What's New To Eat In The Catalina Foothills This Summer
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
For years, dinner in the Foothills came in two registers. There was the resort tier at Loews Ventana Canyon and Westin La Paloma, and there was the shopping-center tier along Skyline at La Encantada. Anything in between meant driving down to Broadway or St. Philip's Plaza.
That gap is closing this summer, and it is closing on purpose.
Two openings tell the story. The Hills, which took over the old Commoner & Co. space at Sunrise and Kolb in the spring, is now settled into its rhythm. Frida American Brasserie, from the family behind Villa Peru, is scheduled to open in August at La Encantada in the former Living Room space. The two restaurants are stylistically opposite. Read together, they are the clearest sign in years that Foothills operators are betting on residents rather than winter visitors.
The intersection at 6960 E. Sunrise Dr. has been a restaurant address since 2010, when The Abbey opened there. Commoner & Co. followed in 2015 as the upscale sibling to Prep & Pastry, and its chef Nathan Ares pulled up stakes for Gilbert last July. Ray Flores, president of Flores Concepts and Si Charro, moved on the space almost immediately. His family already runs El Charro Ventana at 6910 E. Sunrise, on the same intersection.
The Hills opened in April. It seats 120 inside with another 20 on a patio that faces the Santa Catalinas, and the concept is a copy-and-evolve of The Monica, the family's all-day cafe on South Congress that opened in 2022. What lands differently up here is the pricing. Flores told the Arizona Daily Star that dinner plates would run "$20 to $30, if not even less for lunch and brunch," and told Tucson Spotlight that mimosas would be priced below what nearby resorts charge. That is not an incidental detail. It is the entire thesis of the restaurant.
The menu spans further than you would expect from a place with a brick oven at the center of it. Pizzettas and focaccia, sure, but also a pasta program, a coffee program from open to close, and a full bar with wine list. The kitchen accommodates gluten-free, vegan, keto, and high-protein diets, and the vegan hemp tamales served across every Flores Concepts location are on the menu here too. Reader favorites emerging in the first four months: the vanilla bean pancake served with horchata butter and available as a single a la carte (a small mercy for anyone who has ever been defeated by a stack), the canyon bowl, and the smoked salmon toast.
The design leans, in Flores's words, "shabby boho chic," with vintage Tucson objects and murals by Joe Pagac. The name is a nod to Catalina Foothills High School athletics, whose teams are collectively called the Hills. If that sounds parochial for a restaurant, that is the point.
"Catalina Foothills is a great neighborhood, it's a great community, but they don't have restaurants that serve everything. They don't have a neighborhood cafe." — Ray Flores, Flores Concepts, to Tucson Spotlight
Hours as of July: Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Reservations run through Tock. KGUN9 checked in with the assistant general manager Mark Hall in July and got the answer you would expect for month four of a busy restaurant: the summer slowdown has been useful for tightening service after a first six weeks that overwhelmed the team.
Two miles north, at 2905 E. Skyline Dr., a very different kind of opening is scheduled for this month. Frida American Brasserie will take over the former Living Room space at La Encantada. Owners Charles and Frida Hunt, who also run Villa Peru with their family, have designed it around a Champagne-forward beverage program and a level of theater that the Foothills has not really seen before.
Some specifics from the pre-opening reporting in Tucson Foodie. Booths will have service buttons that summon a Champagne cart to the table. The patio is being built as a climate-controlled "living patio" so it functions in July as well as it does in February. DJs will play Sunday brunch and weekend evenings. The design language is black-and-white throughout, inspired by Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. The menu, unusually wide for a Champagne bar, runs from mini lobster rolls, crab cakes, and duck confit salad to filet mignon medallions, oysters, lobster tails, grilled halibut, caviar, and veal ossobuco.
Whether that concept lands with Foothills regulars or reads as a resort restaurant pretending it isn't will be the question of the fall. What is not in question is that the operator chose this address for its resident traffic, not its tourist traffic. La Encantada is a locals-first center in a way visitors often miss.
Look at the two openings side by side and the same instinct shows up in different clothes. The Hills is explicitly built to undercut resort brunch. Frida is built to give La Encantada a proper evening restaurant that competes with the resort dining rooms rather than sending diners to them. Both are locally owned. Neither is a chain rollout.
That is the shift worth naming. For a decade the interesting new openings within a ten-minute drive of Skyline have been either national concepts brought in by La Encantada's leasing team or upscale independents chasing a resort price point. This year is different. The bet is on the person who lives on Camino de Oeste, is annoyed at the drive to St. Philip's, and wants a Tuesday dinner that costs less than $80 for two.
For the sake of a full picture, the current Foothills dining bench looks roughly like this:
One practical note from the True Food Kitchen team that applies to most of La Encantada in summer: weekday lunch and weekend brunch are the peak windows, Saturday midday is the heaviest shopping crowd, and weekday mid-afternoon between 2 and 4 p.m. is when the center actually breathes. If you have flexibility, that is when to book The Hills for a working lunch or slide into an AJ's patio table without a wait.
Put the openings together and a plausible Saturday looks like this. Coffee and a vanilla bean pancake at The Hills at 8 a.m. before the brunch surge lands. A late-morning walk from Ventana Canyon or Finger Rock trailhead. A shower and a Champagne cart at Frida for a 7 p.m. dinner, then a nightcap on the patio while a DJ turns the room over from dinner service to weekend evening.
None of that itinerary existed twelve months ago in this configuration. Commoner & Co. was closed. The Living Room space was dark. The nearest all-day cafe with a full bar was The Monica, thirty minutes and one canyon away. That is the change worth noticing before it gets absorbed into the background of daily life up here.
If you are thinking about a home in the Foothills, or thinking about how the character of the neighborhood is shifting under you as a longtime owner, these openings are worth paying attention to. Restaurants are a leading indicator of where money believes the residents are. Two locally owned operators just made a public bet on this ZIP code inside six months of each other.
When you are ready to talk about what that means for your own plans, whether you are staying, selling, or just looking for a better Tuesday dinner, Old Pueblo Estates is here. Schedule a free consultation and let's talk about the Foothills as it actually is right now.
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