What is Thompson 105?
Thompson 105 Woodfired Grill & Cocktails is the restaurant at the southwest corner of McDowell Mountain Ranch Road and 105th Street, at 10401 E McDowell Mountain Ranch Road, Suite 160, in the shopping center that serves McDowell Mountain Ranch and the subdivisions below Thompson Peak. The name is the corner. It opened in February 2022 in the space that had been the Twisted Lizard, and its patio faces the McDowells from close enough that Arizona PBS called the view nearly 360 degrees.
The people behind it are P.F. Chang’s alumni. Rick Federico, the chain’s former chief executive, teamed up in 2022 with Tim Donmoyer and Ric Gordon to open it, according to In Business Magazine, which reported Federico’s Elliot Impact Award in July 2023. Gordon, also ex-P.F. Chang’s, is the operating partner who runs it day to day, and the ownership entity, Thompson View Partners LLC, filed the trademark in April 2021. Chef Michael Dei Maggi co-developed the opening menu, and Bob Reardon was executive chef by mid-2023, when Phoenix Magazine printed his citrus salad with prickly pear vinaigrette.
The cooking is Italian-influenced and built around a wood-fired rotisserie and grill: rotisserie chicken, prawns and spaghetti, a barrel-cut filet, house pastas such as a radiatori with broccoli rabe, and a Cobb salad made with the rotisserie bird. The bar leans on whiskeys and tequilas, which Gordon has said he wants the restaurant known for, with a locals’ cocktail called the Scottsdale Skinny built on Scottsdale’s ROXX Vodka. It bills itself as “Your North Scottsdale Neighborhood Restaurant,” and that is accurate: dinner nightly from 3 p.m., Sunday brunch from 10 with football on, a weekday happy hour and a $19 Burger Tuesday.
Who it is for: the families and retirees of McDowell Mountain Ranch and the subdivisions along Thompson Peak Parkway, and anyone coming off McDowell Mountain Golf Club or the trails at sunset. OpenTable diners voted it a Diners’ Choice winner in 2023 and 2024. Our verdict: a well-run neighborhood grill whose patio is the best seat for the mountains in this part of North Scottsdale, better than its food needs to be, and priced like an occasion only on the steaks.
How to eat at Thompson 105
Timing. Dinner runs Monday through Thursday 3 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 3 to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., with the Sunday brunch menu from opening. These are the summer hours the website still posts in 2026, so check before a holiday. Book the last hour of light.
Happy hour. Monday through Friday, 3 to 6 p.m. When Arizona’s Family went in August 2023 the list ran: meatball sliders with fresh mozzarella and pesto, three for $11; a Sonoran chicken lettuce wrap, $8; rotisserie chicken with roasted corn, $8, the kitchen’s signature at a snack price; a hummus plate with house flatbread, $10; chicken tenders, $9; well drinks $7 and craft drafts $6. Prime rib dip and classic burger sliders round it out. For how it compares across the city, see our happy hour guide.
Burger Tuesday. Any burger on the menu or the weekly special, with fries and a beer, for $19. It is the restaurant’s standing promotion and the night the bar fills with neighbors.
Order from the fire. The rotisserie chicken is the dish to measure the place by. The prawns and spaghetti and the barrel-cut filet mignon were the opening-week showpieces that Mouth by Southwest photographed in February 2022; a radiatori with broccoli rabe runs about $23 on the online ordering menu and the KO Chix Cobb, with rotisserie chicken, bacon and egg, $19. A guest on Arizona PBS’s Check, Please! praised the prawns with avocado to start and a filet “cooked to perfection.” Reardon’s citrus salad with arugula, hazelnuts and prickly pear vinaigrette is the right starter in winter, when Arizona citrus is in. The full dinner price list is only in a PDF on the website; expect the grill section to run higher.
Drink. Gordon told Check, Please! he wants Thompson 105 synonymous with exceptional tequilas and whiskeys, and the back bar reflects it. The Scottsdale Skinny ($14) is ROXX Vodka, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, sparkling citrus water and mint. Bartender Lexi Scott was a Top Mixologist finalist at the 2025 Arizona Foodist Awards. Wine dinners run a few times a year, and the restaurant offers a prix fixe for Arizona Restaurant Week each September.
Getting there. It is a few minutes from the Frank Lloyd Wright exit off the 101; parking is the center’s lot. Reservations are on OpenTable through the website.
The P.F. Chang’s veterans and the corner under the peak
McDowell Mountain Ranch is the master-planned community on the bajada below Thompson Peak, with a golf course, a park and a strip of shops at 105th Street to serve it. The corner’s restaurant space had been the Twisted Lizard. When it came free, it drew an unusual tenant: a group led by a former chief executive of P.F. Chang’s China Bistro.
Rick Federico was P.F. Chang’s chief executive, and the In Business profile that announced his Elliot Impact Award in 2023 summarized a career that went from operator to CEO to several boards. Thompson 105 was described there as the newest concept he had opened, with Donmoyer and Gordon, in 2022. Gordon, the operating partner, told What Now Phoenix in December 2021 that the website’s January opening date was likely to slip to early February, which it did; the liquor license had just come through. The trademark, “Thompson 105 Woodfired Grill Cocktails,” had been filed by Thompson View Partners in April 2021, and the name says what the owners wanted: the view, the fire, and a bar.
It opened into the 2020s North Scottsdale pattern in which independent, chef-led neighborhood restaurants replaced the chains and sports bars of the 2000s in the shopping centers above the 101: The Living Room at DC Ranch, Pinard at Hayden and Thompson Peak, The Belmont at Pinnacle Peak. Thompson 105 is the McDowell Mountain Ranch version, less ambitious than those and more useful: open every night, brunch on Sunday, a burger deal on Tuesday. The OpenTable Diners’ Choice awards in 2023 and 2024 and the Foodist nomination for its bartender in 2025 suggest the neighborhood agrees.
What the record does not say is as much as what it does. No critic has reviewed the food at length; the coverage is openings, happy hour and television segments. The restaurant does not publish its dinner prices outside a PDF, we could not confirm the seat count, and Reardon’s tenure after 2023 is not documented, so the kitchen may have changed hands. Federico’s and Donmoyer’s involvement has not been reported since 2023 either.
Honest assessment: Thompson 105 is a good neighborhood restaurant with a great patio, and the gap between those two things is the whole review. Order the rotisserie chicken, go at sunset, drink a whiskey Gordon chose, and you will understand why McDowell Mountain Ranch stopped driving to Kierland for dinner. Expect competent Italian-American cooking rather than a destination, and prices on the grill section that assume you live nearby and can afford to.