"Downtown Tempe is a very hot place to be and a lot of restaurateurs and bar owners are looking here for their next big location," Tempe Mayor Corey Woods told Phoenix New Times. "2026 is going to be very exciting for Mill Avenue and downtown Tempe." Mayors say things like this every year. What makes this year different is who is actually showing up to build.
In recent years, that same three-block stretch of Mill Avenue lost its two most trusted sit-down restaurants. Rula Bula and House of Tricks, the two spots downtown regulars pointed newcomers toward when they wanted something better than a sports bar basket of wings, both departed, leaving Caffe Boa as one of the few European-style holdouts still serving downtown. A few blocks south, Devil's Advocate, the sports bar at Rural and University that had anchored a mostly college crowd for 15 years, closed in December to make way for a high-rise apartment complex. Mellow Mushroom pulled out of its Mill Avenue location too. For a stretch, the reputation downtown Tempe earned was a place you could drink almost anywhere and eat well in only a few spots.
That gap is why this August matters. It is not just that new restaurants are opening on Mill Avenue. It is who is opening them.
What actually arrives this August
The dated openings on the calendar right now:
- Roman God of Fire, the wood-fired Italian concept from celebrity chef Scott Conant and Pretty Decent Concepts, opens Aug. 7 at the corner of Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway inside Hayden Ferry Lakeside, with reservations already open on OpenTable.
- RePUBLic Tempe, a sports bar and cue club concept from C.A.S.A. bar creator Scott Price, is taking over the former Mill Cue Club and Zuma Grill spaces just south of Sixth Street on Mill Avenue, with an August 2026 target.
- Price is also expanding C.A.S.A. itself, adding dine-in and walk-up service to the existing bar around the corner, on the same August 2026 timeline.
- Culinary Gangster, the Chicago-born burger brand, is building out a spot on the southeast corner of Mill Avenue and Fifth Street, directly below Varsity Tavern. Owner Ricky Raschillo had hoped for a March opening, but said the team would wait out the summer for an August debut if renovations ran long.
- Phantom Fox Beer Co., fresh off its two-year anniversary in Mesa, is moving into the former Illegal Pete's space on Mill Avenue with an attached pizzeria called Goat and Ram.
Behind those five, more had already been dated for earlier in 2026 or remains planned for later this year: Novel Ice Cream was slated to move into the relocated Harry Walker House next to Tempe City Hall, the same building that once housed House of Tricks, with a projected opening this past spring. Glai Baan's owners have announced plans for a second concept inside the historic Moeur House on Seventh Street, though a firm date has not been set. Julian Wright's Carmen is planned for the former Anoche Cantina space at Centerpoint on Mill.
Second bets, not first tries
Here is the pattern nobody covering this as a simple "new restaurants" story is naming: almost none of these are first-time operators testing whether Mill Avenue can support a restaurant. They are proven operators making a second or third bet on the same street.
Pretty Decent Concepts, the group behind Roman God of Fire, is not a startup. As of fall 2025 the group already operated seven restaurants and bars across Phoenix and Tempe, and had set a goal of reaching twelve distinct venues by the middle of this year. Roman God of Fire is not their entry into the market. It is expansion capital being spent on a corner they already believe in.
Julian Wright is even more direct about it. He has been on Mill Avenue for three decades and already owns Pedal Haus Brewery and the dual-bar Devil's Hideaway and Idle Hands nearby. Carmen is not his first swing at this street. It is, by his own count, his "ninth or 10th concept on Mill Avenue."
"I personally like really walkable districts, where you have synergy with other bars, restaurants and other events," Wright said. "I think Tempe is one of the best places to live in Arizona, even though I don't think it always gets the credit for that. I think the only thing that's been lacking is food and beverage options."
Scott Price's RePUBLic is not a new bar owner arriving downtown either. He already runs C.A.S.A. around the corner, and the expansion is happening at the same time as the new concept, which reads less like diversification and more like doubling down on a block he already operates on. Culinary Gangster's Tempe move follows the same shape: the brand already has a Scottsdale location and a downtown Phoenix outpost before betting on Mill Avenue specifically.
This matters for a simple reason. A first-time restaurant on a struggling block is a guess. A fourth or fifth restaurant from an operator who already has three others generating cash flow nearby is a read on the market, made by someone with the numbers to back it up. When Wright says the food and beverage gap was the only thing holding Mill Avenue back, he is speaking as someone who has watched the street's dining fortunes rise and fall for thirty years and is still putting new money into it.
What it means if you already live here
None of this requires a car or a special trip. Retail followed the same pattern earlier in the year: Lizard Head Trading Co. opened its doors on Mill Avenue in March, on the same weekend as the Spring Tempe Festival of the Arts, and Downtown Tempe's own business tracker lists Green Corner, Retail Therapy, and Window Coffee Bar all opening within the same four-month stretch between November 2025 and March 2026. The restaurant wave is arriving on top of a retail wave that was already building.
If you are planning an August night out, a few practical notes worth knowing before you go:
- Roman God of Fire is taking reservations now for its Aug. 7 opening, and the Mill and Rio Salado Parkway location puts it at the north end of the strip, closer to Hayden Ferry Lakeside than the college bar cluster.
- RePUBLic and the expanded C.A.S.A. both sit within the same block just south of Sixth Street, so expect that stretch to get considerably louder and busier once both open.
- Culinary Gangster's exact date depends on how renovations under Varsity Tavern wrap up. If you want to know before you drive down, checking ahead is worth it since the owner himself has said the timeline could slip into late summer.
- For anyone driving in rather than walking from campus or a nearby building, the city's Tempe TRiP tool shows real-time parking availability, which is worth a look before circling Mill Avenue during a Friday night crunch.
The corner to watch after August
The honest read on all of this is that downtown Tempe spent the last few years losing its dining anchors and is now getting them back, but from operators who already know what works elsewhere in the Valley rather than from people guessing for the first time. That is a different kind of bet, and it is one worth watching past the ribbon cuttings. If Roman God of Fire, RePUBLic, and Culinary Gangster all open on schedule this month, Mill Avenue will have added five new sit-down and bar concepts in a matter of weeks, on top of a retail wave that already landed earlier this year. Whether that turns into the kind of walkable, restaurant-forward strip Wright and Woods both describe, or whether some of these concepts struggle the way Rula Bula and House of Tricks eventually did, is the question worth revisiting once the fall semester brings ASU's full population back downtown.
For now, the block looks different than it did a year ago, and the people paying to make it look that way have already tested this street once and came back for more.
If you are watching downtown Tempe for reasons beyond dinner plans, whether you are weighing a move here or wondering what these changes mean for property values on or near Mill Avenue, Mark Palacio has been working East Valley real estate long enough to have watched more than one restaurant cycle come and go. Let's Connect if you want a local read on what a stretch like this means for the neighborhood around it.
