After cooking under lauded chef Kevin Binkley for more than a decade, Brandon Gauthier and his wife purchased Cafe Bink in 2018, renaming it Confluence to reflect everything coming together: styles, influences, opportunities. Gauthier’s elegant plates of soulful food — French-inspired with global elements — make it clear he’s his own man. He sources hard-to-find fish, wagyu beef cheek, and frog legs for the menu, offering a luxurious fine dining experience at a surprisingly reasonable price. The wine list is well-rounded, and there’s a breezy patio for catching the remains of the day.

Run by the Uvaydova family, Cafe Chenar brings Bukharian Jewish culinary traditions — a melting pot of cuisines from Central Asia — to a pleasant, sun-filled cafe in North Phoenix. Dumplings like pelmeni and manti abound, and the kitchen serves a wide-ranging selection of kebabs — liver, sweetbreads, lamb ribs, and rib-eye, for example — on metal skewers. Hearty meat pies, plov, lagman, and grilled Cornish hen are just a few of the specialties here.

At Hush, chef and owner Dom Ruggiero pulls from an arsenal of skills including butchering, curing, and smoking meat, as well as hand-making pasta. A long bar dominates the intimate and unfussy New American restaurant where the kitchen builds novel dishes around in-season ingredients. Staples include crab hush puppies, date cake, and a deliriously good riff on Chicago’s Italian beef, made with oxtail.

Like the other two restaurants under this restaurant family’s umbrella — Richardson’s and the Rokerij — this sliver of a spot dominated by a long bar specializes in New Mexican cuisine but ventures into ’80s-era Southwestern territory as well. Regulars come for the all-day brunch, offering just about everything imaginable — rellenos, huevos rancheros, smoky carne adovada, steak, green chile stew, and Vic’s meatloaf with eggs. The menu is broad and the choices seemingly endless. If finding a table is impossible, pop over to Richardson’s or the Rokerij instead. The menus are nearly identical. However, Dick’s is the only one of the three to open at 7 a.m.

Perched on the edge of a hilltop and attached to the graceful, 90-year-old Wrigley Mansion, Christopher’s is the city’s most dazzling restaurant. Minimalist and modern without being cold, the dramatic dining room offers 180-degree views of the city, an experience upstaged only by James Beard award-winning chef Christopher Gross’s French cooking. The prix fixe tasting menu (starting at $275 per person) is a two- or three-hour fete of opulent ingredients, an evening filled with surprises in service and presentation. Wine pairings run an additional $230 per person.

What started for the Heflin family as a sustainable commercial fishing operation in San Diego with a boat named Chula has become a mini seafood empire here in metro Phoenix, boasting three Valley outlets. Each store contains both a fish market and a restaurant, the latter offering bacon-studded clam chowder, poke bowls, mind-blowing Hatch chile tuna melts, and a legendary burrito stuffed with fresh fish, fries, and guacamole. Plan a trip around daily specials such as Friday’s Hawaiian plate lunch: seared albacore katsu with sushi rice, spicy Kewpie slaw, jalapeno-onion jam, and a soft, soy-marinated egg.

Fry Bread House has more than 20 years under its belt as a metro Phoenix dining staple (and James Beard Award America’s Classics winner) specializing in Indigenous preparations of stews, tamales, and hand-stretched, plate-sized fry bread served puffy, golden brown, and faintly greasy. Filled with meat, beans, cheese, and various other savory combos, each fry bread is folded like a giant taco. Of course, there’s plenty of sweet fry bread, too — honey and sugar, chocolate, and butter, for example — all profoundly satisfying. Late founder Cecilia Miller used the Tohono O’odham recipes from her youth, hand-stretching large tortillas called chumuth to accompany hearty stews and to use as wraps for hefty burros.

This modern Southwestern restaurant, brought to life by Blaise Faber and Chad Price during the first year of the pandemic, offers innovative food, coffee, pastries, and beverages that never fail to impress. Cocktails combine regional ingredients like cactus vermouth, Arizona gin, and creosote bitters. Lattes are made with squash, chiltepin, and cajeta. Chef Donald Hawk blends ingredients from his Korean ancestry with desert crops such as Red Fife wheat, heirloom squash, and tepary beans to create a style uniquely his own. His most famous dish is the hiramasa crudo bathed in brown butter and tomatillo vinaigrette, but he also turns out a fabulous smoked chicken with herb yogurt and the city’s best crispy cauliflower.

Don’t be deterred by the strip mall location. This cavernous and decidedly old-school Chinese restaurant is one of Phoenix’s oldest and best for classic Hong Kong-style dim sum. Offerings include the requisite noodles, dumplings, buns, cakes, chicken feet, and spareribs. The shu mai (steamed pork and shrimp dumplings) are justifiably famous.

If Phoenix has a signature dish, it just might be the Sonoran hot dog; and yes, the irony is deep, given that Sonora is the Mexican state that borders Arizona. But they’re everywhere here, offered in dozens of permutations. Local enthusiasts generally agree that El Caprichoso turns out the very best of its kind, served from a truck until well after midnight. People gather at picnic tables under a giant tent to eat plump, charred dogs, wrapped in bacon, cradled in puffy griddled buns, and smothered in whole pintos, grilled onions, guacamole, salsa, cotija cheese, and generous squirts of ketchup and mustard.

This “modern wood-fired deli” easily outpaces the average sandwich shop with a menu featuring an elote bowl, potato-bacon pizza, roasted mushroom toast, and a spectacular hummus topped with spicy, salty ’nduja, pickled vegetables, and charred pita. And if bread is the foundation of any great sandwich (and it is), Noble’s offerings are exceptional. Owner Jason Raducha also founded Noble Bread, an artisan bakery specializing in naturally leavened bread and old-world techniques. Get there early because some items sell out, and be sure to take home a loaf of bread.

A night at Binkley’s is like no other dining experience in town. Unfolding in a small house with the laid-back vibe of a dinner party, the meal begins on the patio with drinks and light bites before moving to the bar for clever pub food. The finale, a heart-stopping run of perfectly executed, beautifully plated courses made with luxurious ingredients, takes place in a dining room overlooking the kitchen. The multicourse feast (starting at $240 per person) takes about two and a half hours, so feel free to get up and wander through the house or take a moment to watch chef Kevin Binkley at work in the kitchen. Pay extra for courses of caviar and foie gras, as well as an extra $200 for wine pairings with each course.

The cozy, brick-walled dining room, twinkling with string lights at this Central Phoenix restaurant specializing in northeastern Thai food draws an eclectic crowd who come for steamed dumplings, juicy with local pork; mackerel fried rice; and PEI mussels, fragrant with lemongrass and chile jam. Chef Pornsupak “Cat” Bunnag highlights dishes from her native Isan with an emphasis on street food, and the outstanding cocktails incorporate Thai ingredients.

Vecina means “neighbor” in Spanish — an apt name for this lively neighborhood hangout consistently buzzing with regulars as Latin hip-hop plays in the background. The Latin-inflected menu includes dishes like Peruvian-style hiramasa ceviche (a local favorite); pork belly tacos; mesquite-grilled prime carne asada rib-eye; and carnitas empanada with manchego cheese, onion marmalade, and salsa verde. Sit at the bar for the best people-watching and don’t miss the excellent cocktails.

For more than a decade, James Beard Award-winning chef Charleen Badman has skillfully turned the Valley’s bounty into vegetable-rich plates drawing inspiration from a constellation of world cuisines. On her frequently changing seasonal menu, you might find chickpea cakes from Nice, Peruvian chicken spring rolls, or Hungarian potato bread, each dish enlivened with local ingredients and a rainbow of spices. Partner Pavle Milić echoes Badman’s local focus with a beverage menu that puts Arizona wines at center stage.

Shinbay’s multi-course omakase dinner makes for the kind of breathtaking evening diners think (and brag) about for months afterward. Priced starting at $185 (and worth every penny), Shinji Kurita’s menus highlight seafood, some of it hard to find and much of it imported from Japan. The meal progresses from a trio of traditional Japanese vegetable dishes to sashimi “salads” to a plate of seafood bites such as jellyfish, snow crab, oyster, or bluefin tuna belly, to custard-like chawanmushi, then sashimi, and finally, 10 courses of spectacular nigiri. The sake selection is also first-rate. Kurita never books more than eight customers per seating, so a two-hour meal is always serene and well-paced.

The Mexican food scene in metro Phoenix can be divided into two eras: before Barrio Cafe’s opening in 2002 — and after. Classically trained chef Silvana Salcido Esparza broke the mold, serving pre-dinner bread instead of the usual chips and salsa, while lightly applying French cooking techniques to preparations from all over Mexico — cochinita pibil from the Yucatán, nut-studded chiles en nogada from Puebla, fish from Veracruz, and silky moles from Oaxaca. The work of local Mexican artists fills the restaurant’s interior walls, while the building’s exterior swirls with colorful murals. Agave-based spirits are everywhere these days, but Barrio was the first restaurant in the area to offer a vast selection of them.

Owner Gustavo Lom’s shop is a mainstay of the 16th Street corridor and a hotbed of great Mexican eating, where classic Mexican sandwiches come filled with options like cochinita pibil and fried turkey tails. Check out the torta ahogada, Mexico’s fiery answer to the French dip: a crusty bolillo roll stuffed with tender carnitas and avocado and “drowned” in chile de arbol sauce. Lom also stocks a decked-out salsa bar.

Housed in the former Tuck Shop space in the heart of the historic Coronado neighborhood, this cozy vegan restaurant offers locally brewed beer and coffee, garden-to-glass cocktails, and dishes with Mexican-Southwestern inflection. Consider masa-battered and fried cauliflower tacos, black coffee chili and cornbread, or a beet and quinoa burger topped with poblano corn relish and crispy fried onions.  

Jack Durant opened his eponymous pink stucco steakhouse in 1950, and none of the important things have changed much since. Customers still enter through the back door and walk through the kitchen to enter the dining room. The flocked red wallpaper still conjures a bordello, and Phoenix movers and shakers still drink martinis at the bar or slide into deep booths for dinner. The menu still features shrimp cocktail, sauteed chicken livers, prime rib, and lots of steak. Don’t miss the legendary strawberry shortcake.

James Beard semifinalist Stephen Jones calls the cooking at his downtown restaurant “new Southern.” With roots in the Midwest, West Coast, and South, he weaves disparate influences into contemporary versions of Southern dishes. Imagine hoe cakes with cured egg yolks, Hoppin’ John with herb salad, and crispy hush puppies filled with smoked catfish. His sleek space manages to feel “big city” but also cheerful and diner-ish. The best seats are at the bar or on the small patio overlooking a narrow, tree-shaded park. For a new-fashioned Southern breakfast, check out the weekend brunch.

Because Arizona borders the Mexican state of Sonora, Phoenicians have long assumed they know what’s what when it comes to Sonoran food. Then Rene Andrade opened his tiny, hot pink Grand Avenue restaurant and devoted it to all things Sonoran. He chars local chickens, steaks, elote (and just about everything else) on a Santa Maria grill; sources local vegetables for light, beautiful salads; hauls up fiery chiltepins from his family’s ranch; and pours Sonora’s signature spirit — bacanora — in a dramatic, cinnamon-scented presentation of fire and smoke. He demonstrates that Sonoran cooking can be simple yet complex, rustic yet sophisticated, a regional cuisine this city is only beginning to fully appreciate.

This cheerful Garfield diner takes cues from the South and Southwest alike with plates of chorizo meatloaf and smoked pork over heirloom corn grits, fried chicken tucked in a biscuit, spicy chili with a dab of pimiento cheese, or fried green tomatoes stacked on a sandwich. Never mind that the cheery turquoise interior looks like an old-fashioned diner; the cocktails are surprisingly good (especially the Hurricane). Folks sip, eat, and relax on the greenery-filled patio deep into the night.

For nearly two decades, the Maldonado family has served Mexican seafood and oversized drinks at this popular 16th Street staple. The restaurant kitchen is just as fluent in raw seafood (making dishes like ceviche tostadas and an aguachile with oysters and shrimp) as it is with cooked (such as the filet divorciada and molcajete teeming with shrimp). Diners can go as big as party-sized seafood towers or as small as tacos gobernador.

Scott Holmes’s indoor-outdoor barbecue joint by the airport stars Central Texas-style meats. On giant offset smokers welded from old propane tanks, Holmes smokes all of the major barbecue staples and sells them by the pound and on sandwiches. The beef — fatty brisket, short rib, and pastrami — is legendary, as is the smoked pecan pie. And glory be! Even the sides are excellent. The larger satellite restaurant on Seventh Street features an enclosed patio as well as a small bar that dispenses local beer and pre-batched cocktails.

Lulu Zhou and Sunny Zhao’s two Chou’s Kitchen locations focus on northeastern Chinese delicacies but extend to provinces beyond. Noodles, soups, and stews abound. The main events here, though, are savory pies and lavish dumplings stuffed with mackerel, squash, pork, and pickled vegetables.

This Tempe restaurant and grocery has been serving Arizona State University and the surrounding community for decades. Middle Eastern specialties, including staples like tabbouleh, falafel, and ful medames, are surprisingly well-priced. Some of the most popular selections are kebabs, Greek gyros, and lamb tongue sandwiches built on hot, handmade pitas and minimally adorned. Several flavors of baklava, like pistachio and Arizona pecan, are available for dessert.

Husband and wife team Nadia Holguin and Armando Hernandez, Chihuahuan natives, turn out some of the city’s best tacos and more at their three Valley locations in Phoenix, Chandler, and Mesa. Fluffy gorditas enrobe picadillo and shredded beef, while burritos are supremely simple — packed with little more than meats (think al pastor and lengua), then tucked into fresh, organic flour tortillas. That said, the tripas taco may be the best in town. Doctor everything up with excellent salsas. The downtown Mesa location boasts an expansive bar, which turns out excellent margaritas in various renditions.