of tenants followed, The Drunk Munk chief among them. Shiso’s arrival in 2026 fits a broader 2020s pattern the Entertainment District has seen up close: rooms that pair a polished dinner menu with late hours and a DJ.
What Shiso does differently from the Valley’s older sushi bars is the Korean thread. Kimchi fried rice and karaage aren’t the usual sidekicks on an Old Town sushi menu, and they give the kitchen a voice of its own in a part of town where a lot of sushi is still about rolls and sake bombs.
The test is longevity. This corner has hosted one of Scottsdale’s defining restaurants and one of its best-loved bars, and the bar for a new tenant is correspondingly high. For now, Shiso brings sushi back to the street where Scottsdale first learned what serious Japanese cooking could be, and that is reason enough to book a counter seat and judge for yourself.