The Best Places to Eat and Do in Downtown Mesa

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

1. Foodist Awards 2023 · Winner · Top Arizona Brewery, Winery, or Distillery Experience
2. Foodist Awards 2024 · Finalist: Mango Foxtrot · Favorite Local Craft Beer
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3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Roberto Centeno

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

White tiles, pastel trim, and a cartoon burger grinning at you from the wall set the tone at this retro counter-service burger joint on downtown Mesa's main drag. The team behind Tacos Chiwas and Espiritu kept things deliberately simple: a short menu of semi-smashed burgers, hot dogs, loaded fries, and aguas frescas. The Sonora burger, stacked with griddled cheese, chiltepin, and bacon, is the one people talk about.

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

Thick griddled corn arepas, stuffed or served alongside shredded beef and rice, are the spine of this Venezuelan Caribbean restaurant in downtown Mesa. The team graduated from a food truck to a brick-and-mortar, and the kitchen still rolls out hot cheese sticks every morning. The patacon swaps buns for fried plantains, and the cachapa, a sweet corn pancake, earns its own detour. A bar handles tropical drinks.

1. Phoenix New Times The top 50 restaurants in Phoenix right now

1. AZ Central The 100 Best Metro Phoenix Restaurants

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Psychic readings, lights-out museum tours, and Victorian seances hosted by a local spiritualist named Flitter Mouse: East Valley Paranormal runs a haunted museum and ghost-hunting operation in downtown Mesa that treats October as a suggestion, not a deadline. Neighborhood ghost tours go by way of Day of the Dead-themed rideable animals, which is a sentence that shouldn't work but does. Open to skeptics, believers, and everyone still deciding.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place to Get Spooked · Best of Phoenix

Five vintage signs from vanished Mesa businesses glow outside The Post, an open-air neon garden that doubles as a love letter to the city's midcentury Main Street. Watson's Flowers, a porcelain Dairy Queen cone, and a Bill Johnson's bull head share the garden with a 15-foot Diving Lady, a replica of the last animated neon sign in Arizona, restored by the local artist who fixed the original after a storm took it down.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Preservation of Local History · Best of Phoenix

The shop stocks tour merch from acts that recently played the Nile Theater down the street, so if you missed the show you can still walk out with the shirt. It's a small record store inside The Greenbelt building, selling vinyl, tapes, CDs, and apparel, with a tightly curated mix of rock, country, punk, indie, and hip-hop. The selection runs new and used, and the rotating band merch gives it a reason to check back in that most shops can't offer.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best New Record Store · Best of Phoenix

The clack of a Remington or an Olivetti fills this old-school typewriter shop, which has been around forever and looks every year of it. The shelves run from clunky pre-war workhorses to sleek midcentury portables, and the staff will sell you one, rent you one, or fix the one gathering dust in your closet. Ideal for anyone who's decided that a glowing screen is the problem and a ribbon-inked page is the solution.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Typewriter Shop · Best of Phoenix