The Top 100 Restaurants Near Arizona Brick Co.

The name means "foreigner," which sets the tone for a modern Indian restaurant that treats the cuisine as a starting point rather than a finish line. Tucked into a Chandler strip mall, it runs cocktails spiked with masala chai vodka or ghee-washed whiskey alongside small plates, large plates, and pani puri worth sharing around the table. The room skews upscale without being stiff about it.

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Best World Flavor
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Upscale Indian Restaurant · Best of Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Day Drinker · Favorite Local Craft Beer

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Best Cold Brew: Chocolate Peanut Butter Shaker · Best of the Valley

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Maggiore Group · Outstanding Hospitality Group

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Maggiore Group · Outstanding Hospitality Group

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Maggiore Group · Outstanding Hospitality Group

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Phoenix

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

The curved brick entryway opens into an oblong room of deep green walls, gold candelabras, and picture frames, which is a lot to pull off inside a Tempe strip mall. Bar Capri is an Italian restaurant and bar with the bones of a big-city neighborhood spot: cocktails and a tight wine list from a back bar, lasagna and arancini coming through the kitchen window. Tiramisu closes things out, and nobody seems in a hurry to leave.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. Phoenix New Times Our top 10 favorite restaurants in Tempe
3. Phoenix New Times The 10 best new Phoenix restaurants of 2025

Saguaro fruit, tepary beans, and wild sumac foraged from Gila River Community land anchor the tasting menu at this fine-dining room on tribal grounds. The team turns those Sonoran Desert ingredients through a global fine-dining lens, so cactus lime pie and buffalo with saguaro syrup land somewhere genuinely unexpected. It holds a Forbes Five Star and AAA Five Diamonds, a combination that signals dress-up territory before you've even looked at the menu.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Service · Best of Phoenix

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. Phoenix New Times Our top 10 favorite restaurants in Tempe
2. Phoenix Magazine Curry Lamb Pot Pie · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

1. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Indian restaurants in Phoenix

1. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Indian restaurants in Phoenix

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Korean Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Phoenix

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Chinese restaurants in Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner · Top Mixologist/Bartender · Kyla Hein

Dark walls, checkerboard tile, and a four-course French tasting menu in a Gilbert strip suite, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write. Maeva runs all day, so you can stop in for a lavender latte in the morning and then come back dressed up for dinner. The kitchen does a la carte too, but the tasting menu is the main event, with servers who steer the pairings and explain each plate without making you feel like you're being graded.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. Phoenix New Times Chicken Soup en Croute · The 10 best bites we tasted at Phoenix restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times The 10 best new Phoenix restaurants of 2025

Mesquite and pecan wood smoke drifts out of the open kitchen at this Chihuahuan-rooted restaurant inside Tempe's Culdesac neighborhood, where the grill does serious work on meats, peppers, and open-faced quesadillas. The team behind Tacos Chiwas built something more personal here, moving from taqueria to family table. Moles, micheladas, and brunch dishes like concha French toast fill out a menu that runs morning to night. A James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur semifinalist in 2024.

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Chiles Rellenos · Best of Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times Our top 10 favorite restaurants in Tempe

A black bungalow in downtown Phoenix that turns out northern Thai food rooted in Chiang Rai, where the chef grew up cooking alongside her mother and grandmother. The menu is built to share, the flavors run deep, and the cocktails are doing interesting things with fish sauce and fresh coconut cream. Yotaka Martin took the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2025, which in Phoenix is basically a neighborhood fact at this point.

1. Food & Wine Yotaka Martin · Best New Chefs
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Best Chef: Southwest · Yotaka Martin
3. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner: Yam Mamuang Boran · Best Dish in a Supporting Role

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Best Gorditas · Best of the Valley

The chef here trained at Tsuji Culinary Institute and cooked at Nobu before settling into a ramen shop in Ahwatukee, which is either a surprise or exactly what someone like that would do. The menu runs classic: tonkotsu, miso blended from Hokkaido pastes, rice bowls, takoyaki. The broth is unhurried and clear in its intentions, the kind of ramen that makes the fast-food versions feel a little embarrassed about themselves.

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Ramen · Best of Phoenix

Rene Andrade runs a short, rotating menu over a mesquite grill in a small, triangular room, and the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest followed. This Sonoran Mexican restaurant in Phoenix trades in carne asada, caramelos built on crisp flour tortillas, and beans that make you reconsider how seriously you've been taking beans. The menu is a handful of items on any given night, many of them changing, all of them smelling like fire.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Winner · Best Chef: Southwest · Rene Andrade
2. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner: Tomahawk Steak · Standout Signature Dish
3. Foodist Awards 2024 · Winner · Top Mixologist/Bartender · Moises Castro

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

The chef still works the line most nights, which tells you something about a creative restaurant that's been an Old Town Scottsdale fixture long enough to feel inevitable. Vegetables are taken seriously here, pulled from Arizona farms and steered through a menu that drifts from the Sonoran Desert to the Levant without announcing itself. The wine list leans hard into Arizona producers, and the tucked-away bar is a fine place to work through both.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Arizona Wine Selection · Best of Phoenix

1. Phoenix Magazine Honey Bee Pizza · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

The restaurant's unofficial motto translates roughly to "I don't give a damn," which is a curious thing to post when your birria arrives in hand-pressed squid ink tortillas with miso consommé. Chilte is a modern Mexican restaurant and bar in a revamped motor hotel on Grand Avenue, and Food & Wine named the chef one of its Best New Chefs. The seasonal menu shifts often, and the team pulls in guest chefs regularly, so the room rewards repeat visits.

1. Food & Wine Best New Chefs · Lawrence "LT" Smith
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Emerging Restaurant of the Year
3. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants

The name means "far from home," which tells you something about what the chef is doing here. This central Phoenix Thai restaurant draws on Bangkok street food and the cooking of the Isan region, with a tight menu of small plates, noodles, and skewers that reads like a personal dispatch rather than a crowd-pleasing survey. The cocktail program is serious enough to make parking on this stretch of Osborn Road feel like a design choice. A James Beard semifinalist, 2024.

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner · Best World Flavors
3. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Mango Sticky Rice · Most Delectable Dessert

A banana leaf-wrapped branzino arrives at the table and you unwrap it yourself, releasing a cloud of curry-leaf steam. Indibar is a fine dining modern Indian restaurant, all desert neutrals and Art Deco curves, with the white-glove service of a high-end resort. The kitchen applies globe-spanning fine dining technique to tandoori and regional traditions. A James Beard Best New Restaurant semifinalist in 2026, and named by USA Today among its Restaurants of the Year.

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Thai Peanut Poke Bowl · Standout Signature Dish
2. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
3. Phoenix New Times The 12 best restaurants in Scottsdale

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist: The Great One · Most Crave-Worthy Burger
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times The top 10 burger joints in Phoenix

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Best Low-Key Cocktail Menu · Best of the Valley

Chihuahua-style street food is the whole point here, counter-service and no-frills, with a menu tight enough that everything on it earns its spot. The gorditas have won over Phoenix two years running, and the tacos, barbacoa through lengua, hold up across multiple locations without the usual chain drift. A James Beard semifinalist, which for a fast-casual taco spot is its own kind of statement. Patio seating available if the line moves fast enough.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now

The injera arrives with every order, a spongy sourdough flatbread that doubles as plate and utensil, and first-timers get a menu with a glossary to help them figure out what they've just ordered. This Ethiopian restaurant has been an ASU rite of passage for what feels like forever, a family-run strip mall spot that leans hard into vegetarian dishes and fragrant stews. The dining room is cozy and carpeted, and the coffee ceremony is not decorative.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times Our top 10 favorite restaurants in Tempe

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Milkshakes · Best of Phoenix

Glowing red neon and a tight menu of smash burgers and waffle fries in a downtown Phoenix storefront that used to pour rum cocktails. Bad Jimmy's is a casual burger shop that moonlights as a cocktail bar, which explains why half the room looks like they just escaped a nearby venue. The rotating specials reward repeat visits, and vanilla soft serve finished with olive oil is the kind of thing that sounds wrong until it doesn't. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top smashburger spot.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Double Burger · Most Crave-Worthy Burger
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix
3. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

Latha means "flavor" in Swahili, which the kitchen takes as a brief. Housed in the bungalow-style Silva House in Heritage Square, this downtown Phoenix restaurant traces the food of the African diaspora through Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the American South, on both prix fixe and à la carte menus. The cooking has range, from piri piri chicken over jollof rice to Southern pound cake finished with tropical marmalade. A Michelin Selected restaurant.

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Emerging Restaurant of the Year
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Best World Flavor
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Double Burger · Most Crave-Worthy Burger
2. Phoenix New Times The top 10 burger joints in Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Genuine Concepts · Outstanding Hospitality Group
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Genuine Concepts · Outstanding Hospitality Group

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Chinese restaurants in Phoenix

A bright red neon sign marks this Sichuan restaurant tucked into a Tempe strip mall, where turquoise booths and mural-covered walls set the scene for lazy Susans loaded with mapo tofu, braised eggplant, and the Chongqing-style spicy chicken that Phoenix Magazine named one of Arizona's top dishes. The batter is thin and shatters, the peppercorns do their characteristic lip-numbing work, and the portions are large enough to make you reconsider your afternoon plans.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Traditional Chinese Restaurant · Best of Phoenix

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Chinese restaurants in Phoenix

1. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Best Cold Brew: Chocolate Peanut Butter Shaker · Best of the Valley

Chris Bianco's trattoria keeps a rotating pasta menu built around local flours matched to specific shapes, which sounds precious until you taste it. The kitchen runs classic cacio e pepe alongside whatever Arizona's season hands them, and the drink program goes equally deep into esoteric Italian amari and house-made liqueurs. The New York Times put it on their restaurant list, and the room feels like it earned that quietly.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Food Pioneer · Chris Bianco
2. The New York Times The Restaurant List
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The electric pink neon sign is your landmark, and the shareable platters are the reason you came. This Sonoran taqueria from James Beard Award winner Rene Andrade runs on big, festive plates of ribeye or carnitas surrounded by beans, elote, and salsas, all meant to be wrapped into soft tortillas at the table. The cocktail program runs wilder than you'd expect from a taqueria. Bring people; the portions assume you did.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist: In-Good Spirits · Outstanding Hospitality Group
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Salad: The Original Chopped Salad · Best of Phoenix
3. Phoenix Magazine Lucky 7 Cereal Bowl · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

The Original Chopped Salad has its own Facebook page, which tells you something about the regulars here. Citizen Public House is a polished American restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale that manages to feel genuinely comfortable despite looking like it shouldn't. Classic dishes get quiet, confident upgrades, the room runs warm without trying too hard, and the kitchen keeps the kind of hours that make it useful for more than just dinner plans.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist: In-Good Spirits · Outstanding Hospitality Group
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Salad: The Original Chopped Salad · Best of Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The 12 best restaurants in Scottsdale

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
3. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Uniquely Arizona

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Voodoo Fried Rice · Best Dish in a Supporting Role
2. Phoenix Magazine New Orleans Shrimp and Grits · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Exceptional Culinary Experience
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. Phoenix Magazine Hiramasa Ceviche · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

A strip-mall address in Scottsdale is doing its best to throw you off, but step inside Course and it's a full tasting-menu restaurant, white-tablecloth intentions and all. The kitchen runs a rotating seasonal menu, five courses on weeknights and eight on weekends, with a James Beard semifinalist nomination for the chef and another for pastry. The Pinnacle Guide awarded it one Pin for 2026.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
3. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Exceptional Culinary Experience

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Hamburgers · Best of Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Double Burger · Most Crave-Worthy Burger
2. Phoenix New Times The top 10 burger joints in Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept

The broad patio sweeps out from a small turquoise-trimmed adobe inn with the Camelback range as a backdrop, which is doing a lot of work before the food even arrives. Lon's is a white-tablecloth Southwestern restaurant in Paradise Valley, seasonal and quietly inventive, with weekend brunch drawing the kind of crowd that lingers over customizable margaritas and monkey bread loaded with caramel and cream. The bar is serious, the mountain views are free.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Ultimate Patio Atmosphere
3. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Sticky Toffee Pudding · Most Delectable Dessert

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept

A ramen shop where the broth might arrive laced with matcha or built around five preparations of garlic in a single bowl. Mensho brought its Japanese noodle concept to Arizona with this Mesa outpost, a light-wood room centered on an open kitchen where handmade noodles go into thick, creamy broths. The kind of place where the bowl keeps revealing itself as you eat, which is a polite way of saying you'll want to stay longer than you planned.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Emerging Restaurant of the Year
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Ramen · Best of Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Exceptional Culinary Experience
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Christopher Gross
3. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

The salsa bar alone could justify a visit: nearly a dozen house-made salsas, each in its own small cup, running from tangy pineapple to smoky morita to a bracingly fresh serrano. Casa Corazon is a gourmet Southern Mexican restaurant tucked into a small red building on Phoenix's 16th Street corridor, where the menu leans into regional dishes and pairs naturally with Mexican wine or a fresh-fruit margarita. Eater counts it among Phoenix's best.

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Upscale/Modern Mexican · Best of the Valley
3. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Mexican Happy Hour · Best of Phoenix

The shelves of imported flour, olive oil, and canned goods are the first thing you navigate on the way to ordering lunch, which about sums up what Andreoli is: a north Scottsdale Italian grocer where the sit-down dining room is just as serious as the pantry. The chef hails from Calabria but ranges freely across the regions, and the whiteboard specials tend toward the kind of dishes that take some explaining. A James Beard nominee.

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: Southwest · Giovanni Scorzo
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

High ceilings and big windows flood this New American neighborhood restaurant with afternoon light, and candlelit booths handle the evening shift. The rotating dinner menu runs from clams to pasta to brick chicken, and the bar pours cocktails serious enough to justify a second round. Lunch added focaccia sandwiches and grandma-style pizza slices, which turned a quietly beloved dinner spot into something the whole city suddenly had opinions about.

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner · Emerging Restaurant of the Year
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

1. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Best Workday Lunch Break · Best of the Valley

Marinated skewers sit in the case waiting their turn over live coals, and a haze of mesquite smoke follows the grill man out of the kitchen on a good night. This Armenian kabob counter on 16th Street landed on the New York Times restaurant list and keeps turning up on every Phoenix rundown worth reading. Combos come with enough meat, basmati, and Shirazi salad to feed two people, and regulars treat first-timers like a conversion project.

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

The rotisserie smoke reaches you before you open the door, which is either a warning or a promise. This counter-service Peruvian chicken shop on East Thomas keeps things focused: whole or half birds off a hulking oven, Peruvian sauces on the side, and thick-cut fries that Phoenix New Times handed a Best of Phoenix nod to. Wash it down with an Inca Kola and you're done. Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in America in 2025.

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

A white bungalow on a quiet stretch of Second Street, with string lights on the porch and climbing plants inside, that happens to be one of Phoenix's better French brasseries. Marble tables, exposed brick, and a vinyl record spinning somewhere set the mood for oysters on the patio or baked brie and beef tartare by candlelight. The wine list pulls from around the world, which keeps the date-night crowd very happy and very unhurried.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Date Night Restaurant · Best of Phoenix

The fry bread here comes out puffy and golden, stuffed with ground beef and beans or finished with chocolate, and it gives the whole menu its name. This family-run Tohono O'odham restaurant has been an anchor in Phoenix's Melrose District long before the neighborhood got interesting, serving tacos, stews, and tostadas alongside it. The kind of spot where out-of-towners finally understand what Arizona actually tastes like.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Authentic Arizona Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Authentic Arizona Restaurant · Best of Phoenix

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

A European restaurant tucked into the Melrose District's Wagon Wheel building, where the back patio's twinkle lights and two-top tables make the whole thing feel like a date you actually planned. The menu changes with the seasons and you can do a five-course tasting or just pull a bottle from the adjoining wine shop and order à la carte. A James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Southwest.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Date Night Spot · Best of Phoenix

A neon sign behind the open kitchen reads "Al Dente or Die," which tells you most of what you need to know about this downtown Phoenix pasta joint. Frank Ocean plays where Sinatra might, and "The Sopranos" loops on the wall behind the bar. The vodka sauce built a cult following when the place was a food truck, and the no-reservations line outside suggests that reputation held. Craft cocktails and low-intervention wines round things out.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Sauce · Best of Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Food Pioneer · Matt Carter
2. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Italian · Best of the Valley
3. Phoenix New Times The 12 best restaurants in Scottsdale

Palomas come in tajín-rimmed Jarritos bottles here, and the bartender's expression suggests you should feel lucky to have one. Sidewinder is a diner-bar in Garfield that leans hard into the dingy-vintage aesthetic, the kind of place where a $3 Bud Heavy and a sloppy joe feel like the whole point. It was opened by the team behind an upscale French bistro, which explains nothing and everything at once.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Trendy Diner · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Trendy Diner · Best of Phoenix

A strip mall Mexican restaurant where everything, walls, floors, booths, even the plates, is painted black so the food glows against it like a still life. The brothers who run Lujos took over their parents' spot and rebuilt it almost entirely. The regular menu covers tacos, burritos, and quesadillas, but there's a permanent off-menu section worth asking about, including birria enchiladas drowning in red sauce with crema and guacamole. Wash it down with the horchata.

1. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Mexican restaurants in Phoenix

Two bars for the price of one obsession: an energetic street-level cantina with patio and a reservation-only basement room for quieter, deeper agave rabbit-holing. A food truck parks outside when hunger arrives. The agave selection runs wide enough that the bartenders will happily guide you in, and the cocktails, like a mezcal-and-pistachio-milk situation, suggest this is not your average tequila shelf.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Outstanding Bar/Nightlife Experience
2. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Most Creative Handcrafted Cocktail Program
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Agave-Based Cocktails · Best of Phoenix

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

Old Town Scottsdale runs heavy on sushi and gourmet burgers, so a candlelit Mexican restaurant with a serious tequila program reads almost as contraband. The Mission leans modern Latin rather than strictly regional, but the street tacos and bacon-wrapped hot dogs hold their own against the fancier plates. The room is dark and unhurried in a way that makes a second round of $15 cocktails feel inevitable.

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Food Pioneer · Matt Carter
2. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Tequila Selection · Best of Phoenix
3. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants In Scottsdale

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Double Burger · Most Crave-Worthy Burger
2. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
3. Phoenix New Times The top 10 burger joints in Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist: Church Music · Favorite Local Craft Beer

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Phoenix Magazine Lobster Tarte · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Genuine Concepts · Outstanding Hospitality Group
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Genuine Concepts · Outstanding Hospitality Group

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Beef Wellington · Standout Signature Dish
2. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Top Chef · Ivan Gonzalez
3. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner · Most Creative Handcrafted Cocktail

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix New Times The top 10 burger joints in Phoenix

The attached market selling frozen pierogi and chilled soups to go tells you everything about the vibe here. This casual Ukrainian family restaurant in Mesa treats borders as a loose suggestion, pulling in beef goulash, plov over cumin-scented rice, pork schnitzel, and thick, buttery pierogi that pair well with griddled sausage. The chicken Kiev arrives loaded with dill and herb butter. Unpretentious, generous portions, and priced like someone actually wants you to come back.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Eastern European Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Eastern European Restaurant · Best of Phoenix

Sundubu jjigae arrives at the table still at a full boil, in a black earthenware bowl that stays screaming hot long after it lands. This Korean tofu house in Mesa's Asian District is the kind of place where a server drops off a raw egg and you crack it straight into the broth. The house-made tofu is silky, the broth is deeply red, and the white-shirt warning is sincere. Bulgogi and bibimbap round out the menu for anyone not ready to commit to the fire.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Korean Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Phoenix

1. Phoenix New Times The top 10 burger joints in Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Exceptional Culinary Experience
2. Phoenix Magazine Navarro Grain Bowl · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Phoenix

A mother-and-son Cajun and soul food restaurant where the menu shifts with the day of the week: catfish on Fridays, wings on Wednesdays, Sharon's soul food the first Sunday of the month. Their Louisiana and Mississippi roots show in a shrimp étouffée that's lighter and brighter than you'd expect, and a beef debris over grits that rewards patience. Hong Kong-style praline French toast with cardamom and fennel is either the strangest thing on the menu or the most logical.

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Southern Food · Best of Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Southern Food · Best of Phoenix

A Mexican restaurant in a converted brick building in Garfield, where the large windows keep things bright enough that you don't feel like you're day-drinking when you order a Paloma at noon. Gallo Blanco runs all three meals, so the crowd shifts from coffee-and-eggs regulars to the burrito-and-margarita contingent by midday. The guacamole and chips make a persuasive case for arriving hungry and starting slow.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Paloma · Best of Phoenix
3. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants In Phoenix

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Koffee Kolsch · Favorite Local Craft Beer

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Ultimate Patio Atmosphere

A globe-hopping dinner spot in Old Town Scottsdale built as a love letter to Anthony Bourdain, which means handmade pasta shares the menu with egg yolk nigiri and bison ribeye without any of it feeling like a theme park. The warm, conversation-friendly room earns its vibe. The bar team applies something closer to lab technique to the cocktails, and the mocktail program picked up a Phoenix Magazine Best of the Valley nod, which is a sentence Bourdain would have found deeply funny.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
2. Phoenix Magazine 2025 · Best Mocktail: Smartest Cocktail in the Room · Best of the Valley
3. Phoenix New Times The 12 best restaurants in Scottsdale

The Kothu Parotta, a pan-grilled flatbread shredded and tossed with spicy vegetables and your choice of protein, is the kind of dish that makes a strip-mall address irrelevant. This casual Indian restaurant started as a food truck and found a permanent home on Thomas Road, where the booths fill fast with regulars who already know to ask the server what to order. The dal makhni and tikka masala pull their weight too.

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Neighborhood Indian Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The 10 best Indian restaurants in Phoenix

The burritos here come open at both ends, more like fat rolled tacos than anything you'd expect, and ordering one is a mistake because you'll immediately want another. Testal is a casual counter-service taco shop on Grand Avenue doing Chihuahuan cooking, a regional tradition that gets less attention than it deserves in Phoenix. The rajas, spicy and cheesy with roasted poblano, are a reason to make the trip on their own.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Chihuahuan Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now
3. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Mexican Restaurant · Best of Phoenix