The Best Places in Downtown Phoenix

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. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Food & Wine Yotaka Martin · Best New Chefs
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Best Chef: Southwest · Yotaka Martin

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

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 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. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix

Chris Bianco is the Bronx-born pizzaiolo who convinced the rest of the country that Phoenix belongs in the pizza conversation, and this snug 42-seat brick room in Heritage Square is where it started. Wood-fired Neapolitan pies come out of an oven that has been running for decades, drawing lines that have shown no signs of shortening. Bianco holds two James Beard Awards, which is two more than most people who make pizza for a living.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza USA Excellent Pizzerias
2. Foodist Awards 2025 · Food Pioneer · Chris Bianco
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

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

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

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

Menus written entirely in Spanish set the tone at this all-white coffee shop in downtown Phoenix, where the minimalism stops at the decor. The drinks lean on flavors from the chef's Mexican childhood: sweetened condensed milk and piloncillo folded into espresso, cafe de olla fragrant with cinnamon and anise, horchata made with wild rice and almond milk. It's a quiet, unhurried room that draws people who plan to stay a while.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Third Space · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times The 10 Best Coffee Shops in Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The 10 best coffee shops in Phoenix

Roosevelt Row gets a proper grown-up restaurant in Pretty Penny, where every table starts with a complimentary pour of bubbles and the kitchen sends out housemade pastas, bold proteins, and an octopus tostada that earned a spot on Phoenix Magazine's top dishes list. The forest-green room is sleek without being stiff, and the bar program holds its own, landing in the Spirited Awards' regional top ten for best new cocktail bar.

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist · Top Mixologist/Bartender · Brenon Stuart
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best New Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A smash burger counter inside The Churchill, Phoenix's shipping-container food hall, Stoop Kid pulls double duty: bagel sandwiches in the morning, crispy patties the rest of the day. The kitchen keeps things small and precise, with homemade dill pickles and a fried-egg option for those who treat lunch like a commitment. Grab a beer from next door, find a table in the shaded courtyard, and wait for your name.

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

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 2024 · Best French Restaurant · 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

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

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
3. The Infatuation The 20 Best Restaurants In Phoenix

The bocce court beside the patio gives away what kind of place this is before you even order. The Vig is a gastropub with a long tap list, a solid wine selection, and a food menu with enough vegetarian options to keep everyone at the table happy. The sprawling patio has its own outdoor bar, which cuts down on excuses to go back inside. Local acts and DJs show up on weekends, and the crowd skews toward people who planned to stay for one drink.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner: Genuine Concepts · Outstanding Hospitality Group
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Genuine Concepts · Outstanding Hospitality Group
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Daily Specials · Best of Phoenix

A pastry case you have to walk past before you even reach the counter is a clever design choice for a breakfast spot. Vovomeena runs a casual line-order setup near downtown Phoenix with a genuinely neighborhood feel, leaning on local suppliers for eggs, sausage, and coffee. The Pain Perdu swaps bread for banana bread pudding, and the chile-corn Johnnycakes remind you this is the Southwest.

1. Phoenix New Times The 10 best breakfast spots in Phoenix
2. Eater The 15 Best Brunches 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

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Eater The 15 Best Brunches in Phoenix

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

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

The cardstock to-go box comes with chopstick handles built into the sides, which is either the cleverest packaging in Phoenix or a sign that the city has simply been doing lunch wrong. This grab-and-go dumpling shop on a downtown corner keeps the menu short: pick your base, pick your filling, pick a sauce. The whole thing runs about thirteen dollars, which buys considerably more than whatever sad situation you had going on at your desk.

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

A chalkboard of rotating cocktail specials and a basement bathed so completely in red light that no other color survives the trip down. This speakeasy-style cocktail bar is tucked beneath the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel, behind a mural and open only two nights a week, which is exactly the energy. Vintage velvet chairs and low tables give it the feel of a sitting room someone forgot to leave, and the drinks arrive in coupes and crystal-cut rocks glasses.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Finalist · Top Mixologist/Bartender · PJ Vader Baron
2. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Speakeasy · Best of Phoenix

The outdoor bar lives inside a repurposed shipping container, which tells you something about this brewpub's sensibility. Arizona Wilderness pours a rotating slate of seasonal ales alongside house classics, and the kitchen keeps pace with oversized burgers, an Arizonan hot fried chicken sandwich, and duck fat fries that have developed their own following. The vegan options are less afterthought than actual draw. Bench seating, a beer garden, and desert weather do the rest.

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Winner: Vegan Bahn Mi · Best Vegan Delight
2. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Refuge IPA · Favorite Local Craft Beer
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Birthday Beer Deal · Best of Phoenix

Part coffee shop, part design store, part Taschen outpost, Dialog sits at the base of a mural-wrapped building on Roosevelt Row and dares you to categorize it. The matcha is stone-ground and ceremonial-grade, with baristas reaching for a scale before the whisk ever touches the bowl. Beans come from Stereoscope in LA. Browsers drift between arched light fixtures and esoteric objects while something simmers on the U-shaped bar.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Coffeehouse · Best of Phoenix
2. AZ Central Best downtown coffee shops for working or studying · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Matcha · Best of Phoenix

The build-your-own bouquet bar is the first thing you notice, a wall of loose stems you pull and arrange yourself while your coffee order is being made. This is a coffee and flower shop in downtown Phoenix, the kind of concept that sounds precious until you're standing in it and it actually works. The rose latte has become something of a signature. Breakfast and lunch round it out, and private floristry classes are available for groups.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Place to Get Coffee and Flowers · Best of Phoenix
2. AZ Central Best downtown Phoenix coffee shops for more than just coffee · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes
3. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Peonies and Pick-Me-Ups · Best of Phoenix

A wood-fired Neapolitan pizzeria tucked inside an old downtown bungalow, with exposed brick, creaky hardwood floors, and a garden patio strung with lights that makes a Phoenix evening feel almost unfair. The team also turns out house-made pasta, burrata, and limoncello from a family recipe. Weekends book up fast, which tells you something without anyone having to say it.

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

The drinks here are built on Mexican dessert flavors, cajeta and horchata and mazapán, which makes the menu feel like someone raided a very good grandmother's kitchen. This Mexican coffee shop on Grand Avenue runs warm in every sense: conversations in Spanish and English spill across colorful tables, and the owner greets everyone like company she was expecting. A useful antidote to the laptop-and-Edison-bulb variety of café down the block.

1. AZ Central Best Grand Avenue coffee shops for meeting friends or making new ones · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes
2. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Mexican Coffee Shop · Best of Phoenix

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants
2. Phoenix Magazine Tiradito · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Winner: Vegan Bahn Mi · Best Vegan Delight
2. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist: Refuge IPA · Favorite Local Craft Beer
3. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The rice comes out burgundy, not white, because Harumi uses Forbidden black rice, and that detail alone tells you this is a modern sushi spot with a point of view. It sits in downtown Phoenix, small and lively, with an omakase option that won't require a financial intervention. The fish is clean and familiar rather than obscure, which suits the pre-show crowd it draws. Phoenix New Times named it a top pick for eating before a downtown event.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Place to Eat Before a Downtown Event · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times Our top 12 favorite sushi restaurants in Phoenix
3. Phoenix Magazine Japanese Caesar Salad · Top 100 Dishes of Arizona

Tijuana-style street food from a truck usually parked outside Cobra Arcade Bar on Second Street, running until 2 a.m. on weekends for a reason. The chef behind the counter built a menu around classics like tacos al pastor and vampiros, then added birria ramen for anyone who wants to confuse their stomach in the best way. Phoenix New Times named it the top late-night Mexican food truck two years running, which tracks with the crowd spilling out of nearby bars.

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Best Food Truck Experience
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Late-Night Mexican Food · Best of Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Mexican Food Truck · Best of Phoenix

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist · Top Chef · Jason Alford
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Exceptional Culinary Experience

1. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist · Phenomenal Fast Casual Concept

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

1. AZ Central Best Grand Avenue coffee shops for meeting friends or making new ones · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

1. AZ Central Best downtown coffee shops for working or studying · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

1. AZ Central Best downtown coffee shops for working or studying · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

1. AZ Central Best Midtown Phoenix coffee shops for meeting friends or making new ones · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

1. AZ Central Best downtown coffee shops for working or studying · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

1. AZ Central Best downtown Phoenix coffee shops for curling up with a book · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

1. AZ Central Best downtown coffee shops for working or studying · The ultimate guide to the best Phoenix cafes

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. 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

The team behind downtown's cocktail bars Wren & Wolf and Carry On pivoted to daytime, and the result is a doughnut shop tucked into the warehouse district just south of Phoenix, connected to a church in a pairing no one planned but somehow makes sense. Brioche rounds and tall, croissant-style hybrids share the menu, with creative coffee alongside. The crowd skews early and purposeful, the way people get when pastries are involved.

1. Phoenix New Times A delicious dozen: The 12 best doughnut shops in the Valley

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

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

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Finalist · Top Mixologist/Bartender · Brenon Stuart

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

The cabin is dressed in burnt orange and warm walnut, the windows show a looping blue-yonder reel, and a flight attendant is rolling the beverage cart your way. Carry On is an immersive cocktail lounge built around the first-class, Mad Men-era flight fantasy, preflight announcements and all. Reservations drop weekly and go fast, so plan accordingly. The Spirited Awards named it a Top 10 U.S. Nominee for Best New Cocktail Bar.

1. The 50 Best Bar Design Award
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best New Bar · Best of Phoenix
3. Imbibe Where to Drink in Phoenix

Vintage arcade cabinets run on Cobra-stamped tokens, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've touched a joystick. This cocktail bar and arcade in downtown Phoenix covers its walls in local murals, pours signature drinks with names like Garbage Pail Kids and Punch Out, and hosts Valley DJs on weekends. When the crowd hits comic-con density, an anime-themed overflow lounge a few doors down offers Japanese import games and cocktails served in fugu-shaped mugs.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Bar Makeover · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix

Globe pendant lights, brass accents, and two misters-in-summer courtyards make this woman-owned taproom on Roosevelt Row feel like the anti-brewery brewery. The flagship pale ale is called Herstory, which tells you everything about the vibe. Rotating experimental brews sit alongside core taps, and if you get hungry, a QR code on the table summons food from nearby spots. Trivia nights and live music fill the calendar, and Phoenix New Times named it one of the city's top 100 bars.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Unusual Beer: Mango Lassi · Best of Phoenix
2. Imbibe Where to Drink in Phoenix

The DJs here spin actual vinyl, which means you hear the crackle before the beat drops. Spin Room is a music-driven cocktail lounge tucked into the CityScape complex downtown, built around a proper turntable setup and a crowd that came to dance. Sets run heavy on R&B, hip-hop, funk, and soul with a nostalgic lean. The full bar keeps things accessible, with cheap beers alongside named cocktails that match the throwback energy.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Vinyl Bar · Best of Phoenix

The Ra Ra Room is a supper club tucked inside PHX Arena where entry runs $15,000 a year in membership fees, which means most people get in by befriending someone richer than themselves. Major Food Group runs the room, and the menu leans heavily on steaks and Italian. The real closer is the candy alcove at the end of the night, a small room stocked with lollipops, peanut brittle, and jelly beans that guests take home freely.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Restaurant You Can’t Get Into · Best of Phoenix

The draw at this Thai bar and mookata spot is the tabletop grill sunk into a pot of bubbling broth, where you cook your own meal at the table. It lives on the patio behind Lom Wong, small and casual, with craft cocktails doing serious work alongside the smoke. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List, which is a lot of attention for a patio bar where dinner is technically a DIY project.

1. The New York Times 2024 · The Restaurant List
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Cook-It-Yourself Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
3. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix

Frosted mugs pulled straight from a freezer behind a bar draped in kitschy tchotchkes: this Grand Avenue tiki dive bar has been an institution since truckers were rolling through on Route 60. Wood paneling, tiki-style tables, a pool table, and a patio where the smoking happens. On Tuesdays a DJ spins vinyl, playing what the regulars call "funky mutant dance music," and somehow the night outlasts your intentions. Cash only, so plan accordingly.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Dive Bar · Best of Phoenix
2. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix

A bakery and coffee café where a pastry chef known for laminated doughs and a coffee roaster behind some of the Valley's better seasonal lattes have joined forces, with a bread baker trained at San Francisco's Tartine rounding out the team. The collaboration covers a lot of ground, and the range of talent in one room means you can justify a second order before you've finished the first.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Collaboration · Best of Phoenix

A wine bar where you skip the sommelier entirely and pour your own glass from a sleek, self-serve kiosk loaded with 24 options, several of them from Arizona. You fund a chip card at the bar, pick your wine, choose one, three, or five ounces, and push the button. Former schoolteachers run the place, which might explain why the whole system is genuinely easy to figure out after one drink, or even before.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Wine on Tap · Best of Phoenix
2. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix

A faded pink building off Seventh Avenue, formerly a tax office, which tracks: there's something a little bureaucratic about a jukebox this good. Inside, the bar is cheap, loose, and happy to stay that way, with Scrabble at the booths and beers that don't require a budget meeting. The patio shifts into DJ territory after dark, and the rotating calendar of themed nights keeps regulars checking Instagram like it's homework.

1. Imbibe Where to Drink in Phoenix
2. Eater The Best Bars in Phoenix
3. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix

Counter service Hawaiian barbecue tucked into the shipping container courtyard at the Churchill, just off Roosevelt Row. The move is a mixed plate piled with kalbi short ribs, kalua pork, and teriyaki chicken, everything sitting on rice with a scoop of mac salad alongside. It's the kind of meal that's better shared, partly for variety and partly because the portions don't encourage restraint. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top Hawaiian restaurant in 2025.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Hawaiian Restaurant · Best of Phoenix

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

You reach it by taking the middle elevator in the Ten-0-One Building down to the basement, which sets the tone before the doors even open. Rough Rider is a cocktail bar with a full food menu, done up in dark wood and high ceilings, somewhere between a Victorian gentlemen's club and a downtown Phoenix speakeasy. The drinks lean into the era with names like Happy Birthday Mr. President, and the kitchen sends out a raw bar and a bone-in pork chop that suggest nobody phoned it in.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Underground Restaurant · Best of Phoenix
2. Imbibe Where to Drink in Phoenix
3. Eater The Best Bars in Phoenix

You reach this cocktail bar and pinball arcade by yanking open a fake freezer door inside Ziggy's Magic Pizza Shop, which is either the best or worst way to start a night depending on how you feel about commitment. Inside: a glowing dance floor, a disco ball, pinball machines, and a full bar. Post-show crowds spill in from the Van Buren next door, so on any given night the room holds goths, burners, and Disney adults in rough harmony.

1. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Hidden Bar · Best of Phoenix

Thirty-five self-pour taps line the wall at this craft beer bar in downtown Phoenix, where you grab a card, pull your own pint, and pay by the ounce. The rotating selection runs craft beers and wines, so a tour of the taps is genuinely the point. Wings, poutine, burgers, and pasta keep things grounded when the sampling gets ambitious. The mural-covered patio draws the after-work crowd on good-weather nights, which in Phoenix is most of them.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Place to Pour Your Own Beer · Best of Phoenix

Neapolitan pizza next door to an Irish pub, sharing the same owners and roughly the same spirit. The Desmond is a casual pizza and cocktail spot in downtown Phoenix where the crust comes wood-fired and the drinks lean toward craft cocktails and imported beers. The pies run from burrata and prosciutto to spicy salami with roasted peppers. It sits a short walk from the ballpark, and the pre-game crowd has clearly figured that out.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place to Eat Before a Downtown Event · Best of Phoenix

A honeycomb dining structure, murals of Prince and Freddie Mercury, bars in trailers, a pool, and the occasional bachata lesson: The Pemberton is a sprawling outdoor complex a few blocks from Roosevelt Row that resists any single label. Wander in for a cocktail, stumble into a live band, or sit down for dinner inside what amounts to a giant hive cell. After dark, the lighting and pop-art murals tip the whole place into something genuinely strange, in the best sense.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Downtown Hangout · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Outdoor Hangout · Best of Phoenix

Gold palm fronds hang over the bar like a permanent vacation has been declared, and the drinks menu at this Cuban cocktail bar treats rum the way a serious wine list treats Burgundy. The daiquiri and mojito get thoughtful treatment alongside wilder tropical builds. The same team runs Pigtails and Rough Rider, so the pedigree tracks. Pink tiles, cozy booths, and food to keep things grounded.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best New Bar · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix

A hanging mobile about Phoenix's infamous trunk murderess sets the tone before you've even ordered a drink. Valley Bar is a basement dive, reached through an alley off Central Avenue that will make you question your life choices right up until you hit the stairs and descend into genuinely good energy. Cheap beers, cocktails named after Arizona politicians, skeeball, shuffleboard, and live DJs on weekends round out a room that has no interest in taking itself seriously.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Basement Bar · Best of Phoenix
2. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix
3. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix

A pasty bar doing roughly fifty fillings, from tikka masala to cheeseburger, in a cavernous downtown Phoenix space that somehow feels more Cornish pub than desert Southwest. The multi-story room stays dark despite the chandeliers, and the second-floor railing gives you a perch over the pool tables below. Draft Guinness is the obvious move. Phoenix New Times named it among the top 100 bars in the city.

1. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Late-Night Eats · Best of Phoenix

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Breakfast Burrito · Best of Phoenix

The ice cream sandwich here comes on a fresh-sliced doughnut, which is either genius or a personal liability depending on your self-control. This small-batch ice cream shop keeps a core menu of eight flavors, rotates in new ones weekly, and does fruit sorbets for the dairy-free crowd. The original location sits in a tiny historic building on Grand Avenue, which gives it more character than a strip mall scoop shop ever could.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Ice Cream · Best of Phoenix

A living wall and copper accents soften what is otherwise a properly dark cocktail bar doing its best not to be found. Pigtails is a speakeasy that skips the password theatrics and the reservation-or-else attitude, which puts it ahead of most places bothering with the genre. The drinks riff on classics, a rotating mystery punch keeps things loose, and the raw bar snacks suggest someone thought past the ice bucket.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Speakeasy · Best of Phoenix

A converted cottage on McDowell Road that smells faintly of old rugs and good intentions, Sauvage is a natural wine bar and bottle shop where the list leans toward obscure regions and the staff will talk you through all of it. Charcuterie and tinned fish are always on hand, and local chefs occasionally pop up to cook. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America, which the room, unhurried and candlelit, seems entirely unbothered by.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Eater The Best Bars in Phoenix
3. AZ Central Best bars in metro Phoenix

Pint glasses hang from the ceiling and dollar bills plaster the columns at this Irish pub tucked into the back of a downtown Phoenix hotel. The menu runs shepherd's pie, fish and chips, and beef stew, with Guinness on draft doing most of the heavy lifting. A jug of apple pie shots on the bar suggests the night can go a few different directions. Phoenix New Times named it one of the top 100 bars in the city in 2025.

1. Phoenix New Times The Top 100 Bars in Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Irish Pub · Best of Phoenix

The Churchill is an open-air food hall in downtown Phoenix with a courtyard packed enough during peak hours that finding a seat becomes a sport. Most people never notice the staircase tucked past the restrooms at the north end, which leads to a rooftop with a quiet view over the city. Grab something from one of the vendors below and take it up; the crowd thins considerably and the evening light does most of the work.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Secret Patio · Best of Phoenix

The entry is flagged as a place to eat, but the source material describes a cultural center with no food or dining component mentioned. I don't have enough information to write an accurate restaurant or food blurb for this location. Could you double-check the entry type or share source material that covers the food offering?

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Champion of Latino Culture · Best of Phoenix

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Margaritas · Best of Phoenix

A serpentine bar stocked floor-to-ceiling with tequila and cerveza anchors the main room at this Latin nightclub on Central Avenue, where resident DJs rotate through reggaeton, cumbia, salsa, and bachata until 3 a.m. or later. The $10 door gets you the dance floor; $20 buys plush couches and bottle service on the VIP side. A michelada and taco bar rounds things out for anyone who needs a breather.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Latin Nightclub · Best of Phoenix