What is The Goose?
Mercado del Lago is a lakeside shopping center of pancakes, pizza and dry cleaning, which makes it a good place to hide a bar. The Goose sits inside Crust Simply Italian, the neighborhood Italian restaurant that has held a corner of the center since 2007, and it does not announce itself. There is no name on the door. You find it by looking up: a small golden goose marks the entrance.
Behind it is a 42-seat room that looks nothing like a strip mall. Art Deco lines, gold accents, geometric wallpaper, candlelit tables and a black-and-white marble floor. The bar opened on April 26, 2024, from Michael Merendino’s Crust Restaurant Group, whose habit is to hide a bird-named speakeasy in its restaurants. The Goose is named for the geese on Lake Marguerite, a two-minute walk away.
The menu is a proper cocktail list, not a gimmick with a door attached. One page is classics with their birth certificates (Clover Club, Vesper, Vieux Carré, a Sazerac and a Death & Co. Oaxacan Old Fashioned). One is house drinks with bird puns. One is whiskey, including a flight of three 18-year single malts. And there is Goose Bumps: half an ounce of Osetra caviar and two chilled shots of Grey Goose for $125, which is the most McCormick Ranch thing on any menu in McCormick Ranch.
It is the McCormick Ranch speakeasy, and the only one in the neighborhood you can walk to from the lake.
How to do The Goose
Find the door. Walk the Mercado del Lago arcade toward Crust, then look up rather than around. The golden goose over the door is the only sign. There is no password and no phone booth; finding it is the whole test.
Pick the night. Weeknights from 5 p.m. are the easy version, with seats at the bar and room to talk. Friday and Saturday run until midnight and fill, so book a table through Crust’s website or call (480) 948-3099. The room also takes private buyouts of up to about 80 guests.
What to order. Prices on the August 2026 menu:
- Classics, $14 to $18. The Clover Club ($17) and the Vieux Carré ($15) show the bar can stir and shake properly. The Oaxacan Old Fashioned ($18) is the one for mezcal people.
- Crafts, $16 to $18. The Down Comforter (Smoke Wagon bourbon, Amaro Lucano, pistachio orgeat) is the house drink to try first. OnlyFeathers, vodka and passion fruit under a Prosecco float, has been on the list since opening day and is the light option.
- Whiskey, $18 to $24. The Lakeside, an old fashioned on Smoke Wagon Uncut named for the water outside, is the best stirred drink on the list. The F%#king Quack is a whiskey sour with a Chianti float.
- Flights, $30 to $95. Three Japanese whiskies for $30, three Rufina mezcals for $50, three 18-year single malts (Glenfiddich, Macallan, Bruichladdich) for $70, or Eagle Rare 17, George T. Stagg and Thomas Handy for $95.
- Mocktails, $12, built to order.
Eat from Crust. The kitchen is the restaurant’s, so the bar food is better than bar food: tangerine spiced olives ($8), fried calamari with pickled Fresnos ($15), bone marrow with an optional whiskey luge ($19), pizzettas from $14, braised short ribs ($28). It works as dinner.
Make an evening of it. Breakfast at Butters on the same shore, a loop of the Greenbelt, a beer on the lawn at The Vig McCormick Ranch, then The Goose at sunset. For the rest of the city’s hidden rooms, see our speakeasy guide.
A flock of hidden bars, and why this one is in a strip mall
Crust began as a single restaurant. Michael Merendino opened the first Crust Simply Italian at Mercado del Lago in 2007, an East Coast red-sauce Italian place with a manager at every table, and grew it into a small Valley chain. The speakeasies came later, and they came from history. The first was The Ostrich, in the basement of the San Marcos hotel in Chandler, named for the ostrich feathers that made Chandler’s early money. The Blue Heron followed in Gilbert. The Goose was third, and since then The Raven has opened in Peoria and The Nightingale at The Grid in downtown Mesa. The group’s own explanation is that Prohibition bars were named for animals as a signal to people who knew; whatever the history, the formula is now five doors deep.
The Goose is the one that came home. It sits beside the original Crust, and its name is local: the menu credits the geese that circle Lake Marguerite. That matters, because McCormick Ranch is a neighborhood that has always had good bones and few bars. Laid out in the 1970s around lakes and greenbelt, it got its lakeside shopping center and its pancake breakfast, and then for decades had to drive to Old Town for a serious drink. A 42-seat cocktail room a block from the water fills a gap the master plan left.
It also belongs to a moment. Scottsdale opened most of its speakeasies between 2023 and 2025, nearly all of them north of Indian Bend and nearly all of them inside something else: a resort conference wing (The Madam), a hotel lobby (Straight Up), a wine bar (The Peacock), a steakhouse basement (Tell Your Friends). The Goose is the neighborhood version: no velvet rope, no dress code, no password, a pizza kitchen on the other side of the wall.
What has changed since opening is mostly the list. Take a Gander, the launch-era house drink, has given way to The Gander’s Apologeese, and the whiskey and flight pages have grown. The room has not changed, and neither has the hardest part of the visit, which is still remembering to look up.
Honest assessment: this is a polished group concept, and the drinks are priced like a resort lounge. But the cocktails are made with care, the room is genuinely good-looking, the food is better than it has to be, and it is the rare hidden bar where nobody is performing secrecy at you.