Roaring Fork plan is to become chain
Howard Seftel
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 25, 2006 12:00 AM
Two of the Valley’s top chefs are out of work. A high-powered developer is trying to put together an ambitious downtown restaurant plan. The new owners of a nationally acclaimed, chef-driven restaurant want to grow it into a chain. And the dots are all connected.
The anticipated result? A distinctive new restaurant corridor downtown and at least two more high-end restaurants in Scottsdale.
Robert McGrath, the James Beard award-winning chef of Roaring Fork, has sold the restaurant to partners Guy Villavaso and Larry Foles, who founded Z’Tejas Grill, Eddie V’s and Wildfish Grille.
The 52-year-old McGrath is “all fired up” about the new place he hopes to open in Scottsdale next year, a contemporary classic restaurant that he says will be a cross between two shuttered landmarks: Scottsdale’s Golden Door and the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room in New York.
“One door closes, another opens up,” he said.
Villavaso plans to bring a second Roaring Fork to north Scottsdale and to plant Roaring Forks throughout Texas.
Meanwhile, developer Bill Smith, chairman of the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau and a partner in Stoudemire’s, down the street from US Airways Center at Second Street and Jefferson, is aiming to make his mark on the downtown food scene.
Smith is negotiating to take over two storefronts in the rotunda alongside Stoudemire’s, then combine their space into an Italian restaurant by the end of the year. He has tapped Patrick Boll, McGrath’s right-hand man, as his corporate executive chef.
Next month, another Smith project, an “American pub,” will move into the hard-luck address around the corner on Washington, between First and Second streets, a space that housed Oregano’s and most recently Taste of N’Awlins. In a couple of years, Smith envisions a gourmet marketplace and high-end restaurant downtown, as well.
The idea is to create a downtown food “corridor,” similar to what the La Grande Orange group is doing in Arcadia.
Boll will also be revamping the menu at Stoudemire’s, which leads to another dot. Earlier this year, Smith brought in celebrity chef Eddie Matney to run Stoudemire’s. But Matney and Smith are now parting.
Matney and Stoudemire’s seemed like a mismatch from the beginning: One of this town’s most creative foodie minds has been spending his days churning out an assortment of sports-bar standards like battered calamari, sliders and roast chicken.
Matney said he wants to get back to doing his own food in his own restaurant and reports he’s “actively looking” for a place to resume his career.
