Where to Eat in Phoenix Right Now

“Tavern” is a misnomer for this upscale wine-centric sibling to Tarbell’s Restaurant, which sits right next door. Furnished with its own curving bar, big windows, and interesting art, the tavern shares space with Tarbell’s excellent wine shop, which means wines may be purchased at retail prices and drunk on premises. The result? A wine bar without pretention, a tavern without the blue-collar vibe.

The modern American menu offers a bit of everything, including snacks (don’t miss crispy, Parmesan-dusted chickpeas), pretty salads, crisp-bottomed flatbreads, tacos cradled in housemade corn tortillas, a burger, a fancy patty melt, and a handful of entrees, including perfectly seared sea bass, strewn with roasted corn salsa and set atop dreamy poblano risotto. For dessert, a built-for-two slice of coconut cream pie is chock-full of fresh coconut.

Recently nominated for a James Beard Best Chef Southwest award, chef-owner Giovanni Scorzo has been turning out outstanding Italian food for decades — even though he’s only just now receiving national recognition for it. Although he’s also won plenty of local acclaim for the white tablecloth Italian restaurants he’s owned over the years (La Bruschetta, Leccabaffi), he’s found his sweet spot at this unprepossessing storefront, a former fast-food operation he transformed into a homey café-cum-grocery 15 years ago. The room is furnished with mismatched antique tables and chairs, its walls lined with shelves holding hard-to-find Italian foodstuffs. The place is relaxed, cozy, almost familial. Not surprising when you know that Scorzo’s adult children work there.

Customers queue up in front of a long display case holding housemade breads and desserts, house-cured and imported salumi, Italian cheeses, olives, and the like, squinting at a chalkboard that features Italian-style sandwiches (served on excellent baguettes or focaccia), bresaola, carpaccio, housemade burrata, an ever-changing selection of pasta dishes (many fashioned from housemade pasta), and entrees. There’s little point in telling you what to order. It’s all terrific, although if you run across the gnocchi alla Romana — crisp-edged disks of semolina pasta draped in Gruyère and Parmesan fondue — don’t hesitate.

Find more info here.

Chef Rene Andrade opened his tiny bright pink restaurant, devoted to all things Sonoran, in early 2021, becoming the biggest restaurant phenomenon to plant Phoenix firmly on the culinary map since Pizzeria Bianco. By November of last year, Esquire had included Bacanora among the 40 best new restaurants in America. That was followed by a finalist slot in the James Beard awards, and the New York Times naming it one of the country’s most exciting restaurant — an avalanche of accolades for a sweet, sincere restaurant and its minimalist menu, featuring smoky carne asada-filled burritos, caramelos (the quesadilla’s cousin) and pollo asado, charred and juicy with a hint of smoke from its time over mesquite wood on a custom-built grill. And we haven’t even gotten to the 46-day dry-aged ribeye.

Daily specials are the real sweet spot, however, the place where Andrade’s high-end restaurant experience really shines. Consider citrus-licked crudo, grill-blackened elote, aquachile, fiery with the chiltepin peppers Andrade hauls up from his family’s Sonoran ranch, or smoky grilled octopus that ranks among the best in town. Don’t leave without a shot of bacanora (Sonora’s rugged agave-based spirit), served in an eye-popping presentation involving cinnamon, piloncillo, and fire.

If you’re under the impression that Southern cooking is staid and predictable, let chef-owner Stephen Jones disabuse you of that antiquated notion. This wildly creative, three-time James Beard award nominee lightens, broadens, and modernizes the Southern dishes he grew up on, redefining Southern Cuisine in the process. Take his crispy oversized hushpuppies, for example, made with heritage corn, infused with smoked catfish, glazed with housemade pepper jelly, set atop a puddle of pimiento cheese and garnished with katsuobushi. They’re rooted in Southern tradition yet move well beyond it.

Oh, but there’s more: crispy pig ears dusted with Cheetos, Jones’s elegant take on Hoppin’ John, and for late summer, smoked ribs with benne seeds, watermelon radish, and sorghum glaze. With its big windows and bright yellow bar stools, The Larder’s small, sunlit space seems just right for a Sunday brunch of biscuits and gravy, shrimp and grits, or a Delta omelet made with braised collards and smoked andouille sausage. Don’t forget the cocktails.

Phone 480-409-8520 for reservations.

Located in the gracious building that once housed Tempe’s historic Casa Loma Hotel, Boa — with its gleaming wood floors and exposed brick — is both the classiest and longest running restaurant in downtown Tempe. It’s a haven for grown-ups who drop in for quiet business lunches, imaginative cocktails, and a global, all-natural wine list featuring, among other things, Croatian, Slovenian, and trendy skin-contact wines.

One of the strengths of the Mediterranean-inspired menu is the housemade pasta; another is the build-your-own charcuterie board, featuring premium meats and cheeses, not obscure, low-quality dreck. Pasta highlights include walnut pesto fettuccine and fantastic Coniglio, combining Istrian pasta (long, hand-rolled dumpling-like noodles) with an ultra-rich ragu of slow-roasted, pulled rabbit and mushrooms. If you’re macho enough, finish up with a shot of Serbo-Croatian rajika, a high-alcohol fruit brandy that will take your breath away.

Named for the Heflin family’s commercial fishing boat in San Diego, Chula has morphed from a wholesale swordfish operation to a mini seafood empire, comprising two (soon to be three) fish market-restaurants, selling fresh fish by the pound as well as a dazzling selection of seafood dishes to eat on the spot, including rich, bacon-studded clam chowder, oysters on the half shell, poke bowls (try the gochujang-sparked Korean), a smoked fish platter, and the world’s best tuna melt, made with fresh albacore tuna, spiced Oaxacan cheese, Hatch green chiles, and chimichurri.

The recently expanded Uptown Phoenix location has a bar, a patio, a larger menu, and a more varied selection of daily specials, which you really don’t want to miss. Weekly specials are the happy place for Chula chefs, where wings are spread and boundaries pushed, so it changes by location and with regularity. That said, current possibilities might include crab grilled cheese, branzino torta Milanesa, lobster tacos, and a magnificent Hawaiian plate lunch composed of flash-fried, sushi-grade albacore, furikake-topped rice, jalapeño-onion jam, togarashi-spiked coleslaw, and an oozy ramen egg. The third location in North Scottsdale is now open, too.

Find more info here.

The word was out on this convivial sliver of a restaurant from the second partners Dom Ruggiero and Charles Barber (Zinc Bistro alums) when it opened its doors in 2019, and the buzz was — and still is — justified. When Barber flew the coop last year to open his own restaurant (Aftermath in Uptown Phoenix), Ruggiero never missed a beat, turning out the same hearty but sophisticated Modern American food for which he’s famous: grilled oysters, splashed with local Cutino hot sauce, butter, and Grana Padano; silken chicken liver mousse, topped with boozy cherries; and crab-laced hushpuppies sided with sweet corn remoulade.

Unless you’re there when the doors open, it’s almost impossible to get in without a reservation, and bar seats overlooking the kitchen action are especially desirable. Take what you can get because you don’t want to miss any of it, particularly umami-laden duck confit fried rice (topped with a fried duck egg) and Ruggiero’s elegant take on Chicago’s Italian beef: a thick slice of griddled brioche bread, heaped with juicy braised oxtail, melty smoked provolone, and housemade giardiniera.

Find more info here.

In 2014, when Scott and Bekke Holmes opened their first Little Miss BBQ — a hole in the wall in a scruffy neighborhood south of Sky Harbor Airport — the heavens parted, and the angels sang. Theirs is the pit barbecue of Central Texas, given a simple dry rub, then cooked in a custom-made smoker over oak and pecan for eight to 12 hours. It’s the barbecue that barbecue buffs consider the best in the state, if not the region. In late 2018, the couple opened a larger second location in Sunnyslope (thank God!), where the digs are spiffier and the lines shorter and quicker. Plus, there’s beer.

There’s really no going wrong here, but when you’re in a joint paying homage to Central Texas, you damn well ought to order the brisket (fatty brisket preferably), cut right there in front of you and piled on a plate with a slice of white bread. Pulled pork, sausage, and turkey are excellent too, as are sides such as jalapeño-cheddar grits and soupy ranch-style beans, chunky with meat. Red and green chile burritos (the first stuffed with brisket, the second with a luscious amalgamation of meats), stray from Texas to Sonora, but nobody’s complaining.

Find more info here.

Specializing in sushi, seafood and smoked meat, Smokin Fins is a casual, family-friendly restaurant that aims to be all things to all people — sports bar-meets-barbecue joint-meets-seafood shack all rolled into one rustic, comfortable ball of wax.

Although the menu offers a huge range of seafood options, including florid, cream cheese-filled sushi rolls (great for neophytes), shrimp and fish tacos, signature cedar plank salmon, and a fun lobster-stuffed, tempura-fried avocado, it also appeases carnivores with 48-hour Nashville chicken and a house-smoked prime rib sandwich that resembles a French dip.

Jeff and Leah Huss started brewing beer in 2013 in an industrial park suite in South Tempe. Less than 10 years later, Huss is the third-largest craft brewery in Arizona, boasting three taproom-restaurants, including their newest venture in downtown Phoenix. Here, the vibe is laid-back, the interior rustic, the food unpretentious.

Huss bought Papago Brewing in 2016, so their roster of excellent beers includes Scottsdale Blonde (their flagship), Copper State IPA, Genuine Sunshine lager, the gorgeously floral Papago Orange Blossom, and Papago Desert Sage. Try one (or two) with beer-friendly eats such as giant, salt-flecked pretzels with beer cheese fondue, stuffed jalapeño poppers, black bean nachos, burgers, brats, and Midwest-style fish and chips. Probably no one wants salad with their beer, but it’s there for the asking.