For years, the joke inside Paradise Valley has been that the town has more golf courses than restaurants a resident can walk into without checking in first. That is changing this year, but not evenly, and not on the timeline the headlines suggest. Two resort properties on opposite sides of town are mid-renovation right now, each adding a new dining concept. One of those additions is already open and taking reservations from anyone, resident or hotel guest. The other is a name Arizona diners have been waiting to hear, but it is arriving inside a space built for ten private residences, and nobody has announced when, or how easily, an outsider will get a table.
That distinction matters more than the announcements themselves.
What's Actually Changing, and When
Kimpton Miralina Resort & Villas, the property that emerged from a reimagining of the former Scottsdale Plaza Resort, opened its first phase in January 2026 with 224 redesigned guestrooms and 36 casitas, plus new event space and public areas. That part is done and operating. The second phase is the one generating attention: a $70 million transformation set to begin unveiling in the fourth quarter of 2026 and finish in early 2027.
When it's complete, the resort will include:
- 134 newly renovated Valley Villas designed for longer stays and multigenerational visits
- The Enclave, a ten-residence, hotel-within-a-hotel concept with its own private pool complex modeled on traditional onsen bathing rituals
- More than 50,000 square feet of additional meeting space
- Arizona's first location of Katsuya, the modern Japanese restaurant concept from hospitality group sbe, led by culinary director Chef Benjamin Dayag
By the time all of it opens, the resort will carry 404 total keys, six pools, and 22 indoor and outdoor event venues across 40 acres between Camelback and Mummy Mountains. As of the June 2026 announcement, reservation dates for Katsuya had not been set. The resort's own language said only that they'd be announced "in the coming months."
Katsuya Isn't a Neighborhood Restaurant Yet
Here is the detail that gets lost when a name like Katsuya lands in a press release: it is being built as the culinary centerpiece of The Enclave, not as a standalone restaurant with its own entrance and walk-up seating. The resort has described the integration deliberately, extending the Katsuya concept into the onsen-style pool and the ten residences themselves, so that design, service, and food work as one experience rather than a restaurant that happens to sit on hotel grounds.
That framing tells you something practical. A ten-residence enclave with an integrated pool and dining program reads like an intimate, reservation-gated room built to serve people already staying there, not a restaurant sized for walk-in traffic from the neighborhood. It may open to outside diners once it launches, plenty of resort restaurants do, but nothing in the announcement promises casual accessibility, and the timeline itself (unveiling starts Q4 2026, full completion isn't until early 2027) means residents hoping for a quick addition to the weekly rotation should plan on next year, not this fall.
Meanwhile, Hecho Libre, the resort's existing restaurant from James Beard Award finalist Chef Wes Avila, has been operating since Phase One opened in January. It anchors the property's current dining program alongside the pool bar Cima. If you've been curious about it, that curiosity doesn't have to wait for 2027.
The Table That's Already Open
On the other side of Camelback Mountain, Mountain Shadows Resort has been running two restaurants that require none of the wait. Hearth '61, led by Chef de Cuisine Yulissa Acosta with dishes shaped around ingredient-driven, seasonal cooking, serves modern American fare daily, and Rusty's handles the casual side, grill fare and brews for the post-golf crowd off the resort's par-3 Short Course.
What makes Hearth '61 worth naming specifically is the monthly Brunch & Learn series the resort runs through the summer, a ticketed, chef-led cooking demonstration paired with a three-course brunch, capped at 24 guests and priced at $89 per person. It is explicitly framed for anyone looking for something to do in Paradise Valley, not just hotel guests. This summer's lineup has featured Pastry Chef Tyler Johnson on dessert technique and Chef Acosta on seasonal, warm-weather preparations like ceviche. This is the kind of detail that separates a resort dining room from a genuine neighborhood table: you can book it this weekend.
So the practical read for anyone living inside the 85253 zip code is this. If you want a dinner reservation you can actually make tonight without driving to Old Town Scottsdale or Arcadia, Hearth '61 and Hecho Libre are already there. If you're waiting for Katsuya, you're waiting for a room that was designed around ten private residences first, and a neighborhood amenity second, with no confirmed date for how or when that second use case opens up.
Timing the Hike Around the Table
Both restaurants sit close enough to the town's two signature mountains that a lot of residents build the evening around a late-afternoon hike first. That routine has its own logistics worth knowing. Camelback Mountain's Echo Canyon Trail, accessible from the trailhead on McDonald Drive, runs on a strict capacity system: during winter and spring months the parking lot typically fills by late morning on weekdays and stays full all day on weekends, and once it hits capacity, the entry gate closes until space opens up. If your plan is trail then table, Echo Canyon on a Saturday afternoon is the wrong bet.
Mummy Mountain, the town's other defining peak, works differently. Its main public access point, Tyner's Hiking Trail, starts behind the Camelback Inn on Lincoln Drive and requires you to notify the front desk so your car doesn't get towed from what is technically private resort property. It's a shorter, rougher scramble than Echo Canyon, without the parking gate problem, and it's the kind of local logistics that only shows up once you've actually tried to park there.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
None of this changes the fundamentals of Paradise Valley living. The town's character was never built around a commercial strip, and it isn't becoming one now. What's changing is the margin: for the first time in a while, two of the resorts that already define the town's daily rhythm are actively expanding what a resident can do without leaving. One of those additions, Hearth '61's public-facing dining and event calendar, is already yours to use. The other, Katsuya, is real, confirmed, and coming, but it's arriving inside a space built for privacy first, and the smart move is to treat any early 2027 reservation as a hope rather than a plan until the resort actually opens the books.
If you're weighing a move into this stretch of town, or you already own here and are thinking about what your next property should be near, that kind of distinction, what's actually open to you versus what's simply been announced, is the sort of local detail that's easy to miss from a listing photo. Eddie Villalobos and his team work across Paradise Valley and the wider Phoenix area and can walk you through what's changing on the ground, not just what's in the press release.
Start Your Property Search today to see what's available near Paradise Valley's resort corridor.
