🍺 Downtown Tempe’s newest beer-and-pizza pairing finally has an opening date. Phantom Fox Beer Co. and its in-house pizzeria Goat & Ram will hold their grand opening on Oct. 8 in the former Illegal Pete’s space just south of Fifth Street, with a soft-opening week leading up to it.
It’s the third act for owners Trent Smith and Eric Cady, who got their start in downtown Mesa’s beer scene back in 2019 with Chupacabra Taproom, a scrappy 28-tap bar squeezed into a 900-square-foot brick building on Robson.
The pair, who’d homebrewed but had no formal industry experience, built Chupacabra themselves, tearing out drop ceilings and scraping decades of paint off the walls before opening to a downtown Mesa that wasn’t exactly known for its drinking scene at the time.
Opening a brewery
Riding that success, Smith and Cady expanded down the street in 2023, taking over the space vacated by Desert Eagle Brewing to launch Phantom Fox, a full brewery with a rotating lineup of fantastical-sounding beers named after the likes of Chupacabra, Krampus, and the Nanook.
For the food side, they teamed up with Dan and Morgan Medlen’s mobile pizza operation, Goat & Ram, which turns out a rotating list of wood-fired pies ranging from a classic pepperoni and sausage to one topped with roasted potatoes and goat cheese. The specialty pies rotate roughly every two weeks, so there’s always something new on offer.
What’s ahead
The Tempe location will mark the second time Goat & Ram operates under the Phantom Fox roof, but it won’t be the last: the duo also has a Phantom Fox/Goat & Ram combo planned for The Gilmore, the mixed-use development taking shape in South Gilbert with a target opening sometime in 2027.
For now, Tempe drinkers and pizza fans can start counting down to the soft-opening week ahead of the Oct. 8 debut, joining a stretch of Mill Avenue that’s already filling up with new openings – from RePUBlic’s pool tables to Culinary Gangster’s third burger spot below Varsity Tavern.
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