Kid-Friendly Restaurants in and Around Scottsdale
Scottsdale, Arizona — updated August 22, 2026
A short, honest list of family-sized restaurants in Scottsdale and the wider Phoenix area, ranked by how settled their ratings are and what we can actually verify about each one.
Listings verified
Scottsdale's restaurant scene leans heavily on national brands, which makes the independently run rooms that can absorb a table of five worth naming individually. The three below are all large-format, high-volume places with thousands of reviews between them, so their ratings reflect years of service rather than an opening-month spike. Two of them sit outside Scottsdale proper, in Phoenix and Mesa, and we say so in each entry.
1. The Mission Old Town
The only entry on this list actually inside Scottsdale, and the busiest restaurant in the whole brief: more than 3,300 reviews behind a 4.4 rating, which is about as settled as a score gets. It sits on N Brown Avenue in Old Town, walking distance from the galleries and the parking garages, so a family meal can be bookended with a stroll rather than a second drive. Volume that high usually means peak-hour waits, so an early sitting is the safer play with children. Shared-plate ordering suits mixed-age tables better than one entree each.
2. La Santisima
A Phoenix restaurant rather than a Scottsdale one, on N 16th Street, but it earns the drive on the strength of its record: 4.4 across more than 3,100 reviews. That is proven rather than promising. The 16th Street corridor is roughly 20 to 25 minutes from central Scottsdale depending on traffic, so it works better as a planned outing than a last-minute stop. As with any restaurant carrying that much traffic, going before the standard dinner rush gives a family the best odds on a table without a long stand-around.
3. Rancho de Tia Rosa
Included with a caveat. This Mesa restaurant on E McKellips Road carries a 3.6 rating across more than 1,100 reviews, which is a low score with enough volume behind it that it is unlikely to be a fluke or a bad month. The upside is scale and a long track record in the East Valley, useful when you need a room that can seat a group. If the drive from Scottsdale is 30 minutes or more, the two entries above are the stronger bets. We would rather flag the number than bury it.
What we left off
Four places from the earlier version were chains and are out under our no-chain rule: Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant on E Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd, North Italia at Kierland Commons, True Food Kitchen at Scottsdale Quarter, and Hash Kitchen at Gainey Village, which operates multiple Arizona locations. Wright Bar at the Arizona Biltmore was also cut. It rates 4.6, but from 266 reviews, and it is a hotel bar, which does not match a guide about feeding children.