Matt Carter Is Going Casual With Dash, Coming to Scottsdale This Fall
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Chef Matt Carter has spent more than two decades behind some of Scottsdale’s most recognizable restaurants.
The Mission gave us modern Latin cuisine and tableside guacamole. Fat Ox went sleek and Italian. Zinc Bistro brought a little Paris to Kierland Commons.
So what does Carter do for his first completely new restaurant concept in a decade?
Apparently, whatever he wants.
Dash, an all-day restaurant and neighborhood market from Carter and longtime business partner Brian Raab, is expected to open this November in Scottsdale’s McCormick Ranch.
And this one feels different.
Instead of another big Scottsdale dinner destination, Dash is going small and casual, with coffee and pastries in the morning, sandwiches and Roman-style pizza during the day, Portuguese-style charcoal chicken at night and soft serve for dessert.
There’s also going to be mushroom cola.
We’ll get to that.
A Very Different Kind of Matt Carter Restaurant
The idea behind Dash is right there in the name: dash in, dash out.
Carter has lived in McCormick Ranch for 17 years, and this is very much being built as a neighborhood restaurant. The dining room will have just 12 seats, with another 40 on the patio, plus online ordering and dedicated curbside pickup.
Honestly, that may be the part that interests me most.
This isn’t sounding like the place you save for an anniversary reservation three weeks from now. It’s coffee on the way somewhere, lunch when you realize you forgot to eat, or grabbing dinner because absolutely nobody at home has any intention of cooking.
Dash will also have a small market stocked with prepared foods, including some familiar dishes from Carter and Raab’s other restaurants. Zinc Bistro’s mac and cheese, Fat Ox polenta and The Mission’s chips and guacamole are among the items expected to make an appearance.
Restaurant mac and cheese without having to put on real pants?
This feels like a solid business model.
So, What Are We Eating?
Longtime Fat Ox pastry chef Lisa Graf is joining Carter and Raab on Dash, and the menu will shift throughout the day.
Mornings start with coffee, fresh croissants and other pastries, breakfast bowls and sandwiches. The coffee program will include house-made syrups using local and seasonal ingredients such as dates and fig leaves, along with fresh-squeezed orange juice and matcha.
Then we get to lunch.
Chopped sandwiches, salads and Roman-style pizza are all planned, but there’s already one sandwich I know I’m ordering.
The BLT.
It starts with Nueske’s bacon and salt-cured tomatoes, which would have been perfectly respectable on their own.
Then they added bacon-infused Duke’s mayo.
Listen.
I was already on board. There was no need to get aggressive about it.
Dinner shifts to Portuguese-style charcoal-roasted chicken and potatoes, with daily specials giving Carter some room to play with whatever sounds good.
There’s something I really like about that. The menu doesn’t seem particularly concerned with fitting neatly into one category.
Coffee shop? Sandwich shop? Pizza place? Chicken spot? Market? Somewhere I can stop for soft serve after convincing myself I only came in for coffee?
Apparently, yes.
Fine. Let’s Talk About the Mushroom Cola.
Dash plans to make its own sodas.
There will be root beer and a bubbly ginger-and-grapefruit drink, which both sound lovely and perfectly normal.
And then there’s the mushroom-infused cola.
Mushroom.
Cola.
Two perfectly respectable words I was not prepared to see holding hands.
I have no idea what this is going to taste like. Earthy? Sweet? Weirdly delicious? Like licking a log while someone nearby opens a Coke?
We’ll find out.
Because obviously I’m ordering it.
Dash is expected to serve beer and wine when it opens, with batched cocktails joining the beverage lineup later. But I’m sorry, you cannot put mushroom cola on a menu and expect me to spend this paragraph talking about wine.
Priorities.
This Might Be Exactly What the Neighborhood Needs
And weirdly enough, the mushroom cola isn’t even what interests me most about Dash.
Carter has said the menu is partly made up of things he wants to cook for himself and things he wishes he could eat in his own neighborhood.
That makes the whole slightly random assortment of food make a lot more sense.
There are plenty of Scottsdale restaurants designed for celebrations, date nights and evenings when someone eventually suggests another bottle of wine and everyone makes a questionable financial decision.
Dash doesn’t seem particularly interested in competing with those places.
It wants Tuesday.
It wants the person grabbing coffee at 8 a.m., somebody meeting a friend for lunch and the family picking up chicken and potatoes at 6 because dinner at home has been officially abandoned.
That’s a harder kind of restaurant to pull off than it sounds.
New restaurants can get people through the door once. Being the neighborhood place people work into their regular routine is something else entirely.
And with only 12 seats inside, a big patio, curbside pickup, an all-day menu and a market full of things you can take home, Dash seems built around exactly that idea.
We’ll see whether it works when the doors open this November.
PhoenixBites will, of course, be checking it out.
For journalism.
And definitely not because I’ve been thinking about that BLT since I first read the words “bacon-infused Duke’s mayo.”
Dash Scottsdale
Opening: Expected November 2026
Where: 9619 N. Hayden Road, Suite 101, Scottsdale
What: All-day restaurant, coffee shop and neighborhood market
Expect: Coffee, pastries, breakfast, chopped sandwiches, Roman-style pizza, charcoal chicken, soft serve, house-made sodas, beer and wine
What I’m already eyeing: The BLT, charcoal chicken and that deeply suspicious mushroom cola
Chef Matt Carter has spent more than two decades behind some of Scottsdale’s most recognizable restaurants.
The Mission gave us modern Latin cuisine and tableside guacamole. Fat Ox went sleek and Italian. Zinc Bistro brought a little Paris to Kierland Commons.
So what does Carter do for his first completely new restaurant concept in a decade?
Apparently, whatever he wants.
Dash, an all-day restaurant and neighborhood market from Carter and longtime business partner Brian Raab, is expected to open this November in Scottsdale’s McCormick Ranch.
And this one feels different.
Instead of another big Scottsdale dinner destination, Dash is going small and casual, with coffee and pastries in the morning, sandwiches and Roman-style pizza during the day, Portuguese-style charcoal chicken at night and soft serve for dessert.
There’s also going to be mushroom cola.
We’ll get to that.
A Very Different Kind of Matt Carter Restaurant
The idea behind Dash is right there in the name: dash in, dash out.
Carter has lived in McCormick Ranch for 17 years, and this is very much being built as a neighborhood restaurant. The dining room will have just 12 seats, with another 40 on the patio, plus online ordering and dedicated curbside pickup.
Honestly, that may be the part that interests me most.
This isn’t sounding like the place you save for an anniversary reservation three weeks from now. It’s coffee on the way somewhere, lunch when you realize you forgot to eat, or grabbing dinner because absolutely nobody at home has any intention of cooking.
Dash will also have a small market stocked with prepared foods, including some familiar dishes from Carter and Raab’s other restaurants. Zinc Bistro’s mac and cheese, Fat Ox polenta and The Mission’s chips and guacamole are among the items expected to make an appearance.
Restaurant mac and cheese without having to put on real pants?
This feels like a solid business model.
So, What Are We Eating?
Longtime Fat Ox pastry chef Lisa Graf is joining Carter and Raab on Dash, and the menu will shift throughout the day.
Mornings start with coffee, fresh croissants and other pastries, breakfast bowls and sandwiches. The coffee program will include house-made syrups using local and seasonal ingredients such as dates and fig leaves, along with fresh-squeezed orange juice and matcha.
Then we get to lunch.
Chopped sandwiches, salads and Roman-style pizza are all planned, but there’s already one sandwich I know I’m ordering.
The BLT.
It starts with Nueske’s bacon and salt-cured tomatoes, which would have been perfectly respectable on their own.
Then they added bacon-infused Duke’s mayo.
Listen.
I was already on board. There was no need to get aggressive about it.
Dinner shifts to Portuguese-style charcoal-roasted chicken and potatoes, with daily specials giving Carter some room to play with whatever sounds good.
There’s something I really like about that. The menu doesn’t seem particularly concerned with fitting neatly into one category.
Coffee shop? Sandwich shop? Pizza place? Chicken spot? Market? Somewhere I can stop for soft serve after convincing myself I only came in for coffee?
Apparently, yes.
Fine. Let’s Talk About the Mushroom Cola.
Dash plans to make its own sodas.
There will be root beer and a bubbly ginger-and-grapefruit drink, which both sound lovely and perfectly normal.
And then there’s the mushroom-infused cola.din
Mushroom.
Cola.
Two perfectly respectable words I was not prepared to see holding hands.
I have no idea what this is going to taste like. Earthy? Sweet? Weirdly delicious? Like licking a log while someone nearby opens a Coke?
We’ll find out.
Because obviously I’m ordering it.
Dash is expected to serve beer and wine when it opens, with batched cocktails joining the beverage lineup later. But I’m sorry, you cannot put mushroom cola on a menu and expect me to spend this paragraph talking about wine.
Priorities.
This Might Be Exactly What the Neighborhood Needs
And weirdly enough, the mushroom cola isn’t even what interests me most about Dash.
Carter has said the menu is partly made up of things he wants to cook for himself and things he wishes he could eat in his own neighborhood.
That makes the whole slightly random assortment of food make a lot more sense.
There are plenty of Scottsdale restaurants designed for celebrations, date nights and evenings when someone eventually suggests another bottle of wine and everyone makes a questionable financial decision.
Dash doesn’t seem particularly interested in competing with those places.
It wants Tuesday.
It wants the person grabbing coffee at 8 a.m., somebody meeting a friend for lunch and the family picking up chicken and potatoes at 6 because dinner at home has been officially abandoned.
That’s a harder kind of restaurant to pull off than it sounds.
New restaurants can get people through the door once. Being the neighborhood place people work into their regular routine is something else entirely.
And with only 12 seats inside, a big patio, curbside pickup, an all-day menu and a market full of things you can take home, Dash seems built around exactly that idea.
We’ll see whether it works when the doors open this fall.
PhoenixBites will, of course, be checking it out.
For journalism.
And definitely not because I’ve been thinking about that BLT since I first read the words “bacon-infused Duke’s mayo.”
Dash Scottsdale
Opening: Expected November 2026
Where: 9619 N. Hayden Road, Suite 101, Scottsdale
What: All-day restaurant, coffee shop and neighborhood market
Expect: Coffee, pastries, breakfast, chopped sandwiches, Roman-style pizza, charcoal chicken, soft serve, house-made sodas, beer and wine
What I’m already eyeing: The BLT, charcoal chicken and that deeply suspicious mushroom cola
About the Author - Taryn Jeffries
Editor and Chief Eating Officer of PhoenixBites, 2017 Food Writer of the Year (Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame) Taryn grew up in a small town in Illinois with a doting Grandmother who taught her the way around a kitchen and that food is representative of love. Her current quest is to find the love in local dishes and the chefs behind them. In addition to running all things PhoenixBites, Taryn is also a freelance writer, sharing her insight on the best dishes and where to get them each and every month.
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Would love to know the price point for Dash – it sounds very interesting.
Me too! I’ll be sure to add more details as soon as they become available.