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Zen Culinary, asian restaurant in Scottsdale, closes after a year; plans move to downtown Phoenix

Posted at 12:54 PM, Dec 21, 2017
and last updated 2017-12-21 14:54:42-05

A year after opening, Zen Culinary has shuttered its Scottsdale restaurant and plans to reopen in downtown Phoenix under a new name.

The restaurant opened in December 2016 within the Sonora Village shopping center near Loop 101 and Frank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale. It closed in the beginning of December. 

"Zen Culinary was created to serve the refined tastes of Asian food aficionados drawing from the affluent areas of Scottsdale and Phoenix," the restaurant said in a statement. "We really believed that would be our market, however, over the past year we have found that not to be the case and therefore made a difficult choice to relocate the Zen Culinary concept downtown..."

The restaurant will move to Central Avenue and Adams Street in the space currently occupied by Tom Yum, another Thai restaurant. It will be rebranded as "Zen Thai Cafe" sometime next year.

Owner Rachel McAuley said she purchased the downtown restaurant from its previous owner in November. Next year, she plans to merge the menus of the two restaurants keeping the favorites from Tom Yum and bringing over some dishes from Zen Culinary.

As for the vacated building in Scottsdale, it will be remodeled into "an energetic American eclectic restaurant, [sic] with tremendous brunch menu, a beautiful patio, an authentic wood-fired oven," the team at Zen Culinary said in the statement.

The not-yet-named restaurant concept will be open seven days a week for brunch, lunch and dinner and will feature wood-fired sandwiches, pizzas and burgers. It will also have a custom Bloody Mary and Sangria bar, the release said. It is expected to open sometime next year.