Joyride Taco House served its last SoCal burrito and its last round of Taco Tuesday margaritas after close on Sunday, Aug. 2. For anyone who has pedaled up to that patio at Central Avenue and Colter Street over the past decade, the closing itself isn't the surprising part. Restaurants close. What's different this time is who is moving in, and what that says about a stretch of Central Avenue that has run the same way for thirteen years.
Joyride was one of five concepts that Upward Projects, the Phoenix restaurant group behind Postino, built and kept for itself along this same short run of Central Avenue north of Camelback Road. Postino, Windsor, Federal Pizza, Churn ice cream and Joyride all sit within walking distance of each other, and until this summer, every time Upward Projects wanted to grow on this block, it grew with a concept it already owned. Joyride itself came out of that pattern. It joined the Central Avenue lineup in 2013 as a second location for a taco concept the company had first tried in Gilbert.
That pattern just ended. The space isn't going to a sixth Upward Projects brand. It's going to Lado A Lado, a wood-fired Sonoran restaurant with a coastal raw bar built by Chiwas Hospitality Group, the team behind Tacos Chiwas, Espiritu, Cocina Chiwas and Main Burger. Chefs Armando Hernandez, Nadia Holguin and Roberto Centeno have all been James Beard Award semifinalists for their kitchen work, and this fall marks their first foothold on this particular stretch of Central. Upward Projects runs its own headquarters from 5210 North Central Avenue, close enough to Joyride's old address at 5202 that the company handing over the keys can see the space from its own office windows. For a group that has spent thirteen years expanding by cloning itself, inviting an outside kitchen this close to home is a real departure.
The other end of the same street is doing the opposite kind of change
A few blocks north, at the corner of Central Avenue and Camelback Road, Uptown Plaza just marked its 70th anniversary. The mid-century shopping center has long served the surrounding Windsor Square, Medlock Place, Pierson Place and St. Francis neighborhoods, and its ownership, Levine Investments, has been reworking the tenant mix in a way that mirrors the Joyride story from the opposite direction.
Last year, Uptown Plaza brought in The Henry, the Fox Restaurant Concepts all-day cafe that had spent 14 years building a following in Arcadia before Fox decided to bring it north. The Uptown location wasn't a retrofit. Fox built it from the ground up on the footprint where an Applebee's used to sit, complete with an indoor-outdoor bar, a coffee window and a fireplace patio. Salt & Straw opened the same year. This summer, two more tenants joined the roster: Road Runner Sports, a national running and fitness retailer founded in 1983, and Let's Toast, a Korean BBQ breakfast sandwich concept opening its first brick-and-mortar location anywhere.
That pairing is the tell. Uptown Plaza isn't just filling vacancies with whichever national chain will sign a lease, and it isn't only backing proven local names either. It's doing both at once, the same way Central Avenue's restaurant row is doing both at once a few blocks south, just with the roles reversed. Down at Joyride's old spot, an established local operator is stepping back to let a rising outside group in. Up at Uptown Plaza, an established shopping center is using its national tenants, Road Runner Sports and, before it, Shake Shack and West Elm, to underwrite space for concepts that haven't proven themselves at retail scale yet, like Let's Toast.
What's actually open right now
If you're planning a walk or a bike ride down this stretch of Central this month, here's the current lineup without the backstory:
- Uptown Plaza (Central Ave & Camelback Rd): The Henry, Salt & Straw, Road Runner Sports, Let's Toast, AJ's Fine Foods, Shake Shack, Chula Seafood, Flower Child, West Elm, Manor Shoes and Urban Eyecare, among the plaza's other retail and dining tenants
- The Central Avenue restaurant cluster north of Camelback: Postino, Windsor, Federal Pizza and Churn are all still running as usual
- 5202 N. Central Ave (the old Joyride space): closed as of Aug. 2, under construction for Lado A Lado's fall opening
Nothing about the Postino or Windsor experience changes in the meantime. The shift is happening in one storefront, and it won't be finished until later this fall.
Why this is worth watching if you live here
A single restaurant closing on Central Avenue wouldn't normally be neighborhood news. What makes this one worth noticing is that it's happening at the same time, on the same street, as a change with the opposite shape at Uptown Plaza. Two different property owners, working from two different playbooks, have both landed on the same conclusion this year: the safest way to keep a stretch of Central Avenue interesting isn't to keep doing more of what already worked. It's to make room for someone new, even when that means an established local group hands its own turf to a competitor, or a national retailer subsidizes a first-time storefront next door.
For residents, the practical version of that is simple. This particular stretch of Central Avenue has become the place where Phoenix's next generation of restaurant and retail concepts gets its first real shot at scale, not just a legacy corridor being renovated for nostalgia. Lado A Lado's opening this fall and Let's Toast's debut this summer are both bets by established players on names that weren't guaranteed a spot here two years ago. If that pattern holds, the next round of change on this stretch is likely to look the same way: not a new location for something you already know, but the first location for something you don't yet.
Phoenix Living has spent a long time paying attention to how neighborhoods like this one change block by block, because the small shifts, a new tenant here, a closed storefront there, are usually the first sign of what a street is becoming. If you're curious what any of that means for the value of a home on this stretch of Central Avenue or in the surrounding Windsor Square, Medlock Place, Pierson Place or St. Francis neighborhoods, our team at Phoenix Living can walk you through it, starting with a free instant home valuation.
