Most places around here will tell you they’ve been around forever. El Chorro actually has. The original building went up in 1937 as a girls’ school — which explains why the dining room feels like a hacienda that someone gradually convinced to start serving prime rib. It’s been a restaurant since the 1950s, and it sits at the base of the Mummy Mountain foothills on Lincoln Drive, just far enough from Old Town to keep the bachelor-party foot traffic away.
If you haven’t been, the patio is the reason to go. It faces the mountains and catches the kind of late-afternoon light that makes people put their phones away and actually look at something. The grounds are mature — old saguaros, bougainvillea growing up the walls, the kind of landscaping that takes decades to accumulate. It doesn’t feel performed or recently installed. It just exists, which is rarer than you’d think in Scottsdale.
The menu is squarely American continental: steaks, chops, seafood, a sticky bun situation at brunch that has its own following. The sticky buns are genuinely famous locally and have been on the menu since the fifties. They’re enormous, arrive warm, and are the sort of thing that makes people decide to skip the rest of breakfast. Order one and do not feel conflicted about it. It’s tradition at this point, and arguing with a seventy-year tradition is a losing proposition.
For dinner, the prime rib with creamed horseradish is the move if you’re going classic. The rack of lamb gets ordered confidently by people who’ve been coming here for years. Prices are what you’d call upscale but not irrational — figure $45 to $65 for entrees at dinner, less at Sunday brunch where the sticky buns run the show. Happy hour on the patio runs weekdays and is a reasonable way to get the view without committing to a full dinner tab.
The service is old-school in the best sense: attentive, unhurried, aware that the patio situation is the main event and not rushing anyone off the table. The staff tends to actually know things about the menu, which shouldn’t be remarkable but is. The wine list is large and leans classic — not trendy, not experimental, and better for it in this context.
Crowds peak on weekend evenings when the sunset hits and every table wants to be outside. If you go in high season (roughly November through April), a reservation is not optional. During summer, you’ll find the patio more forgiving, and the fact that it’s partially shaded and cooled by misters helps move the needle past what the temperature might suggest.
El Chorro is not for people chasing the newest thing. It’s for people who appreciate that a place sticking around for eighty-plus years usually means it’s doing something right, even if it’s not doing anything particularly surprising. Scottsdale cycles through restaurants constantly. This one just keeps being there, serving sticky buns and prime rib, with the Mummy Mountains in the background looking exactly the same as they always have.
