By Jess Harter
By Jess Harter
By Jess Harter
Please support the businesses that support MXSW:
Back East Bagels
Bar/Restaurant Insurance
Brooklyn V’s Pizza
Craft 64
Creative Strategies
Cuisine & Wine Bistro
Floridino’s Pizza & Pasta
La Ristra New Mexican
Laurshan Construction
Sal’s Gilbert Pizza
Serrano’s Restaurants
Sun Devil Hoods
Taqueria Factory
The Hart Experience
The Restaurant Brokers
Tott’s Asian Diner
Venezia’s Pizza
We Sell Restaurants
Sorry! While most of MouthBySouthwest.com is free to read, MXSW Insider articles are for paid subscribers only. Learn how to become an MXSW Insider. Username Password Remember Me Forgot Password
🥟 Lovebite Dumplings – the acclaimed dumpling shop that opened in 2024 as Lovesack Dumpling before a lawsuit threat from furniture company Lovesac forced a name change – is moving to a bigger space. Owner Angel Gould is relocating from
Sorry! While most of MouthBySouthwest.com is free to read, MXSW Insider articles are for paid subscribers only. Learn how to become an MXSW Insider.
🥗 If you’ve been mourning the loss of your regular Salad and Go run, there’s finally some good news. Angie’s, the fast-food concept from the husband-and-wife team behind Salad and Go, just announced nine new locations. Angie’s dropped the news
🚫 Craft Kitchen Cafe has closed its doors on the west side of the Hayden-Northsight roundabout in north Scottsdale, with last Friday marking its last day of service. The comfort-driven brunch spot was opened by John and Marilyn Utter just
🚫 Funky Frida’s, the Frida Kahlo-inspired Mexican restaurant that opened next to OHSO Brewery on the northeast corner of Indian School and 49th Street in Arcadia last fall, is closing as a walk-in restaurant. The team announced regular restaurant service
🚫 August is shaping up to be the worst month for restaurant closures in Valley history, and it’s not particularly close. The big driver is Salad and Go, which filed for bankruptcy and has been shuttering roughly 70 locations across
🌶 La Ristra New Mexican Kitchen will hold its 14th annual Chile Roasting Sale on Friday, Sept. 11, and Saturday, Sept. 12, beginning at 11 a.m. both days. Every year, restaurant staffers travel to Hatch, N.M., to pick up their own chiles,
Sorry! While most of MouthBySouthwest.com is free to read, MXSW Insider articles are for paid subscribers only. Learn how to become an MXSW Insider.
🥂 Porta Via, a Beverly Hills-born bistro and bar, is bringing its first Arizona restaurant to Scottsdale Fashion Square, taking over the former Zinqué space in the mall’s West Luxury Wing — a stretch near Camelback Road that’s already home
🍺 Shay Gau spent a decade running a beer bar without a kitchen. Come Aug. 10, that era is officially over – and this time, it’s not going anywhere. The Wandering Tortoise, the Phoenix craft beer and wine bar Gau
🍔 I stopped by at lunchtime Monday to check out Pregame Sports Grill, which opened Saturday in Ahwatukee, tucked into the northwest corner of Chandler Boulevard and 42nd Street. If that location rings a bell, it should. This building was
Sorry! While most of MouthBySouthwest.com is free to read, MXSW Insider articles are for paid subscribers only. Learn how to become an MXSW Insider.
☕️ I’ve been tracking the Salad and Go saga for a while now – the closure of every Texas and Oklahoma location back in January, the subsequent move of the company’s headquarters back to Arizona, the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak, and
🎃 Fall officially arrived in Tempe over the weekend, at least by the only calendar that matters to Arizona beer drinkers: the one that says Pumpkin Porter is back on draft. Four Peaks Brewing released the beer at its Eighth
🚫 Sel Bistro has served its last dinner. Chef Branden and May Levine confirmed this weekend that the East Main Street restaurant has closed for good after a decade in business. Sel opened in Old Town Scottsdale 10 years ago
🔥 The wait is over. At 5 p.m. today, Pretty Decent Concepts throws open the doors for the official grand opening of Roman (God of Fire), the most ambitious project yet from the hospitality group behind local favorites like Wren
🍔 Johnny Rockets‘ comeback to Chandler Fashion Center is finally here – the retro burger joint opens its doors this Saturday. The new spot lands in the mall’s food court, a decade after the original Chandler Fashion Center location closed
🌮 Scottsdale favorite Cien Agaves has planted its second flag in west Chandler, opening in the former Smokin Fins space southeast of the intersection of I-10 and Ray Road. The new outpost marks the first expansion for the tequila-and-Mexican-food concept
OK, I need to buy a lottery ticket. Yesterday I was joking around with several of you readers that Dutch Bros Coffee should scoop up all the closing Salad and Go locations – perfect little drive-thru boxes, prime corners, no
