"Happy to be back in the Melrose neighborhood, which is probably my favorite neighborhood that we've ever been in."
That's Terry Bortin, co-founder of America's Taco Shop, talking to Axios Phoenix this June about a return that took twelve years to happen. Bortin and his partner America Corrales opened the original taco shop on 7th Street north of McDowell Road back in 2008, then expanded into the Melrose District, Tempe and Old Town Scottsdale. Rising rents picked off every location except Old Town over the following years, and Melrose lost its outpost in 2014. This summer, America's Taco Shop reopened at 4306 N. 7th Avenue, in the space that most recently held Melrose Kitchen.
Anyone who has watched 7th Avenue's storefronts change hands over the last decade knows this stretch never sits still for long. But most of the churn runs one direction: a concept opens, struggles against the same cost pressures that have always defined this corridor, and closes to make room for whatever comes next. What happened this year runs the other way. A business that got pushed out came back and reclaimed a piece of the same half mile it used to call home.
Two Openings, Same Half Mile, Different Stories
If you've been on 7th Avenue at all this year, you've probably heard more about the other new name: Brasserie Melrose. The French-style bakery and brasserie took over the former Belly Kitchen & Bar space at 4971 N. 7th Avenue, right at the corner of Camelback Road, opening in December 2025. Owners James Lenhart and chef Tory Johnson built the two-story midcentury building into a full-day operation, an espresso counter and open kitchen downstairs, a 13-seat bar and a second-story patio wrapped in black and white striped drapes upstairs. By August, Phoenix New Times had already named it to its list of the city's top 50 restaurants for 2025 to 2026 and nominated it for Best New Restaurant and Best Bakery in the paper's annual readers' poll, a fast climb for a place not yet a year old, according to Hoodline's coverage of the opening.
Brasserie Melrose is the kind of story 7th Avenue tells often: a new operator takes a corner that didn't quite work for the last tenant and makes it work. Belly Kitchen & Bar, the Southeast Asian fusion spot that had occupied the same building since late 2020, closed its Phoenix location in October 2024. Someone else moved in, tried something different, and it's working. That's the corridor's normal rhythm.
America's Taco Shop breaks that rhythm. It isn't a new operator testing a corner. It's the same two people who left more than a decade ago, coming back to a street a few blocks south of where they used to be, at limited hours for now with plans to expand once they're settled. The pattern most residents have gotten used to on 7th Avenue is turnover. What happened this year, at least once, was return.
What Never Left While the Storefronts Changed
None of this turnover touches the handful of businesses that have anchored 7th Avenue long enough that their addresses barely register as news anymore. Fry Bread House has served Tohono O'odham comfort food from the same stretch since 1992, and its menu earned a James Beard America's Classics award in 2012, the first time a Native American restaurant had won it, according to Visit Phoenix's rundown of the district. Charlie's Phoenix has been open since 1984 and still serves as headquarters for the Arizona Gay Rodeo every February.
A short list of names that have outlasted several rounds of turnover around them:
- Stacy's @ Melrose, often described as the closest thing 7th Avenue has to a neighborhood living room, with rotating events for different segments of its regular crowd
- The Rock, north of Indian School Road, running weekly karaoke, drag shows and dart tournaments
- Charlie's Phoenix, open since 1984 and home base for the Arizona Gay Rodeo each February
- Boycott Bar, one of the few lesbian-owned and operated bars in the country, open since 2017
- Thunderbird Lounge, part arcade bar, part hidden patio, running DJs and live sets
- Fry Bread House, serving since 1992 and still the corridor's only James Beard America's Classics winner
These businesses are the fixed points residents navigate around while the storefronts between them change names every few years. The corridor itself has a name for its own shape: locals call the stretch between Indian School Road and Camelback the Melrose Curve, a nod to a street misalignment that bent 7th Avenue slightly off the city's grid decades ago. The Seventh Avenue Merchants Association, which has run the district's annual street fair and decorative lighting for years, describes its mission as supporting that mix of longtime merchants and the neighborhoods around them. One of Phoenix's two rainbow crosswalks sits at 7th Avenue and Glenrosa, a few blocks from both new openings, marking a concentration of LGBTQ+-owned and allied businesses that has defined this stretch for years.
Reading the Turnover Correctly
It would be easy to read Brasserie Melrose and America's Taco Shop as two items on the same list, two more openings in a district that always has a few. But they answer different questions about how this corridor actually works. Brasserie Melrose tells you that a struggling address can still find its footing with the right concept and the right timing. America's Taco Shop tells you something rarer: that leaving 7th Avenue over rent doesn't have to be permanent, and that whatever drew Bortin and Corrales here in 2008 was strong enough to pull them back more than a decade later, even with limited hours and a smaller footprint than before.
For residents who've watched this stretch cycle through tenants for years, that distinction is worth holding onto. The churn isn't random. Some of it circles back.
A Practical Note for a Fall Weekend
If you're mapping out where to eat next time you're on 7th Avenue, the range now runs from Brasserie Melrose's morning pastry counter, open Wednesday through Sunday starting at 7:30 a.m., to America's Taco Shop's carne asada burritos a few blocks south, with Fry Bread House's James Beard-recognized menu and Charlie's Phoenix's Friday night karaoke holding down the ends of the corridor the way they always have. None of that requires planning around a festival or a seasonal light display. It's just what's open on 7th Avenue right now, on an ordinary Saturday.
If the mix of what's staying put and what's coming back on 7th Avenue has you curious about what a home near the Curve is actually worth these days, Russell Harris can walk you through it, no pressure, just a straight answer.
