What is Vecina?
Vecina is the restaurant that finally filled the lakeside building at Hayden and Via de Ventura. It opened on Friday, September 18, 2026, at 8300 N Hayden Road, Suite D-101, in the space Z’Tejas had held on the McCormick Ranch lake until the chain gave up on Arizona in 2025. It is the second location of a Phoenix restaurant with a national reputation, and the first time a kitchen of that rank has set up on Hayden Road.
The owners are James and Raenee Fox, husband and wife. James Fox, who had cooked at Zinc Bistro, The Mission, Southern Rail and Buck & Rider, opened the first Vecina with chef Eric Stone in early September 2019 at 3433 N 56th Street in Phoenix’s Arcadia neighborhood, in the old Kitchen 56 space. The name means neighbor. Within months Phoenix New Times had named it the year’s best new restaurant, and in 2020 the James Beard Foundation made it a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. It has stayed on New Times’ Top 50 list ever since.
What made it famous is the grill. A mesquite fire running between 800 and 900 degrees touches about 95 percent of the menu, and the kitchen treats simple things with an intensity most restaurants reserve for tasting menus: the elote carries some 40 ingredients, the habanero salsa is made creamy with butter, the ceviche sits in a coconut leche de tigre with a touch of fish sauce. The food is Latin in root and goes wherever a dish needs it. The owners’ own description is a chef-driven modern American restaurant with Latin-inspired flavors, and that is honest.
The Scottsdale room is nearly three times the size of the original, with a lakeside patio, a mezzanine, private dining, a glass wine room and a floral mural by Phoenix artist Tato Caraveo, who painted the Arcadia wall. The kitchen is three to four times larger. James runs it; beverage director Sloane Van Zanen runs the bar. Our verdict: this is the best restaurant McCormick Ranch has had in a generation, and the lake finally has a reason to walk around it after dark.
How to eat at Vecina
Start with the salsas and the corn. The salsa trio ($12) is roasted tomato, raw tomatillo and the habanero salsa that New Times called one of the most memorable in town, a recipe Fox has cooked for more than a decade; at happy hour, 4 to 6 daily, chips and salsa are the cheap way in. The elote ($14) is corn grilled in the husk, stripped and grilled again, coated in chorizo-spiced compound butter, lime crème fraîche, cotija and a blend of about 20 spices. The papas verde ($19), crispy fingerlings with green chorizo, tomatillo salsa and melted asadero, and the calabacitas ($18) with cilantro pesto crema and cashew dukkah round out the vegetable side.
Then the raw and the sea. The California sea bass ceviche ($26) with grilled pineapple, coconut leche de tigre and crisp tortillas descends from the hiramasa ceviche that New Times’ critic ordered twice in 2019 against his own rules. Gambas al ajillo ($27) are wild Mexican shrimp in paprika garlic butter; Saltspring mussels ($28) come in a jalapeño citrus broth with Spanish chorizo. The owners say a raw bar with oysters is coming now that there is room for it.
Tacos and plates. The Faroe Island salmon tacos ($24) with yuzu kosho aioli, grapefruit and Cara Cara orange are the house staple; the skirt steak tacos ($28) ride cascabel salsa and avocado relish, and the Duroc pork belly tacos ($22) get tomato jam and peanuts. The carnitas empanada ($22) and the tlayuda ($22) with smoked green-chile pork are the small plates to share. For the big plate, pick one: the smoked half chicken ($42) with peanut mole and chiltepín, the adobo Duroc pork chop ($58) with escabeche and chicharrón, descended from the blackened chop that anchored the 2019 review, or the 16-ounce mesquite-grilled prime carne asada ribeye at market price with habanero potato purée and chimichurri. A hiramasa collar ($32) shows up in limited quantity.
Drink. Van Zanen’s list leans natural wine and agave cocktails, and there is a frozen drink on the Scottsdale menu that James Fox describes as a nod to the margaritas Z’Tejas poured here.
Timing and parking. Dinner is daily from 4 to 9; lunch and brunch are promised in the coming months. Reserve through the website and specify the patio, a date-night two-top or the 10-to-14-seat community table. Park in the Mercado del Lago lot on Hayden. The prices above are from the restaurant’s posted menu in October 2026 and will move with the season.
Why a Beard semifinalist chose the Z’Tejas building
McCormick Ranch had a bad 2025. The Chart House closed, and so did Z’Tejas, the Austin-born chain whose Hayden Road room had been the last of its Scottsdale locations; by June 30, 2025, every Z’Tejas in Arizona and Texas was gone, its owner saying he had never found the right team for the brand. That left a large, oddly shaped restaurant on a lake, with a patio most developers would kill for, in a neighborhood whose dining had drifted toward chains and sports bars.
The Foxes had been looking for a second location for several years. James told New Times that when they stepped inside the empty building they knew: “It kind of feels like Arcadia. I think we’ll fit in with our neighborhood vibe.” The comparison is apt. Arcadia and McCormick Ranch are both low-rise, affluent, family neighborhoods that eat out on weeknights and had, until recently, fewer chef-driven rooms than their incomes suggest. Vecina’s original success came from being a neighborhood restaurant that happened to cook at a national level, and the Scottsdale plan is the same bet at triple the size.
The build-out carried the Arcadia look across: the minimal palette, the wood over the bar, the oversized community table, the Caraveo mural in sunset reds and pinks. The additions are what the bigger footprint allowed, a glass wine room, a mezzanine, private rooms and the lake patio. The kitchen’s size is the real change; it is what lets Fox add lunch, brunch, more wood-fired dishes and a raw bar, none of which fit in Arcadia. Raenee’s line to New Times was modest: “It’s a really good extension of what we do in Arcadia.” The press we found does not say what the Foxes paid for the lease, whether Eric Stone or Jamie Catlett from the original partnership are involved in Scottsdale, or how the lunch service will be structured; the restaurant’s own site lists only dinner hours.
Honest assessment: Vecina arrives with the best pedigree of any restaurant to open in McCormick Ranch in the 2020s, and a month in, that is all we can say with certainty; the Scottsdale room has not yet been reviewed. The risks are the obvious ones for a tripled restaurant, consistency across a bigger floor and a neighborhood that may want more Z’Tejas than mesquite. The upside is that the lake at Hayden and Via de Ventura has waited a long time for a kitchen this serious, and our guide to mesquite grilling explains why the smoke you smell from the parking lot is the point.