What is UNiQ Burger?
UNiQ Burger is an all-vegan burger counter at 7730 E McDowell Road, Suite 108-B, in Fountain Plaza, the strip center on the northwest corner of Hayden and McDowell roads in South Scottsdale. It opened in late September 2022, and it is the work of one person: Dan Homaijani, who grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, came west for ASU, and decided in his senior year in 2019 that the area did not have enough vegan food and that he would fix it. He has said he went in with no knowledge of the food-service industry. By 2025 Phoenix New Times had named his shop the Valley’s best vegan restaurant and its best vegan burger.
The concept is a fast-food burger that happens to be plant-based. The patties are a house-seasoned blend of soy protein and Impossible meat, thin and smash-style, built to be doubled. The signature UNiQ Burger carries vegan cheese, grilled onions, lettuce, tomato, pickles and a house UNiQ sauce; the Southwest Burger adds avocado, jalapeños, fried onion strings and spicy aioli; the Paradise Burger, the one Best of Phoenix cited in 2025, stacks vegan American cheese, banana peppers, teriyaki sauce, grilled onions, lettuce and a ring of grilled pineapple. Alongside are three chick’n sandwiches, tenders, a ranch wrap, a few salads, crinkle-cut and sweet potato fries, and Southwest fully loaded fries under vegan cheese, jalapeños, chipotle aioli, onion strings and sesame seeds. Homaijani’s rule, stated before opening: no dairy, no honey, no eggs, no gelatin, no meat.
The room is a small counter-service space, stylish by New Times’ account, with outdoor tables and compostable utensils and straws. You order at the register, sit, and the kitchen calls your name. It is open Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 11 to 7, and dark Monday and Tuesday.
It is for vegans first, who in this corner of the Valley had little before 2022, and for everyone else second; the owner’s favorite line is that non-vegans tell him it is the best burger they have had. Our verdict: the best vegan burger in Scottsdale by a wide margin, a good burger by any standard, and the strongest argument that south Scottsdale’s dining scene is its own thing now.
Ordering at UNiQ Burger
Order a double. The patties are thin, and both New Times, in its November 2022 first look, and the owner recommend doubling them; a single reads as a snack. The Paradise Burger is the signature for a reason, sweet from the pineapple and teriyaki and sharp from the banana peppers, and the Southwest is the one for people who think a burger needs heat. The plain UNiQ is the test of the patty itself, which New Times called surprisingly juicy in a way that a black-bean or portobello burger never is.
Share the loaded fries. The Southwest fully loaded fries were half of the 2025 Best Vegan Burger citation and are a meal on their own. The crinkle-cut fries and sweet potato fries come plain, Cajun or, for the sweet potatoes, with a Cajun dusting; a parmesan truffle version appears on the review sites. In October 2025 the shop added Box Tots, tots with a mashed-potato center, plain or Cajun, which can replace fries on some orders. Desserts, cheesecake bites and cinnamon sugar twists among them, come from a vegan sister bakery, and the drink cooler has beer, cider, kombucha and non-alcoholic beer; vegan milkshakes were in the opening plan.
Prices. The restaurant does not publish prices on the pages we could read, and the delivery apps keep theirs behind logins. One HappyCow reviewer in 2026 paid $16 for a chick’n sandwich without fries; figure $20 to $30 a head with fries and a drink, more for a double. That is Old Town burger money in a strip mall, and the regulars pay it.
Timing. The shop is small and the kitchen cooks for the apps as well as the room. Wednesday and Thursday at opening are quiet; Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons, when it closes at 7 p.m., are not. It has closed early after a sellout before, and after the July 21, 2026 break-in it ran reduced hours while the glass was replaced, so check its Instagram before a special trip. It is closed Monday and Tuesday, which catches visitors who assume a burger joint is open daily.
Getting there. Fountain Plaza has its own lot off McDowell Road. The shop is a few blocks east of SkySong and Fellow Osteria, a short drive from the Papago Park end of the city, and the closest serious vegan option to Old Town, which has nothing like it. For burgers of the other kind, our Rehab Burger Therapy guide covers the Old Town standard; for the wider picture see what to eat in Scottsdale.
The vegan burger joint that took three years to open
The timeline tells the story of opening a restaurant through a pandemic. Homaijani had the idea in 2019, as an ASU senior, and first thought about a pop-up. COVID arrived within months; he has said he spent much of that time indoors working on the concept, and that finding a location, equipment, contractors, ingredient sources and staff was significantly harder than it should have been. Several sites fell through when other businesses took them first. The team considered other cities and settled on south Scottsdale because, as he told the Scottsdale Progress, the area had few vegan options and a significant vegan population. What Now Phoenix reported the Hayden-and-McDowell location in September 2021; the Progress said early 2022; the doors opened in late September 2022, nearly three years from idea to first burger, and New Times put it in a roundup of new vegan restaurants that November.
The awards came fast for a one-location shop. New Times readers voted it Best Vegan Restaurant in 2023, 2024 and 2025; the paper’s editors gave it the same title in 2024 and Best Vegan Burger in 2025; Yelp placed it on a national top-100 vegan list in 2024; and in October 2026 Green Living magazine named it Arizona’s best vegetarian or vegan restaurant, with Homaijani crediting his staff, family and customers. Arizona Foothills profiled him in July 2023 as a 24-year-old whose first job had been bussing tables at an Italian restaurant in Pennsylvania and whose biggest motivators were a father who immigrated at 18 with little money and a mother he described as a very hard worker. His stated dream is to expand nationwide. As of 2026 there is still one UNiQ.
It arrived at the right moment for its corner. The south end of Scottsdale had been the city’s forgotten quarter for decades, the strip malls and apartment blocks between Old Town and Tempe, and the 2020s have been its decade: SkySong filled, Fellow Osteria and Clever Ramen opened on the campus, a brunch room opened on Hayden, and the old Papago Plaza came down for redevelopment. A vegan burger counter run by a recent graduate fits that neighborhood in a way it would not fit Kierland.
What the record does not say: the exact opening date (the shop’s own anniversary post was September 25, 2026, and a HappyCow listing says September 22), the prices, and whether anyone besides Homaijani owns a share. New Times printed a different phone number in 2022 than the one the shop uses now; we have used the current one.
Honest assessment: this is a very good vegan burger and a reasonable one by any measure, served in a small room on a busy corner by a kitchen that also cooks for the apps, with prices that match Old Town and hours that do not. The break-in in July 2026 and the owner’s public insistence that the shop was not closing are a reminder that a one-location independent runs close to the edge even with a shelf of awards. Go on a Wednesday, order a double Paradise and the loaded fries, and you will understand why the readers keep voting for it.