Monday, August 31, 2026

The Top 100 Restaurants Near Lulaá


  1. Five varieties of mole anchor the menu at this Oaxacan restaurant in Sunnyslope, where a string-lit patio softens the strip-mall surroundings considerably. The cocktail list leans heavily on mezcal, with rare agave spirits showing up across most of the drinks. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top Oaxacan restaurant, and the mole negro has a following of its own.




  2. The tortas here are the size of a small architectural project, stacked high on soft telera rolls with combinations like fried beef, ham, egg, chorizo, and avocado all grilled together. This casual Mexican sandwich shop in Sunnyslope sprawls through several rooms, and the menu takes real time to navigate. The juice bar deserves equal attention, especially the agua cremosa, a condensed milk and fresh fruit drink that arrives under a paper umbrella, which feels right.



  3. A tamale shop that sells exactly one thing, in more than twenty flavors. The family operation skips lard, gluten, and preservatives, and the masa shows it. Standards like beef red chile sit alongside spinach and cream cheese, a rotating monthly special, and dessert tamales for when you've already committed. Find them at the North Phoenix storefront on Cave Creek Road or at area farmers markets if the drive feels ambitious.




  4. Rotating TV screens overhead walk you through the menu before you've even sat down, which sets the tone for this welcoming Indian restaurant on the east side of Phoenix. The family behind it grew up in the restaurant business back in India and brought that instinct for hospitality with them. Dosa arrives shattering crisp, the malai kofta is deeply comforting, and the staff nudges you toward something unfamiliar if you let them.








  5. Leather booths, stone and copper accents, and woven rugs on the wall set the tone for a sit-down New Mexican restaurant that skews considerably more swanky than the cuisine's roadside reputation suggests. The marble bar is massive and the patio invites lingering, especially at brunch. Green chile shows up in nearly everything, from eggs Benedict to a pecan-wood-grilled cheeseburger, and the dinner menu runs to rack of lamb and enchiladas.





  6. 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.



  7. Rank 23. Tratto

    Italian

    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.


  8. The green chile burro is what people are actually here for, and on busy days the line confirms it. Rito's is an old-school Mexican counter-service spot, been around forever, run by the same family across a handful of Valley locations. The move if you're feeling committed is to get any order done chimichanga-enchilada style, deep-fried and drowned in red sauce with cheese, lettuce, and tomato piled on top.


  9. Rank 25. Great Wall

    Cantonese

    Carts trundle through this spacious Cantonese dim sum hall on weekends, and by midday the entrance is already a bottleneck of people clutching numbered tickets. Point at what rolls past: lacquered duck, chewy lo mein, dumplings, fried wontons. The servers are moving fast and the tables are crowded and dimly lit, and the whole operation hums along in cheerful, productive disorder. Phoenix New Times handed it Best Dim Sum in 2025.


  10. 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.



  11. 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.



  12. Rank 30. Bacanora

    Mexican, Regional Cuisine

    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.


  13. 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.


  14. Beef heart on a skewer is not a timid opener, but El Chullo's anticuchos, marinated and grilled dense and chewy, set the tone for a traditional Peruvian restaurant that doesn't hedge. The Melrose location on Seventh Avenue is cozy and colorful, the kind of room where a Pisco Sour tastes better than it has any right to. Lomo saltado, ceviche mixto, and arroz chaufa round out a menu that takes the Lima-meets-Canton fried rice angle seriously.



  15. Rank 34. Lon's at the Hermosa

    Southwestern New American

    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.


  16. Rank 35. Chilte

    Modern Mexican

    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.


  17. 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.


  18. 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.






  19. Rank 42. The Gladly

    New American






  20. Rank 47. FnB

    Sonoran New American

    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.


  21. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls frame a sweeping Phoenix skyline view, which does most of the decorating in this contemporary fine dining room beside the historic Wrigley Mansion. The chef runs a live-fire kitchen where modern French technique shapes the menu, prix fixe on weekdays and a full tasting menu on weekends. The full-service bar has a direct sightline into the kitchen, so you can watch things catch fire while sipping something civilized.


  22. Rank 49. Tacos Chiwas

    Chihuahua-style Mexican

    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.


  23. A blue-and-gold accent wall is doing a lot of work inside what looks, from the parking lot, like absolutely nothing. This Mexican neveria in a north Phoenix strip mall serves raspados in flavors that run well past the usual strawberry and tamarind, and the horchata version, cold and cinnamony, has a following. Elote bowls round out the menu. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top neveria.



  24. Yellow booths, green walls, and neon lighting make Tambayan look like someone decorated with pure enthusiasm, which turns out to be the right call for a Filipino homestyle restaurant that spent years as a pop-up and food truck before landing a permanent spot on Camelback. The halo halo, layered and rainbow-colored, is the dessert equivalent of that same energy. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top Filipino restaurant.


  25. 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.






  26. Rank 58. Kabob Grill N' Go

    Armenian Middle Eastern

    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.


  27. Rank 59. Phở Thành

    Vietnamese Noodles


  28. Rank 60. Latha

    African, Caribbean

    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.


  29. 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.


  30. The oxtail Italian beef sandwich, melting with cheese and spiked with giardiniera, tells you right away what kind of chef is running this upscale New American kitchen. Hush is an intimate room in a Scottsdale strip mall, open kitchen sending smells out front, nostalgic rock at a volume that invites conversation. The menu shifts often, but the kitchen's touch with vegetables, fish, and meat stays constant. Reservations through Tock are a smart move.


  31. 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.


  32. 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.





  33. 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.


  34. The meat and cheese counter anchors this Italian deli in West Phoenix, where a full antipasto bar, housemade sauces and dressings, and shelves of pasta and olive oil fill out the rest. Sandwiches are built to order, and the Italian bread carries them better than the alternatives. Homemade lasagna, meatballs, and cannoli round things out for anyone who came in for cold cuts and left with dinner.







  35. The signature move here is the Hazz blend, carne asada folded with mild green chile and melted cheese, and it shows up across the menu at this no-frills Sonoran taco shop in west Phoenix. Order at the counter, everything à la carte, then stake out a table and work the salsa bar, which runs from fresh green to roasty red to a piquant orange. The horchata comes in a bucket. Phoenix New Times has it in their top 50 right now.



  36. Rank 77. CC's On Central

    Cajun & Creole

    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.






  37. 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.


  38. Rank 83. First & Last

    New American

    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.





  39. Rank 87. Da Vang

    Vietnamese

    The cracked-laminate menus at this Vietnamese restaurant in a Phoenix strip mall are entirely on purpose. Fourteen kinds of pho anchor the menu, portions are generous enough to require a to-go container, and the hot coffee with sweetened condensed milk is a good reason to linger. Prices hover around $15, the room is multi-roomed and no-frills, and the com tam dac biet piles broken rice with what feels like the entire menu on one plate.





  40. Rank 91. Casa de Falafel

    Middle Eastern


  41. 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.


  42. 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.






  43. 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.



  44. Rank 100. The Chuckbox

    Southwestern American


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