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A spread of dishes and cocktails at Espiritu.
Espiritu.
Jarrod Opperman/Eater

The 12 Hottest New Restaurants in Phoenix Right Now

From spicy aguachile and sotol to springy mesquite noodles, here’s where to eat now in the Valley of the Sun

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Espiritu.
| Jarrod Opperman/Eater

Phoenix sits at the heart of Maricopa County, recently cited as the fastest-growing county in the U.S. New condos and apartment buildings are popping up everywhere you look, as are new restaurants to feed the hungry people arriving here in droves — typically from states with colder, wilder weather. Naturally, the restaurant scene has grown and evolved considerably in the last decade, but metro Phoenix — once known for its steak houses and mainstream Mexican restaurants — has positively exploded in the past five years, ironically, even more so in the past two.

Yes, the area lost dozens of great restaurants during the pandemic, but it gained plenty of new ones too, many of them owned by plucky entrepreneurs who decided there was no better time to take the plunge. Phoenix never lacks for high-end steakhouses and resort restaurants, but these days, it also offers an impressive range of multicultural restaurants serving Caribbean food, regional Mexican, sophisticated Thai food, and beyond.

When you’re hungry for a specific taste, Phoenix has lots of choices to scratch that itch. So jump in. Your options are deliciously varied.

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Tia Carmen

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Modern Southwestern cuisine, informed by classic dishes of Latin America, is the focus at this elegantly minimalist resort restaurant, named for celebrity chef Angelo Sosa’s Dominican aunt. Sosa buys from local farmers, ranchers, and food artisans, but adds global touches such as Thai basil and Sichuan peppercorns to create an exciting menu that eclipses the usual hotel restaurant fare. Don’t miss the clever tostadas (especially the “Taco Night,” enriched with bone marrow); the earthy lamb ragu, set over springy mesquite noodles; the mushroom menudo, meaty with cordyceps; or the fantastic ember-roasted purple yam, embellished with queso sauce and tepary bean mole negro. For dessert, there’s vanilla flan, generously dusted with Manchego cheese and nested in a puddle of tequila-spiked caramel. 

A tostada piled high with pickled onions and pea shoots on top.
A pretty tostada at Tia Carmen.
Nikki Buchanan

Fire At Will

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Created by Dom and Holly Ruggiero of Hush Public House, Fire at Will is the best thing to happen to the dining desert around Shea and Tatum Boulevards in North Phoenix. Like Hush, it specializes in sophisticated comfort food, but the menu here is broader and more eclectic, featuring inflection from Spain, Italy, and the Middle East. The clean-lined space is dimly lit and moody, while still maintaining a sense of irreverence. This is a neighborhood hangout, after all, offering good cocktails and the straightforward Hush burger as well as less conventional selections such as lamb tartare and anchovy toast. Really, there’s something for everyone, whether elegant côte de boeuf (standing rib roast) or a funky smoked bologna sandwich gussied up with Gruyere and sauerkraut. 

Crusty bread next to pickled onions and smoked salmon rillettes topped with a dollop of orange salmon roe.
Smoked salmon rillettes with salmon roe, pickled onion, and toasted Noble bread
Nikki Buchanan

Ms. Martha's Caribbean Kitchen

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It’s impossible to go wrong at Martha Laurencin’s outpost for all things Caribbean, so the hard part is making decisions. Should you try the turmeric-tinted Jamaican patties? Emphatically, yes. The crunchy, deep-fried wings, bathed in garlicky, hot-sweet Calypso sauce? 100 percent. Nor should you miss beefy, gelatinous oxtail stew or curried goat — both probably the best versions you’ll find in this town. Mop everything up with johnnycakes or festivals and consider your outing a mini vacation to the islands, complete with live Caribbean music on the huge patio on designated weekends. There are even shelves full of Caribbean snacks, marinades, and sauces to take home.

Comfort food, Jamaican-style: brown stew chicken with saffron rice. Nikki Buchanan

The Neighborly Public House

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Good-looking and infinitely comfortable, this aptly named watering hole and eatery is the latest of many restaurants and food outlets owned by restaurateur Chris Collins, and so far, it’s his best. There’s a booth-furnished covered patio out front, deep booths in the dining room, and a mammoth square-shaped bar (great for people-watching) with plush stools tailor-made for settling in over happy hour snacks and cocktails or a full-blown dinner. The extensive menu offers crowd-pleasers such as rotisserie chicken, baby back ribs, and French dip, as well as lots of great seafood options, including new-school oysters Rockefeller and Maryland-style crab cakes (among the city’s best). Save room for custardy coconut cream pie.

Belly Kitchen and Bar

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In his 7th Avenue kitchen, chef Michael Babcock of Instrumental Hospitality channels his love for Southeast Asian cooking, building pizza on grilled rice paper, creating a torta-banh mi hybrid, and making sizzling jackfruit fried rice. Cocktails move well beyond the classics, braiding in Thai basil, lemongrass, turmeric, and other popular Southeast Asian ingredients. If you can, grab a table on the tiny rooftop patio overlooking Camelback Road.

Phoenix Coqui

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Named for Puerto Rico’s noisy mascot, a whistling tree frog, this cramped but cheery restaurant got its start as a food truck in 2017, becoming so popular for its soulful Puerto Rican food that partners Juan Alberto Ayala and Alexis Carbajal moved to permanent space this past February. The menu features flaky empanadillas, garlic-laced mofongo, pastelon (a casserole layered with picadillo, plantains, and cheese), and jibarito — mini pork pernil sandwiches tucked between crispy tostones disks. Don’t miss the outstanding alcapurria, a crunchy fried yuca fritter stuffed with picadillo.

Crunchy fried plantains act as the bread for this pork sandwich called jibarito. Nikki Buchanan

Lom Wong

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Alex and Yotaka (“Sunny”) Martin, the couple who got their start by hosting pop-up style dinner parties in recent years, moved into a Roosevelt Row restaurant in spring 2022. The dimly lit, sophisticated space makes a fitting backdrop for Thai food that doesn’t feel like the same old, same old. Sunny and crew hand-pound Thai red chiles to make various curries and squeeze their own coconut milk rather than open a can. Each dish is light and fresh tasting, as much as it is herbal and complex. The emphasis here is on texture and flavor, not necessarily heat. Green mango salad with hand-torn shrimp is simply off the charts — sweet and lusciously milky, its crunchy counterpoint is found in peanuts, toasted coconut, and fried shallots. Don’t miss jin tup, a pounded beef dish vaguely reminiscent of jerky; sai ua, grilled sausage fragrant with lemongrass; or rich, garlicky pork belly curry. Get the meal off to a brilliant start with a Thai-style pina colada, which puts traditionally tutti-fruity pina colada to shame.

Fried chicken with Thai red chile sauce at Lom Wong. Nikki Buchanan

Sottise

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TJ Culp and Esther Noh of Restaurant Progress opened this French-style bistro and wine bar in a vintage bungalow in Roosevelt Row last fall, and it’s been packed ever since. One draw is the small, farmhouse-chic space equipped with an old-school stereo and plenty of vinyl, another is the global wine list, and a third is a French menu, which hews to bistro classics such as pate, escargot, steak tartare, and croque-madame. Get there early to snag a seat on the front porch overlooking a verdant lawn.

This baked Camembert, drizzled with Calvados honey and hazelnut vinaigrette is sweet and nutty, crunchy and oozy all at once.
Baked Camembert with Calvados honey and hazelnut vinaigrette.
Nikki Buchanan

Bacanora PHX

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Rene Andrade, a native of Nogales, Mexico, prepares some of the most vibrant Sonoran food in greater Phoenix on a single Santa Maria-style grill fired with three kinds of wood. Most dishes see the hot grates — carne asada, octopus, finfish, half chickens, potatoes, elotes, even pots of plump pinto beans. Andrade is often seen greeting customers as they enter the tiny dining room on Grand Avenue, simultaneously tonging tome-thick steaks and squeezing lime over chiltepin-flecked aguachiles. He approaches caramelos and burritos with the technique and rigor of a veteran chef, yet they remain homestyle. And yes, a limited cocktail menu mixes in plenty of bacanora. 

Wren & Wolf

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When it comes to offbeat decor, this bougie new venue from Teddy and Katie Meyers (who also own Chico Malo in CityScape) corners the market. To some, the cavernous, dimly lit space is gorgeous, to others a bit bizarre, given that every nook and cranny is filled with taxidermied wolves, exotic stuffed birds, and otherworldly murals of those same creatures. It’s a cool downtown haven for whiling away the time over excellent cocktails (devised by consulting mixologists Libby Lingua and Mitch Lyons) and on-trend dishes such as beef carpaccio, ceviche, hiramasa crudo, and a three-pound hunk of bone marrow that brings dinosaurs to mind. For a splurge, try A5 wagyu, cooked on Japanese charcoal at a table-side hibachi, which ranges in price from $125 to $210, or a 16-ounce beef Wellington for two that requires 24-hour notice.

A frothy pink cocktail in a coup at Wren & Wolf. Nikki Buchanan

Espiritu Mesa

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The talented crew behind Bacanora also gets the credit for lively Espiritu, a seafood-centric Mexican restaurant in Mesa. Recently named one of the best new restaurants of the year by Eater. At first blush, the emphasis seems to be on drinking, given the lengthy (and humorously written) cocktail menu devoted to beverages both “stirredeth” and “shakeneth,” as well as a selection of Mexican spirits such as sotol and raicilla. But to concentrate on the booze and skip the food would be a serious mistake. Chef Robert Centeno’s short but provocative menu features a hiramasa tostada, spicy aguachile, and a sharp, bright ceviche brimming with shrimp, fish, and octopus. If the market special happens to be whole deep-fried snapper, don’t hesitate to order it. Crunchy with sesame seeds and sparked with chiles, it’s probably the best fried fish in town. There’s also a brunch menu featuring chilaquiles, pozole, and lemon curd pancakes.

The magical bar at Espiritu. Nikki Buchanan

Feringhee Modern Indian Cuisine

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Feringhee, which means “foreigner” in Hindi, doesn’t look like a run-of-the-mill Indian restaurant and, indeed, it isn’t. Not only are the environs prettier and more upscale (check out the blinged out bar), but the food, which celebrates India’s many regions and culinary traditions, is infinitely more beautiful and sophisticated. This is Indian fine dining, replete with tuiles, foams, flowers, and other haute-cuisine touches. It’s the delicious handiwork of chef Karan Mittal (named a rising star by Food & Wine in 2018), who makes the ordinary extraordinary. For proof, try the chaat — India’s favorite snack food — elevated by glistening yogurt mousse foam, dried raspberry powder, and crisp-fried shiso leaves. 

A bed of crispy noodles with yogurt mousse foam, dried raspberry powder, and crisp-fried shiso leaves. 
Feringhee’s fancy version of chaat.
Nikki Buchanan

Tia Carmen

Modern Southwestern cuisine, informed by classic dishes of Latin America, is the focus at this elegantly minimalist resort restaurant, named for celebrity chef Angelo Sosa’s Dominican aunt. Sosa buys from local farmers, ranchers, and food artisans, but adds global touches such as Thai basil and Sichuan peppercorns to create an exciting menu that eclipses the usual hotel restaurant fare. Don’t miss the clever tostadas (especially the “Taco Night,” enriched with bone marrow); the earthy lamb ragu, set over springy mesquite noodles; the mushroom menudo, meaty with cordyceps; or the fantastic ember-roasted purple yam, embellished with queso sauce and tepary bean mole negro. For dessert, there’s vanilla flan, generously dusted with Manchego cheese and nested in a puddle of tequila-spiked caramel. 

A tostada piled high with pickled onions and pea shoots on top.
A pretty tostada at Tia Carmen.
Nikki Buchanan

Fire At Will

Created by Dom and Holly Ruggiero of Hush Public House, Fire at Will is the best thing to happen to the dining desert around Shea and Tatum Boulevards in North Phoenix. Like Hush, it specializes in sophisticated comfort food, but the menu here is broader and more eclectic, featuring inflection from Spain, Italy, and the Middle East. The clean-lined space is dimly lit and moody, while still maintaining a sense of irreverence. This is a neighborhood hangout, after all, offering good cocktails and the straightforward Hush burger as well as less conventional selections such as lamb tartare and anchovy toast. Really, there’s something for everyone, whether elegant côte de boeuf (standing rib roast) or a funky smoked bologna sandwich gussied up with Gruyere and sauerkraut. 

Crusty bread next to pickled onions and smoked salmon rillettes topped with a dollop of orange salmon roe.
Smoked salmon rillettes with salmon roe, pickled onion, and toasted Noble bread
Nikki Buchanan

Ms. Martha's Caribbean Kitchen

It’s impossible to go wrong at Martha Laurencin’s outpost for all things Caribbean, so the hard part is making decisions. Should you try the turmeric-tinted Jamaican patties? Emphatically, yes. The crunchy, deep-fried wings, bathed in garlicky, hot-sweet Calypso sauce? 100 percent. Nor should you miss beefy, gelatinous oxtail stew or curried goat — both probably the best versions you’ll find in this town. Mop everything up with johnnycakes or festivals and consider your outing a mini vacation to the islands, complete with live Caribbean music on the huge patio on designated weekends. There are even shelves full of Caribbean snacks, marinades, and sauces to take home.

Comfort food, Jamaican-style: brown stew chicken with saffron rice. Nikki Buchanan

The Neighborly Public House

Good-looking and infinitely comfortable, this aptly named watering hole and eatery is the latest of many restaurants and food outlets owned by restaurateur Chris Collins, and so far, it’s his best. There’s a booth-furnished covered patio out front, deep booths in the dining room, and a mammoth square-shaped bar (great for people-watching) with plush stools tailor-made for settling in over happy hour snacks and cocktails or a full-blown dinner. The extensive menu offers crowd-pleasers such as rotisserie chicken, baby back ribs, and French dip, as well as lots of great seafood options, including new-school oysters Rockefeller and Maryland-style crab cakes (among the city’s best). Save room for custardy coconut cream pie.

Belly Kitchen and Bar

In his 7th Avenue kitchen, chef Michael Babcock of Instrumental Hospitality channels his love for Southeast Asian cooking, building pizza on grilled rice paper, creating a torta-banh mi hybrid, and making sizzling jackfruit fried rice. Cocktails move well beyond the classics, braiding in Thai basil, lemongrass, turmeric, and other popular Southeast Asian ingredients. If you can, grab a table on the tiny rooftop patio overlooking Camelback Road.

Phoenix Coqui

Named for Puerto Rico’s noisy mascot, a whistling tree frog, this cramped but cheery restaurant got its start as a food truck in 2017, becoming so popular for its soulful Puerto Rican food that partners Juan Alberto Ayala and Alexis Carbajal moved to permanent space this past February. The menu features flaky empanadillas, garlic-laced mofongo, pastelon (a casserole layered with picadillo, plantains, and cheese), and jibarito — mini pork pernil sandwiches tucked between crispy tostones disks. Don’t miss the outstanding alcapurria, a crunchy fried yuca fritter stuffed with picadillo.

Crunchy fried plantains act as the bread for this pork sandwich called jibarito. Nikki Buchanan

Lom Wong

Alex and Yotaka (“Sunny”) Martin, the couple who got their start by hosting pop-up style dinner parties in recent years, moved into a Roosevelt Row restaurant in spring 2022. The dimly lit, sophisticated space makes a fitting backdrop for Thai food that doesn’t feel like the same old, same old. Sunny and crew hand-pound Thai red chiles to make various curries and squeeze their own coconut milk rather than open a can. Each dish is light and fresh tasting, as much as it is herbal and complex. The emphasis here is on texture and flavor, not necessarily heat. Green mango salad with hand-torn shrimp is simply off the charts — sweet and lusciously milky, its crunchy counterpoint is found in peanuts, toasted coconut, and fried shallots. Don’t miss jin tup, a pounded beef dish vaguely reminiscent of jerky; sai ua, grilled sausage fragrant with lemongrass; or rich, garlicky pork belly curry. Get the meal off to a brilliant start with a Thai-style pina colada, which puts traditionally tutti-fruity pina colada to shame.

Fried chicken with Thai red chile sauce at Lom Wong. Nikki Buchanan

Sottise

TJ Culp and Esther Noh of Restaurant Progress opened this French-style bistro and wine bar in a vintage bungalow in Roosevelt Row last fall, and it’s been packed ever since. One draw is the small, farmhouse-chic space equipped with an old-school stereo and plenty of vinyl, another is the global wine list, and a third is a French menu, which hews to bistro classics such as pate, escargot, steak tartare, and croque-madame. Get there early to snag a seat on the front porch overlooking a verdant lawn.

This baked Camembert, drizzled with Calvados honey and hazelnut vinaigrette is sweet and nutty, crunchy and oozy all at once.
Baked Camembert with Calvados honey and hazelnut vinaigrette.
Nikki Buchanan

Bacanora PHX

Rene Andrade, a native of Nogales, Mexico, prepares some of the most vibrant Sonoran food in greater Phoenix on a single Santa Maria-style grill fired with three kinds of wood. Most dishes see the hot grates — carne asada, octopus, finfish, half chickens, potatoes, elotes, even pots of plump pinto beans. Andrade is often seen greeting customers as they enter the tiny dining room on Grand Avenue, simultaneously tonging tome-thick steaks and squeezing lime over chiltepin-flecked aguachiles. He approaches caramelos and burritos with the technique and rigor of a veteran chef, yet they remain homestyle. And yes, a limited cocktail menu mixes in plenty of bacanora. 

Wren & Wolf

When it comes to offbeat decor, this bougie new venue from Teddy and Katie Meyers (who also own Chico Malo in CityScape) corners the market. To some, the cavernous, dimly lit space is gorgeous, to others a bit bizarre, given that every nook and cranny is filled with taxidermied wolves, exotic stuffed birds, and otherworldly murals of those same creatures. It’s a cool downtown haven for whiling away the time over excellent cocktails (devised by consulting mixologists Libby Lingua and Mitch Lyons) and on-trend dishes such as beef carpaccio, ceviche, hiramasa crudo, and a three-pound hunk of bone marrow that brings dinosaurs to mind. For a splurge, try A5 wagyu, cooked on Japanese charcoal at a table-side hibachi, which ranges in price from $125 to $210, or a 16-ounce beef Wellington for two that requires 24-hour notice.

A frothy pink cocktail in a coup at Wren & Wolf. Nikki Buchanan

Espiritu Mesa

The talented crew behind Bacanora also gets the credit for lively Espiritu, a seafood-centric Mexican restaurant in Mesa. Recently named one of the best new restaurants of the year by Eater. At first blush, the emphasis seems to be on drinking, given the lengthy (and humorously written) cocktail menu devoted to beverages both “stirredeth” and “shakeneth,” as well as a selection of Mexican spirits such as sotol and raicilla. But to concentrate on the booze and skip the food would be a serious mistake. Chef Robert Centeno’s short but provocative menu features a hiramasa tostada, spicy aguachile, and a sharp, bright ceviche brimming with shrimp, fish, and octopus. If the market special happens to be whole deep-fried snapper, don’t hesitate to order it. Crunchy with sesame seeds and sparked with chiles, it’s probably the best fried fish in town. There’s also a brunch menu featuring chilaquiles, pozole, and lemon curd pancakes.

The magical bar at Espiritu. Nikki Buchanan

Feringhee Modern Indian Cuisine

Feringhee, which means “foreigner” in Hindi, doesn’t look like a run-of-the-mill Indian restaurant and, indeed, it isn’t. Not only are the environs prettier and more upscale (check out the blinged out bar), but the food, which celebrates India’s many regions and culinary traditions, is infinitely more beautiful and sophisticated. This is Indian fine dining, replete with tuiles, foams, flowers, and other haute-cuisine touches. It’s the delicious handiwork of chef Karan Mittal (named a rising star by Food & Wine in 2018), who makes the ordinary extraordinary. For proof, try the chaat — India’s favorite snack food — elevated by glistening yogurt mousse foam, dried raspberry powder, and crisp-fried shiso leaves. 

A bed of crispy noodles with yogurt mousse foam, dried raspberry powder, and crisp-fried shiso leaves. 
Feringhee’s fancy version of chaat.
Nikki Buchanan

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