Valentine Might Make the Best Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner in Phoenix
Valentine is one of those strange unicorn restaurants that kind of nails it no matter when you show up (it’s kind of like a better version of Lux… not to be competitive about it). The breakfast/brunch is amazing, the pastries are out of this world, and the coffee is delicious. And then you show up for dinner and it’s also amazing, and there’s a whole cocktail situation that might be the best part of it all (I’m lying…the pastries are the star here). Bonus points for wondering around Modern Manor if you’ve had one too many—there’s no better place to find that perfect dog statue with jewel eyes for your coffee table.
Website: valentinephx.com
Reservations: Resy
Tip: Their bar around back—Bar 1912—is incredible. If it’s open, go.
Found On
Valentine Has 19.5 Yumpoints
APR 26, 2024
Foodists Awards: 2024 Finalists
STANDOUT SIGNATURE DISH - Elote Pasta
APR 18, 2024
Tales of the Cocktail Foundation: Tales of The Cocktail Foundation Announces Spirited Awards® 2024 Regional Top 10 Honorees
Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West
APR 3, 2024
James Beard Foundation: The 2024 Restaurant and Chef Award Nominees
Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker
APR 1, 2024 / TIRION BOAN AND SARA CROCKER
Phoenix New Times: The 5 best bites we tried in March around metro Phoenix
Valentine frequently finds itself on lists of this nature. But chef Donald Hawk, pastry chef Crystal Kass and their team just continue to knock out exceptional eats. Our latest find was the Churro Waffle, a decadent dish that perfectly blends its two namesakes. Listed on the breakfast and brunch menu, this would be quite an intense way to start your day. We'd suggest sharing the sugar bomb with a friend over coffee or as a dessert. The sweet looks like a waffle, but tastes like a churro.
MAR 4, 2024 / SHANE REISER
Tucson Foodie: 15+ of the Best Restaurants in Phoenix
I hear about Valentine from more Tucsonans than any other Phoenix restaurant. Start with the white Sonoran wheat pretzel with guinea hen butter and Arizona honeycomb. The twice-cooked potatoes with yuzu aioli were amazing, but fair warning — it’s a large portion and you HAVE to save room for other dishes, like their famous crispy cauliflower with native tahini, stonefruit escabeche, and wolfberry harissa. You can make a whole evening out of Valentine by shopping in the attached Modern Manor, a vintage store with loads of beautiful midcentury furniture (including a lot of beautiful sofas that are hard to find in Tucson), and ending the night in Valentine’s backroom cocktail lounge (you have to go outside and enter through the alley on the north side of the building).
FEB 21, 2024 / BAHAR ANOOSHAHR
AZ Central: Chefs absolutely love these 10 metro Phoenix restaurants: 'Dining is an expression of art'
Famous pizzaiolo and James Beard Award winner for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2022, Chris Bianco loves a meal at Valentine. Chef Donald Hawk and pastry chef Crystal Kaas have made a menu of dishes with Arizona-centric ingredients. In a recent Instagram post, Bianco called his meal at Valentine "a truly special 3 meal point restaurant with a fantastic late night bar @1912_phx round back for the late night owl in you."
FEB 13, 2024 / NIKKI BUCHANAN AND CHRIS MALLOY
Eater: The 38 Essential Restaurants in Phoenix
This modern Southwestern restaurant and relaxed hangout, brought to life by owners Blaise Faber and Chad Price, offers innovative food, pastries, and beverages that never fail to impress. Faber’s cocktails combine regional ingredients such as cactus vermouth, Arizona gin, and creosote bitters, while lattes often include Southwestern ingredients such as squash, chiltepin, or cajeta. Chef Donald Hawk marries ingredients from his Korean ancestry with desert crops such as red fife wheat, heirloom squash, and tepary beans to create a style uniquely his own.
FEB 1, 2024
Phoenix New Times: The Top 100 Restaurants
Its Arizona-centric food and drink creations have brought this cozy and sophisticated Melrose District hot spot recognition from Esquire magazine and The New York Times, the latter of which was enamored with Valentine’s soft pretzel crafted from white Sonoran wheat and served with butter blended with Arizona-grown guinea hen fat and a hunk of local honeycomb. At this restaurant, the spotlight shines on ingredients sourced from the Southwest. Dishes include the lauded elote pasta with Hassayampa asiago cheese. For brunch, try the steak & eggs, made with Rovey Farms grass-fed beef and Two Wash Ranch eggs.
JAN 24, 2024 / LAUREN TOPOR
The Infatuation: The Best Restaurants In Phoenix
Valentine knows the way to our hearts: pastries, pasta, natural wine, and late-night cocktails. The atmosphere here feels familiar—think more living room than dining room, with retro modern leather chairs and soft lighting. The Melrose spot puts Arizona ingredients at the center of every dish, and we particularly love the brunch spread: the avocado squash toast and the churro waffles with dulce de leche are some of our favorites.
JAN 16, 2024 / Bahar Anooshahr
AZ Central: 100 essential restaurants in metro Phoenix: The best places to dine in 2024
At Valentine, chef Donald Hawk and his team create many of the dishes with indigenous Sonoran ingredients. Mesquite and elote make appearances in pasta, and appetizers feature local tepary beans and huitlacoche butter. It's a beautiful homage to Arizona, right down to the name, which is a nod to Feb. 14, 1912, when Arizona officially became a state. The not-so-secret bar, located in an alley behind the restaurant, is aptly named 1912 and features a cocktail menu almost as exciting as what's coming out of the kitchen up front.
DEC 28, 2023 / DOMINIC ARMATO
Phoenix New Times: Critic's Picks: Dominic Armato's 10 favorite dishes of 2023
Speaking of riffs on classic New Orleans dishes, these grilled Chula oysters were so freaking brilliant. At first glance, this array of oysters is a typical Valentine dish — some beautiful bivalves punctuated by ingredients native to the Southwest, like squash and chiltepin. But the moment you slurp one down, you realize that they’re chef Donald Hawk’s modern Southwestern play on classic Oysters Rockefeller — not the goopy, cheesy, bacon-laden gut bombs most places serve these days, but rather the light, herbaceous original. Hawk’s spinach-epazote butter is bright and verdant, and those Southwestern accents give the oysters just a little zip. In a year when I had both this version and traditional Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s in New Orleans proper, as wonderful as both were, I prefer Hawk’s.
DEC 12, 2023 / CHRIS MALLOY AND LIZBETH SCORDO
Condé Nast Traveller: The Best Restaurants in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona
Valentine is a warm restaurant-cafe-bar-bakery hybrid that presents a bold vision of Arizona food. Co-owner Blaise Faber has dubbed its style New Southwestern. Chef Donald Hawk delivers in spades on the promise of innovative dishes tapping into regional traditions. He takes specific desert ingredients—tepary bean, i’itoi onions, cactus fruits—and creatively deploys them to give his food intrigue and soul. That prickly pear? It goes into gochujang for beef heart ssam. The mighty tepary bean? The fragrant, faintly smoky sidekick to ribeye with huitlacoche butter. Valentine’s coffee program is similarly inspired, and cocktail maestro Faber has devised unique tipples inspired by Arizona’s biomes. Oh, and Crystal Kass’s unique program has won national accolades. Valentine feels about as unique as a seven-armed saguaro.
OCT 18, 2023 / MCCONNELL QUINN AND JAMIE KILLIN
Eater: 13 Phoenix Brunches Worth Waking Up For
Valentine offers a true taste of Arizona with a menu incorporating desert ingredients like mesquite, prickly pear, amaranth, and tepary beans in both cocktails and cuisine — and chef Donald Hawk’s brilliant at developing flavors. The brunch menu fits on half a page, which is a sign of a good restaurant: a few excellent dishes rather than pages of average items. For a savory dish with a bottomless layer of flavors, try steak and eggs. For sweet, order the churro waffle.
APR 27, 2023 / ASONTA BENETTI AND LAUREN TOPOR
Thrillist: The Best Restaurants in Phoenix Right Now
Everyone needs a go-to spot and Valentine covers pretty much all of the bases for, well, all the go-to needs. Early morning coffee and fresh pastry? Check. Brunch menu till 3:30? Yep. What about dinner or late-night cocktails? All available, with Southwestern flavors and surprising twists (a tepary bean-miso yogurt, for instance). The day menu offerings run the gamut, from a biscuit and gravy that includes a duck egg to a limited number of daily quiches.
Apr 24, 2023
Tales of the Cocktail Foundation: Tales of the Cocktail Foundation announces the Regional Top 10 Honorees for the 2023 Spirited Awards
Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West
JAN 25, 2023
James Beard Foundation: 2023 James Beard Awards Semifinalist
Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker
FEB 23, 2022
James Beard Foundation: 2022 James Beard Award Semifinalists
Emerging Chef
Jan 18, 2021 / Natasha Yee
Phoenix New Times: A Mid-Century Brunch at Valentine, Now Open in The Melrose District
For everything we forked down, there was still much left to conquer. Valentine's pastries are made in-house. And its sleek black Marzocco machine would make any espresso fanatic eager for a shot. We're fine waiting. When it comes to Valentine, like any dizzying new love, a little mystery goes a long way.
