On the evening of September 16, the robata grill at Kuza was lit for the first time, right in the middle of the room, the way it's supposed to be. A few doors down, valets were already waving cars into The Americano, and below that dining room, past a side door that still looks like it doesn't belong to anything, Tell Your Friends was pouring the same Gatsby-era cocktail list it's poured since 2024. Three restaurants, one operator, one short stretch of Scottsdale Road near Mayo Boulevard. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's a pattern, and it says more about where North Scottsdale is eating than any single opening could.
One group, three doors
Kuza is the sixth restaurant from Clive Collective, the hospitality group founded by Justin Massei and Mikis Troyan, and it's the third concept the group has planted on this particular stretch of Scottsdale Road. The Americano opened here first, an Italian-inspired steakhouse with a supper-club feel, fine-aged steaks, and a wine list built around Italian and American labels. Tell Your Friends followed in 2024, a 52-seat speakeasy tucked beneath The Americano and reached through a side door with no sign, built around a Gatsby-meets-Miami theme and a classics-driven cocktail list. Kuza is the newest addition, taking over the space that used to be Chauncey Social at 17767 N. Scottsdale Road, Suite 100.
Three concepts from the same group on the same stretch isn't how most restaurant rows get built. Usually you get one operator per address, each competing for the same reservation on a Friday night. Here, Clive Collective has effectively built a vertical night out: dinner, a nightcap, and now a second dinner option, all within a short walk of each other. That's a bet on the corridor itself, not just on any one concept succeeding inside it.
What Kuza actually is
Kuza centers on an open robata grill, the Japanese method of cooking over charcoal in full view of the room, paired with a seasonal sushi program and a cocktail list built to match. Executive Chef Erik Davila runs the kitchen. He spent 16 years working around the Valley, most recently as executive chef at Sandfish Sushi & Whiskey, so the sushi program here isn't a side project for him.
The menu leans into the theater of the grill: chicken negima skewers glazed and turned over charcoal until the sauce caramelizes, market robata prawns finished with a red kosho-yuzu glaze and house-smoked sea salt. Kuza is open Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 11 p.m., with the kitchen running its full menu until 11 on Fridays and Saturdays and until 10 the rest of the week. Reservations are already live on OpenTable.
Mikis Troyan described the concept as built around live fire and a room that keeps building energy as the night goes on, which tracks with how the space is laid out. The grill sits at the center of the room rather than tucked into a back kitchen, so the cooking is part of the seating chart, not separate from it.
The Americano wasn't standing still either
What makes the timing more interesting is that The Americano itself changed hands operationally just months before Kuza's opening. In January 2026, Clive Collective took over day-to-day leadership of The Americano, which had been running as an Italian-inspired steakhouse since 2020. The shift brought a refreshed menu built around lighter, more shareable dishes, along with pricing adjustments meant to make the restaurant work for a Tuesday dinner and not just an anniversary. Troyan framed it as keeping what people already liked about the restaurant while making it feel more connected to the people who actually live near it, rather than repositioning it into something new.
That's worth sitting with. A restaurant that had already built a following as a special-occasion steakhouse got nudged toward becoming a neighborhood spot in the same stretch of months that its own operator opened a second dinner option a few doors away. Restaurant groups don't usually retool an existing success unless they're also thinking about what else they're building around it.
Three miles south, the same bet
Two days after Kuza opened, on September 18, Vecina opened its second location in McCormick Ranch, in the building that used to house Z'Tejas at the northwest corner of Hayden Road and Via de Ventura. Vecina isn't part of Clive Collective. It's a separate Latin-inspired concept that was James Beard nominated for Best New Restaurant back in 2020, and this new space is roughly three times the size of its original Arcadia location, with room for a mezzanine, private dining, and a patio that looks out over the lake. Chef James Fox brought over the dishes that built the restaurant's following in Arcadia, including the karaage marinated in a carne asada blend and the Faroe Island salmon tacos with yuzu kosho aioli and Cara Cara oranges.
Two independent, chef-driven restaurants opening within 48 hours of each other on the same corridor, run by two entirely different groups, is not something either operator planned around the other's calendar. It happened because both groups looked at the same stretch of road and came to the same conclusion at roughly the same time.
What this actually changes on a Wednesday night
For anyone who already lives near this stretch of Scottsdale Road, the practical shift is simple. There are now three distinct plans available within walking distance of each other where there used to be one.
- Dinner at The Americano, now built around shareable plates rather than a full steakhouse commitment, with drinks after at Tell Your Friends underneath it
- A full robata dinner at Kuza, reservation-only through OpenTable, with the kitchen running until 10 or 11 depending on the night
- A drive down to McCormick Ranch for Vecina, a bigger room than the Arcadia original with lake views from the patio
None of these require picking a single destination and building the whole evening around it. A Friday could start at Kuza and end underneath The Americano without moving the car. That kind of layering is what a real restaurant row looks like, and it's different from three restaurants that happen to share a zip code.
The corridor isn't finished changing. Clive Collective has other concepts in various stages elsewhere in the Valley, and a group that just retooled an existing restaurant while opening a new one next door tends to keep building rather than stop. For now, the stretch of Scottsdale Road near Mayo Boulevard has gone from a place with one good steakhouse to a place with an actual decision to make on a Wednesday night, which is its own kind of upgrade.
If you're already keeping a running list of what's new on this stretch of Scottsdale Road, or you want someone who tracks this corridor as closely as the restaurant groups do, Kevin Owens (ARC Partners) is a North Scottsdale native who pays attention to this kind of detail for a living. Make a Move when you're ready, even if it's just to a table at Kuza.
