New Restaurants in Uptown Phoenix: Central and Camelback Openings

The colorful midcentury building at Central Avenue and Colter Street still has its tree-shaded patio. It no longer has Joyride Taco House, which served its last tacos on August 2 after 13 years in Uptown. The restaurant replacing it was announced for "this fall." Its own website now says "Coming This Winter."

Meanwhile, a few hundred feet south on Camelback Road, new restaurants kept opening. Between late July and early October, a craft taproom opened at Uptown Plaza, a chef from downtown opened a 100-seat Thai supper club, and a burger counter started building out its kitchen inside a neighborhood bar. Farther south on Central, a barbecue-and-oyster house opened at Park Central. Uptown's dining energy this fall sits along Camelback and in its shopping centers, not on the Central Avenue block that made the neighborhood a dining address in the first place.

The block that set the standard is the one waiting

Upward Projects built Uptown's reputation as a place to eat. The Valley group behind Postino, Federal Pizza, Windsor, Churn and Joyride clustered five signature restaurants on both sides of one block of Central Avenue, and Phoenix New Times credited that cluster with transforming the Uptown dining corridor.

Joyride's space at 5202 N. Central Ave. is becoming Lado A Lado. Upward Projects is building it with Chiwas Hospitality Group, the team behind Tacos Chiwas, Espiritu, Main Burger, Cocina Chiwas and Aruma Cafe. Chiwas founders Armando Hernandez, Nadia Holguin and Roberto Centeno are past James Beard Award semifinalists. The name means "side by side" in Spanish. In the July announcement, the plan was wood-fired Mexican food inspired by Sonora, with open-flame cooking, a raw bar and parrillada. The restaurant's site now describes "live-fire Northern Mexican dining with a coastal raw bar." It lists no opening date, hours or individual dishes.

Upward co-founder and CEO Lauren Bailey told Phoenix New Times that the two teams met in the summer of 2025 and "completely clicked." For now, the timeline has moved by a season. The July announcement said fall, the website says winter, and the storefront sits between tenants for the rest of autumn. Anyone who misses Joyride's tacos can still visit the original Joyride in Gilbert, which stays open.

Uptown Plaza filled in first

The first new restaurant to open went into a shopping center. The Sleepy Whale opened at 100 E. Camelback Road, Suite 160, in Uptown Plaza on Friday, July 31. Its opening weekend featured a California tap takeover. Co-owner Tony Fatica's group also runs The Theodore, Beer Barn and the Silver King smokehouses. Silver King's smoke shows up on the menu: its official menu says the smoked meats come from Silver King Smokehouse.

What to order alongside the craft beer:

• Smoked-meat sandwiches and wraps
• Candied-bacon "Spanglish" toast
• Loaded green-chile mac and cheese
• Wings and pretzels

The Uptown location's posted hours are Monday 3 to 9 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Thursday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Those late weekend hours make it the latest-closing option on this corner.

The plaza's next tenant has a local history. DiMaggio's Italian Restaurant, whose original location is in McCormick Ranch, plans an upscale flagship that will anchor the Uptown Plaza courtyard, with a private dining room that has its own entrance. Co-founders Brandon and Michele Gioffre started DiMaggio's in 2021 as a weekend pop-up at the Uptown Farmers Market. Its draws were Calabrese family recipes, hand-pulled mozzarella and cannoli filled to order. Arizona Foothills Magazine reported in late September that the new restaurant is slated to open in fall 2026. Five years after the pop-up, the farmers market vendor is moving into a permanent space near where it started.

A downtown chef moved her family recipes to Camelback

Homme Thai Supper Club opened about a quarter mile east, at 322 E. Camelback Road. Chef Vivid "Gabby" Chu, who runs LeDu Thai downtown, announced that it debuted on Thursday, October 8. The space seats 100. Chu calls it "fine-casual," and she told KTAR that every dish on the menu is a recipe she grew up eating, "from the Hat Yai fried chicken I learned in my uncle's kitchen to slow-simmered curries made from scratch." Chu grew up in Southern Thailand and cooked in Florida, Chicago and New York before opening LeDu in Phoenix.

KTAR's coverage pictured Gai Yaang, a grilled chicken dish. For Uptown, this means a sit-down Thai dinner by a chef with a downtown track record now sits on the same stretch of Camelback as the new taproom.

The bar-plus-kitchen at 24 W. Camelback

The Joy Lush Club sits on the west side of Central. Mike and Kate Fasel opened the wine-and-beer bar and bottle shop in 2022 in a shopping center at Camelback Road and Central Avenue. It has trivia nights and screens FC Barcelona and FC Bayern Munich matches. It closed for construction so Stoop Kid could put in a permanent kitchen. Stoop Kid is the smashburger and bagel counter that started in a shipping container at The Churchill on Roosevelt Row in 2020.

According to a mid-September report in Phoenix New Times, the reopened space will have:

1. A new hood and fryer for Stoop Kid's short menu of lacy griddled burgers, fries and desserts
2. Lunch hours, which the bar has not offered before
3. One shared ordering system for food and drinks
4. Booths around the edge of the room and more frequent live music

That report put the reopening in late September. It said a weekend-long party in mid-October would mark both businesses' anniversaries and Oktoberfest, with the date still to be set. Cocktails depend on a liquor license that Fasel expected "in the coming months," and later hours depend on the expanded bar menu. Both of those dates have passed without a public update, so check the bar's Instagram before you walk over.

Midtown made the same move at Park Central

The pattern repeats farther south. Cowboy Seafood opened Friday, October 9, at Park Central on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Earll Drive. It comes from Christopher Collins's Common Ground Culinary, the group behind Grassroots Kitchen & Tap, The Macintosh, Wally's American Gastropub and The Neighborly. Collins designed the 5,000-square-foot space with Park Central developer Plaza Companies. It seats 80 in the dining room, 22 at an island bar, 12 at a community table and another 80 on the patio.

Collins lives in Midtown. He told Mouth By Southwest he wants the restaurant "to feel special, but never like you need a special occasion." The menu has two sides. The Misfit BBQ Smoke Yard uses a J&R smoker and a dual-spit Santa Maria grill for pecan-smoked St. Louis ribs, whole hog and prime brisket. The seafood side has oysters, Old Bay shrimp cocktail, Salt Block sashimi and West Coast poke. If you can't decide, "The Whole Truth" barbecue combo covers the smoker side.

Lunch runs daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner runs 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 3 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Happy hour is 3 to 6 p.m. every day.

Where each project stands

On a fall evening, you can start with 3 p.m. happy hour oysters at Cowboy Seafood, have dinner at Homme Thai, and finish at The Sleepy Whale, which stays open until 11 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. None of those stops is on the Central Avenue block that used to anchor an Uptown night out. Lado A Lado's website lists this winter as its opening season.

Restaurant openings like these often change how people think about a neighborhood, including what nearby homes are worth. If you live near Central and Camelback and want to know how that plays into your home's value, the DiBiase Team can put together a clear, local estimate based on recent sales around you. Get Your Home Estimate.