Every summer, Old Town empties out the same way. The snowbirds leave, the patios go quiet by 8 p.m., and the restaurants built for a five-month tourist season shutter early or run skeleton hours until October. That has been the pattern for as long as anyone paying attention can remember.
This year broke it. Walk the blocks around Scottsdale Road and Camelback on a Thursday in August and you will find rooftop bars with a line at the elevator, an ArtWalk still drawing gallery-hoppers past 8 p.m., and a stretch of restaurants that opened in the dead of winter and are still running at full volume in the dead of summer. That is not a small shift. It is the first real evidence that Old Town's dining scene has stopped operating on a tourist calendar and started operating on a resident one.
The corridor that didn't exist a year ago
Three addresses tell the story. Cielito opened February 26, 2026, on the rooftop of the new AC Hotel Scottsdale Old Town at 7117 E. 3rd Ave. Wolf by Vanderpump opened in December 2025 on the seventh floor of Caesars Republic Scottsdale, with a dramatic central bar spanning roughly 6,500 square feet and an eighth-floor veranda. Above All Else took the second floor of the former STK space at 7134 E. Stetson Drive, a short walk from Cielito.
None of those three restaurants existed a year ago. All three are still open now, in August, which is the part that matters. Old Town has always had rooftops. What it has not had, until this year, is a cluster of them designed to run through July rather than close for it.
Cielito runs about 3,100 square feet with roughly 70 seats, including a 14-seat bar and seating that extends onto the pool deck. Chef Shon Foster, whose résumé includes Amangiri, built the menu around bright citrus, charred elements and agave-forward cocktails inspired by the coastal and desert regions of Northwest Mexico.
With Cielito, we wanted to create a rooftop experience inspired by the coastal and desert regions of Northwest Mexico, but interpreted in a way that feels natural to Scottsdale.
That is Foster's own framing of the project, and it matters for the same reason the AC Hotel's ground-floor lounge matters: a hotel restaurant built to serve resort guests eight months a year runs a different menu, staffing model and hours than one built to hold a local audience through 105-degree afternoons. Cielito made it through those afternoons.
Above All Else was pitched by its CEO, Austin Walter, around what he called an Instagrammable wow factor, and whatever you think of that phrase, the restaurant is still pulling a crowd months after its early 2026 debut, which is the only metric that actually confirms the concept.
The ones still arriving
Not everything on the map has opened yet, and it is worth being precise about which is which if you are trying to plan an actual evening rather than read a press release.
Ari & Lloyd, from local owners Katie Schnurr and Stephen Roach, was targeting an end-of-July opening in a converted cabinetry showroom at 7107 E. Sixth Ave. Chef Devan Cunningham, co-founder of CC's on Central, is shaping the menu. The concept splits into two connected rooms: The Ari as the restaurant side, The Lloyd as the cocktail lounge. Schnurr told WhatNow Phoenix the team was aiming to open by the end of July pending final inspections. That target has now passed, which means it should be open or close to it if you have not already found it.
BOA Steakhouse was targeting the first half of 2026 for its debut at Scottsdale Waterfront, a homecoming for Innovative Dining Group after fifteen years running Sushi Roku at the W Scottsdale. That window closed at the end of June, so this one should already be seating guests or very close to it.
Drake's Hollywood and DEPWAH are both still described as opening later this year. Drake's is moving into the former Buca di Beppo space at 3828 N. Scottsdale Road, an 8,000-square-foot build with a valet-only entrance and old Hollywood styling, the chain's fourth U.S. location after Dallas, Houston and West Hollywood. DEPWAH is a French-Vietnamese concept planned for a rooftop lounge and espresso bar built around Vietnamese coffee and matcha. Neither has a confirmed open date yet, so treat them as fall targets rather than August plans.
Why Thursday is still the move, even in August
The other piece of this that outsiders miss entirely is the ArtWalk. The Scottsdale Gallery Association runs a free weekly art walk every Thursday evening from 7 to 9 p.m. along Main Street from Scottsdale Road to Goldwater Boulevard, and along Marshall Way north of Indian School Road to Fifth Avenue. It has been running for decades and is regularly described as the nation's longest-running event of its kind, organized by the Scottsdale Gallery Association since 1975.
August is the sleeper month for it. Foot traffic drops with the tourists, which means parking on the north end of the district actually opens up and gallery owners have time for an actual conversation instead of a nod on the way past. If you have never combined a Thursday ArtWalk stroll with a rooftop reservation on the same night, this is the exact month to try it, because you get the district without the crowd that shows up from October through April.
The Gold Palette series adds themed nights on top of the standard weekly walk. The most recent one, a Summer Spectacular on July 9, ran from 6:30 to 9 p.m. with live music and exhibitions across member galleries including Bonner David Galleries and Pejman Gallery on East Main Street. Watch for the next Gold Palette date if you want the enhanced version rather than the standard weekly stroll.
What the summer left behind
A few smaller local threads closed out over the past month or so that are worth knowing even if you missed them in real time. Old Town's own frozen treat bracket, the Tournament of Treats, ran through June with Sweet Republic, Original ChopShop, Shakes & Cones and Skoop Premium Ice Cream facing off round by round before voting closed June 30. If you are the type of household that argues about where to go for dessert after ArtWalk, that bracket is a reasonable tiebreaker even now that the voting is over.
The Fourth of July at WestWorld carried extra weight this year. The event doubled as a marker for Scottsdale's 75th anniversary of incorporation, a city that was founded in 1888 but did not incorporate until 1951 with just 2,000 residents, against a population that now exceeds 250,000. The celebration ran inside the air-conditioned Tony Nelssen Equestrian Center, the same climate-controlled hall Old Town has leaned on for this event for years, which tells you something about how the city itself plans around a Scottsdale July. It is a reminder that a lot of what makes Old Town feel lived-in this time of year happens indoors, on purpose, because the heat leaves no other option.
What it actually means if you live here
None of this is really about restaurants. It is about what kind of neighborhood Old Town has decided to become. A district that only supports flagship-caliber concepts eight months a year is a resort annex. A district where four or five of them stay open, staffed and busy through 105-degree Tuesdays is something closer to a real neighborhood with a dining scene that happens to also serve visitors.
That distinction shows up in property conversations more than people expect, even outside the scope of any single transaction. Walkability, night-life density and whether a corridor reads as seasonal or year-round all factor into how buyers and sellers think about a block, long before a listing goes live. If you want a closer look at how these shifts read across the broader neighborhood, our Scottsdale neighborhood guide has more on the area, and our running list of local restaurants tracks the newer additions as they open.
For now, the honest read is simple. Cielito, Wolf by Vanderpump and Above All Else made it through the hardest test a Scottsdale restaurant can face and came out the other side still full. Ari & Lloyd, BOA Steakhouse, Drake's Hollywood and DEPWAH are next in line to prove the same thing. Pair whichever one is open with a Thursday ArtWalk stroll while the crowds are still thin, and you will understand exactly why locals keep telling out-of-towners that August is the secret good month in Old Town, not the one to avoid.
If you are curious how any of this touches the value or feel of a specific block in Old Town, or you are weighing a move within the neighborhood you already call home, Karen's Collection is always glad to talk through what we're seeing on the ground. Request a Concierge Consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
