What is The Italiano?
The Italiano is the red-sauce restaurant Joey Maggiore built when he could not save his father’s. It opened on Friday, September 20, 2024, at 9301 E Shea Boulevard, Suite 137, at 90th Street and Shea Boulevard, in a 7,543-square-foot space that the Maggiore Group calls its sixth concept and that Joey calls his “drop the mic.” It is the largest and most ambitious Italian room in the Shea Corridor, and the only one with a family legend behind it.
The legend is Tomaso Maggiore, who left Bagheria, Sicily, at 22, worked in New York, moved his family to Arizona in 1976 and opened Tomaso’s on Camelback Road in 1977. For nearly five decades it was where the Valley learned what formal Italian service looked like. Tomaso died in February 2021, at 73. The building’s lease could not be renegotiated and the structure was failing, and Joey, who had founded The Maggiore Group with his father in 2005 and made its name with the DJ-and-Bloody-Mary brunch at Hash Kitchen, decided not to move the name. “The legacy will always be his,” he told Appetito. “We wanted to call it The Italiano, which is what he made me, what he was.”
His wife Cristina Maggiore designed the room: limestone and olive trees, an indoor patio built for al fresco dining under a ceiling painted with clouds that shift color from sunrise to sunset, crystal chandeliers over a big bar and lounge, Renaissance murals, a white grand piano that a musician plays through dinner, and a private dining room whose art installation honors Tomaso’s. Phoenix New Times’ first-taste verdict was “Italy meets a dash of Vegas,” and the paper meant it kindly.
The food is East Coast Italian-American as Joey grew up eating it, with carts. An antipasto cart of more than 30 items circles the floor so you build your own plate; a limoncello cart pours a free digestivo; a zabaione cart finishes dessert tableside. The pastas are handmade, the veal comes “your way,” and the ribeye is crusted in oreganato breadcrumbs, Palermo style. In October 2025 Yelp ranked it ninth among the 25 best new restaurants in the United States. Our verdict: a sincere, generous, slightly theatrical restaurant that is the closest thing Scottsdale now has to Tomaso’s, which was the point.
Ordering at The Italiano
Let the cart come first. During dinner an attendant wheels the antipasto cart through the room, stopping at birthdays and anniversaries, and you pick six or twelve items from the cured meats, cheeses, pickled vegetables and spreads; the menu’s own version is the imported salumi and formaggio board at $18 a person, minimum two. Pick six. The other starters worth the space are the zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta ($24), the charred prawns oreganata ($25) and the poached octopus in a tin stamped “Maggiore Recipes,” which New Times called the standout.
Order the rigatoni as a primi. The pasta section is headed with a boast about having the best pasta in town, and the spicy rigatoni alla vodka ($28) is the dish that earns it: San Marzano tomato, vodka, cream and pecorino, with a sauce the paper found “luscious and rich without feeling overly heavy.” The ten-layer lasagna ($31), tagliatelle Bolognese braised six hours ($29), gnocchi al forno with Sicilian sausage ($31) and spaghetti and lobster ($48) are the alternatives; the stuffed pastas run to lobster and lump crab ravioli ($39), short rib ravioli ($36) and a three-way ravioli tasting ($46).
Then an Italian Masterpiece. These come with two sides of the day. The chicken and sausage scarpariello ($37), pan-roasted with cherry peppers, lemon and demi-glace, is the dish New Times said best sums up the place. Chicken alla Tomaso ($36) layers prosciutto di Parma under breadcrumbs and mozzarella. Veal your way ($46) is marsala, parmigiana or artichoke piccata, or all three for $3 more; the six-hour braised short ribs ($44) sit on mascarpone polenta. From the grill, the 16-ounce ribeye Palermitana ($68), the 8-ounce filet tartufo ($62) and the Italian Stallion ($72), filet, lemon prawns and charred Sicilian sausage. Or hand it over: Chef Joey’s family style is $95 a head, whole table only.
Dessert and the drinks. Tiramisu arrives in a molded chocolate teacup, the cannoli is rolled as a thin cigar, and the zabaione cart whips the custard at the table. Wait for the limoncello; it is complimentary. The cocktail list is classics, an Aperol spritz built on frozen Aperol cubes and an old fashioned with thyme, fig and cardamom.
Timing. Lunch is Monday through Friday 11 to 3; dinner Sunday through Thursday 3 to 9, Friday and Saturday 3 to 10; happy hour in the bar and lounge runs 11 to 6 daily, which is unusually long and worth knowing, as our happy hour guide notes. Reserve on OpenTable. The dress is business casual, the room is loud when the piano and the birthday tables get going, and parking is the center’s own lot.
The red-sauce restaurant that replaced a landmark
Joey Maggiore’s argument for The Italiano is historical. When his father was in his prime, he told Appetito, the Valley had a run of serious Italian rooms: Tomaso’s, Avanti, Marcellino, Tutti Santi. Their owners aged out or sold, and what replaced them was casual, North Italia and his own Sicilian Butcher among them, which “got away from the roots of how this all started.” East Coast transplants wanted the formal red-sauce restaurant back, and the Carbone and Rao’s revival in New York suggested the timing. The Italiano, he said, is “my version of a red-sauce restaurant like Carbone or Rao’s, but not so formal.”
He was also, by his own account, the family’s black sheep. He had opened an Italian seafood restaurant in the desert, watched it fail, and turned it into Hash Kitchen, the brunch party with a DJ that his father at first could not pronounce and then came to admire. By 2024 the group had Hash Kitchens in Arizona, Texas and Utah and five concepts in the Valley. The Italiano was the sixth, announced in May 2024 for the summer and opened on September 20, three days after Joey’s cookbook, Brunch King, came out. “It’s costing a ton of money, but no expense is spared,” he said. “This is one you’ll keep for 20 years, 30 years. It’s a family legacy.”
The early record is good but not unanimous. New Times’ first taste praised the balance of the rigatoni and the scarpariello, and in October 2025 Yelp, comparing restaurants opened since January 2024 by its own review data, ranked The Italiano ninth in the nation, one of two Arizona entries; Axios and New Times both reported it. Diner reviews on the booking and travel sites are more mixed, with complaints about value and noise alongside the praise, and the hours have changed more than once since opening. The dinner menu now credits Juan Martinez as executive chef, and the press we found does not say when he took over the line or how the kitchen is divided between him and Maggiore. There is also no critic’s full review yet; what exists is a first taste, a trend story and a Yelp list.
Honest assessment: The Italiano is a very good restaurant for what it sets out to be, a celebration room with carts, a piano and a $95 feast, and a less good one if you want the quiet precision of the Camelback Corridor rooms it invokes. The food is honest, the portions are large, and the rigatoni and the scarpariello are worth the trip on their own. In the 2020s, with Tomaso’s gone, it is the Maggiore family’s claim on the city’s Italian table, and the claim is credible. Compare it with the celebrity import Luna by Giada in Old Town and you will understand why the Shea Corridor crowd has adopted this one as its own.