Kai Might Still Be the Best Restaurant in Arizona
Kai
There have always been trendy new restaurants around town, but Kai has always been known as the very best. It’s also the only highest-end Native American place I’m aware of, serving a tasting menu with bison, heirloom grains, and a desert topped with Saguaro and wolfberry foam. The only thing keeping Kai from the top of all the local best lists (IMO) is its relative anonymity, tucked in the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass, and its ever-changing head chefs. We’re on a fairly new one now, but the restaurant still seems to be good as ever.
Tempe / W. Chandler / Ahwatukee - 5594 W Wild Horse Pass Blvd
Awards + Accolades
James Beard Awards
2022: Outstanding Wine Program - Semifinalist
2020: Best Chef: Southwest | Ryan Swanson - Semifinalist
2020: Outstanding Hospitality - Semifinalist
2019: Outstanding Service - Semifinalist
2008: Best Chef: Southwest | Jack Strong - Semifinalist
AZ Central
2020: Dominic Armato’s 100 Essential Restaurants
2018: Dominic Armato’s Top 100 Restaurants
Eater
2024: The 38 Essential Restaurants in Phoenix
Foodist Awards
2019: Uniquely Arizona - Winner
2018: Uniquely Arizona - Finalist
2016: Innovative Restaurant Concept - Winner
Phoenix Magazine
2020: Best Resort Restaurant
2019: Top 100 Restaurants
2019: Best Resort Restaurant
2014: 50 Best AZ Restaurants
2010: Best Resort Restaurant
Phoenix New Times
2024: Top 100 Restaurants
2022: Best Hotel Restaurant
2020: Best Restaurant
2018: Best Authentic Arizona Restaurant
2017: Best Authentic Arizona Restaurant
2012: Best Place to Take an Out-of-Towner
2011: Best Fancy Frybread
2011: Best Use of Indigenous Ingredients
2010: Best Destination Dining
2009: Best Destination Dining
2008: Best Place to Take a New Yorker
2007: Best Place to Take a Foodie
2003: Best Authentic Arizona Restaurant
Reviews
Without a doubt, there’s no restaurant in Arizona quite like Kai. The highly decorated minister of Native American-influenced fine dining, located inside the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort on the southern fringe of the Valley, has long delivered one of the region’s most prized and respected eating experiences. “Cherry Sweet Grass Smoked Quail Breast with Slow Braised Mole Adobo Rabbit”? Pretty unique, that.
- Justin Lee, Phoenix Magazine
There's really nothing traditional about the restaurant at the new Wild Horse Pass Resort on the Gila River Indian reservation ("Kai" is a Pima word for "seed"). But that's why it's so exciting, unexpected, and completely refreshing. Since Kai opened in October, it's grabbed my vote as one of our Valley's best upscale restaurants.
- Carey Sweet, Phoenix New Times
Though dinner for two will range from one to many multiples of $100, you don’t feel like you’re being ripped off. It’s never: How did my bill get this high? It’s more: Okay, that hit me pretty damn hard in the wallet, but I get it. Though out of the way, though a special-occasion place if you’re lucky, Kai remains one of the best and most important restaurants in Arizona. Not only for the past and present, but for one potential future.
- Chris Malloy, Phoenix New Times
What to Get
Dinner
It’s hard to divide this meal into parts given how its ideas, ingredients, and flavors flowed, so I'll be treating it as a whole. It opened with Ramona Farms blue corn killed before harvest by frost, salvaged by chef Ryan Swanson, fried crisp, and perched in huitlacoche charged with pickled shallots. It passed from creamy bison bone marrow crème brulee to scallop sausages to octopus in a desert-glorifying sauce combining wolfberries and chiltepines to a course you only smelled and to other places near and far and finally into memory, now of what was possible in the before times.
- Chris Malloy, Phoenix New Times
Key Lime Pie
After Kai broke for summer, Chef Ryan Swanson came back swinging. Within a few weeks, he developed and dropped a dessert for the ages: a key lime pie riff that spotlights what is arguably the signature plant of the desert: cactus. For the light green bulk and citrusy heartbeat of the “key lime” pie, Swanson calls on nopales. The fragrant, deeply earthy crust is built from Ramona Farms pinole. The pie also sees barrel cactus seeds, cholla buds, prickly pear in two unlikely forms, wild sumac, and desert willow. And here is a pie that you can’t taste anywhere else in the world: one that, in vegetal notes, restrained sweetness, and bright cutting beauty, calls to mind the Sonoran.
- Chris Malloy, Phoenix New Times
Grilled Tenderloin of Tribal Buffalo
The knock on tenderloin as a butcher’s cut: applaudably tender, but often flavorless. Few would voice that objection about buffalo tenderloin, on the other hand – particularly the one served at the celebrated AAA Five Diamond Kai. In keeping with Kai’s ethos of desert-sourced fare, the breathtaking lobe is served atop a smoked corn purée with cholla buds with a drizzle of squash blossom syrup, but it’s the meat itself that’s the real star. It’s tender as all hell, but with the beefy mineral zing of a hanger or skirt steak. It’s a gift.
- Niki D’Andrea, Phoenix Magazine
