What is Tash?
Tash is the tapas room at Talking Stick Resort, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s casino tower at 9800 E Talking Stick Way, just east of the Loop 101 at Indian Bend in the Talking Stick district. The name is an O’odham word that AZ Big Media translates as “sun, day or time,” which fits a dining room built around a west-facing patio. Floor-to-ceiling windows, booths, tables and a bar face Camelback Mountain across the Valley floor, and the patio is the reason to book the 5 p.m. slot.
The resort describes it as a “Mediterranean-inspired playground,” which in practice means Spanish-style tapas, wood-oven flatbread pizzas numbered Uno through Sette, a short list of fish and meat entrées, and a dessert page priced flat at $9. The kitchen belongs to Julio C. Leon Ramos, “Chef Julio” on the resort’s page, the grandson of a baker from Culiacán, Sinaloa, who has cooked at Talking Stick for more than a decade. He started at the Wandering Horse Buffet, moved up to Orange Sky on the fifteenth floor, and took over Tash as his own room. In 2024 he won Best of Show at the Arizona Indian Gaming Association’s Chefs Challenge, the annual cook-off among the state’s tribal casino kitchens.
What the record does not give is an opening date. The 2010 coverage of the resort’s debut lists eight restaurants without naming a tapas room, and the first dated press we found is from June 2023, when the resort announced chef-led cooking classes at Tash; it is a creation of the resort’s post-pandemic reset rather than of the opening lineup. It runs dinner only, five nights a week, closed Tuesday and Wednesday, which is unusual for a casino restaurant and tells you it is aimed at the resort’s weekend crowd and at locals who drive in for the view.
Who is it for? Couples before a show, groups of four to six splitting the Paella Mixta ($34) and the Beef Short Ribs à la Bourguignonne ($37), which arrive under a smoke dome, and anyone who wants Orange Sky’s panorama at a lower altitude and price. Our verdict: the best-value dinner in the tower, a real patio, and a chef with a story, held back only by hours that make a midweek visit impossible.
How to eat at Tash
Book the patio at five. Tash opens at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, closes at 10 (11 on Friday and Saturday), and is dark Tuesday and Wednesday. Reserve through the resort’s website or OpenTable; parties of more than five go through the resort’s group reservation page. The patio looks west, so the first seating on a winter evening gets the sunset behind Camelback, and the dining room’s floor-to-ceiling glass gets the same show from the booths. The restaurant’s direct line is (480) 291-5618.
Order the tapas as a table. The list runs from The Gambler ($10) and Charred Brussels Sprouts ($15) to Calamari Fritti ($18), Polpettine de la Nonna ($18), Tomato and Burrata ($18), Truffle Risotto ($21), the Torre de Fogo ($24), Mussels ($25), Jamón Ibérico Bellota ($26) and the Mezze board ($30). The pizzas, Uno through Sette, run $18 to $24; the Cinque was $18 when AZ Big Media reviewed in January 2025 and is $22 on the current menu, so expect prices to drift.
Then one entrée each, or one paella for two. The Paella Mixta ($34), Santo Tomás bomba rice with seafood, chicken and Bilbao chorizo, is the house favorite by every account we found, including Islands magazine’s July 2025 profile, and a half-pound lobster tail can be added for $45. The Beef Short Ribs à la Bourguignonne ($37) are smoked tableside. The rest of the “Tierra” and “Agua” pages: Chicken Tagine ($26), Pappardelle al Cinghiale ($28), Piri Piri Shrimp ($30), Cast Iron-Seared Sea Bass ($34), Lamb Chops with warm goat cheese ($37), Sea Scallops and Gnocchi ($39) and a Berbere-rubbed bone-in ribeye ($56). Desserts are $9 across the board: cannoli, tiramisu, Cheesecake alla Romana, a wood-oven chocolate torta.
Drink from the right page. Cocktails are $18 (Verona Margarita, Count Boulevardier, Mojito Rosa), the four Smoked Old Fashioneds are $18, and the Soirée 1942 is a $60 showpiece that serves two. The “Free Spirits” page is a real zero-proof list at $10, which matters in a building where most guests are driving home. Local drafts from Huss, SanTan and Mother Road are $9. Skip the big Napa bottles; the Spanish garnacha at $10 a glass is the right wine for the food.
Getting there. Free self-parking and the garage are the same as for the casino; valet is at the main entrance. The resort’s dining page files Tash with the lounges rather than the restaurants, and listings place it on the second level outside the casino floor, so ask at the front desk the first time. Spring training at Salt River Fields fills the weekend tables in March.
The tapas room the pandemic reset produced
Talking Stick opened on April 15, 2010 with a conventional casino-resort food plan: a fine-dining room on top (Orange Sky), a buffet (the Wandering Horse), a three-meal cafe by the pool, a seafood bar off the casino floor. That formula held through the 2010s. What changed it was March 2020. The casino shut, reopened on June 1 with grab-and-go food, and brought back its full-service restaurants in stages, with a round of reopenings announced for April 26, 2021. The buffet never returned. The rooms that came back were the ones with a chef’s name attached and a margin to match, and Tash is the clearest product of that thinking: dinner only, five nights, shareable plates, a cocktail program, a patio.
The chef’s résumé maps the same arc. Julio Ramos started in the buffet line, moved to Orange Sky, whose wine list won Wine Spectator’s Best of Award of Excellence in 2024, and was given Tash as the resort’s second signature room. The 2024 AIGA Chefs Challenge win was the first outside recognition; AZ Big Media’s January 2025 review followed, Islands put the paella in a national travel piece that July, and by December 2025 AZ Big Media was naming Tash alongside Orange Sky as the reason to eat at a casino resort. O’odham Action News, the Community’s paper, filmed Chef Ramos at the Taste of AZ festival in January 2025, an event the resort sponsors.
What the press does not say is when the doors opened, who designed the room, or how many seats it holds, and we have written around those gaps rather than guessed. The name is the one cultural detail the resort has explained: Tash, the O’odham word for sun and day, in a building whose own name honors the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash calendar-stick tradition. For the district’s other options, see Ocean Trail off the casino floor and Cholla Prime at the McKellips casino.
Honest assessment: Tash is a hotel tapas restaurant, and the menu wanders (lamb bao buns, a Berbere ribeye, Italian pizzas, Portuguese-style piri piri shrimp) in a way a purist will notice. It is also sharply priced for the view, the paella is a genuine dish, and the zero-proof list is better thought through than most of Old Town’s. Go on a Thursday or Sunday, when the weekend crowd is gone, and treat it as the best reason to drive to the 101 for a dinner that is not a steak.