Joyride's Last Call: What Changes On The Block This August

The patio on the northwest corner of Central and Colter has looked the same for thirteen summers. String lights, mesquite shade, a Midcentury building painted in colors that read as SoCal more than Sonora. On August 2, that changes. Joyride Taco House serves its last plate and then the doors close, the operators pack up, and a different restaurant group starts building something the corner has not seen before.

If you live within a ten-minute walk of that intersection, this is the swap worth understanding. Not because a taco spot is closing. Because the storefront that anchors the south end of The Block is about to trade one of Upward Projects' most casual concepts for a wood-fired Sonoran restaurant from a team with James Beard semifinalist nods. The ceiling on the corner is moving up.

The Swap, Stated Plainly

Lado A Lado is a collaboration between Chiwas Hospitality Group and Upward Projects. The name translates to "side by side" in Spanish, which is both the operating structure and the concept. Chiwas is bringing the food. Upward Projects is bringing the neighborhood-restaurant playbook they built at Postino and Windsor.

The menu will center on Sonora. Wood-fired grilling, a parrillada, a raw bar. The restaurant team has described the design language as a contrast of fire and sea, smoke and citrus. That is a different animal from what Joyride served in the same room. Joyride was tacos and margaritas in a casual pass-through format. Lado A Lado is being built as a destination dinner.

The Joyride in Gilbert stays open. The Uptown location is the only one closing.

Joyride's Farewell Math

Through August 2, Joyride is running its Taco Tuesday deal every day of the week. Tacos priced between $2.50 and $3.50, select margaritas at $6, available from 2 p.m. until close. That is the sendoff.

Two things are worth naming about the timing. First, this is a real deal rather than a marketing wave. For thirteen years Joyride has run its discount one day a week; the seven-day version has never existed before and will not exist after. Second, the patio in early August is workable in a way it is not in November. Mesquite shade, misters, an 8 p.m. table when the temperature drops out of the triple digits. Residents who have been meaning to bring out-of-town family to Joyride "one of these days" have exactly one of these days left.

The Block, With Addresses

The Central Avenue cluster between Camelback and Bethany Home is compact enough to walk in one evening. Here is what stays open after August 2 and what each space actually is, for anyone who moved to the neighborhood recently:

• Postino Central at 5144 N. Central Ave., in the former Katz Deli building. Wine list, bruschetta boards, a $25 board-and-bottle deal after 8 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays.
• Federal Pizza across Central, in the renovated First Federal Bank building designed by Al Beadle. Wood-fired pies, dine-in or a drive-thru window that most residents forget exists.
• Windsor at 5223 N. Central Ave. Gastropub format, brunch, the build-your-own bloody mary cart, the cassette-wall room.
• Churn next door to Windsor. Ice cream and a small toy shop, better as a walk-up than a destination.
• Lado A Lado, opening this fall in the former Joyride space at Central and Colter.

Five storefronts, one operator on four of them, one joint operator on the fifth once it opens. That concentration is the reason The Block functions as a walkable cluster instead of a strip.

Why Chiwas Matters On This Corner

Armando Hernandez, Nadia Holguin, and Roberto Centeno are the Chiwas founders. Their existing restaurants include Tacos Chiwas, Cocina Chiwas, Espiritu, Main Burger, Aruma Cafe, and a forthcoming tortillería in Tucson. They have been James Beard Award semifinalists more than once and have been featured on Netflix's Taco Chronicles, Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and USA Today's Restaurants of the Year list. They also contributed to Bacanora, Roland's Market, and Santo. That is not a résumé that opens a taco stand.

In the joint statement announcing the partnership, the Chiwas team framed it this way:

We've wanted to bring our flavors to North Central Phoenix for a long time, and doing it alongside partners who care about this community as much as we do makes it really special.

Upward Projects operates more than 35 restaurants across five brands, and co-founder and CEO Lauren Bailey has said the partnership grew out of informal conversations in the summer of 2025. What that means for a resident: the group with the deepest neighborhood-restaurant track record in Phoenix is handing the keys of a flagship-corner storefront to the group with the deepest Sonoran-cooking chops. Neither team is chasing scale here. Both are chasing a room that becomes a habit.

The Rest of Uptown, In Case You Forgot

The Block is a five-storefront run. Uptown Plaza, one intersection south at Central and Camelback, is a different scale of thing and runs on the same walking radius, which matters more in August than in February.

Worth knowing at Uptown Plaza: Chula Seafood at 100 E. Camelback Rd., which does grilled oysters over Noble bread, poke, and swordfish tacos. Elly's for brunch. Kream at 5102 N. Central for the specialty coffee rotation. Lou Malnati's for Chicago deep-dish. Flower Child, Shake Shack, Nekter Juice Bar, and Zookz for the toasted-sandwich format. A block west on Camelback, Changing Hands Bookstore has been a Phoenix fixture since the 1970s and runs a coffee, beer, and wine bar inside. The Velvet Buttercream and Window Coffee Bar cover the smaller bakery and espresso end.

Valley Metro's light rail runs down Central and connects The Block, Uptown Plaza, and downtown without a car. Most residents drive anyway. The people who use the rail religiously tend to be the ones who live in the historic streets between 7th Street and 7th Avenue and figured out that a Friday night on Roosevelt Row costs less than a rideshare round trip.

A Four-Week August Rotation

For anyone who lives in the corridor and wants to make the transition month count, here is a workable rhythm:

1. This week. Joyride patio, weekday, before 7 p.m. Take the Taco Tuesday pricing on any night that is not actually Tuesday. Tuesday will be crowded.
2. Next week. Pick one Uptown Plaza restaurant you have been meaning to try. Chula Seafood if you have not, because the grilled-oyster plate is not on many other Phoenix menus.
3. The Saturday before August 29. Flashlight Nights at Desert Botanical Garden runs Saturdays through August 29, 7 to 9:30 p.m. Ten minutes east of The Block. The last two weekends of the season are the ones locals actually get tables for.
4. The first Friday you have free. Roosevelt Row is a ten-minute drive south on Central. First Fridays run downtown on the first Friday of each month, and the light-rail option makes it a single-drink corridor rather than a designated-driver evening.

One caveat that only shows up if you have lived here through a July: monsoon cells in July and August routinely turn a 6 p.m. plan into a 9 p.m. plan. Build in the flex, especially for anything on a patio.

What The Corner Tells You About Central Avenue

Restaurants close in Phoenix every month. The reason this one is worth a paragraph of your attention is what is coming in behind it. When Upward Projects launched Joyride in Uptown in 2013, the corner was still testing whether The Block could hold five destinations. It could. Thirteen years later, the same operator is retiring the most casual concept in the cluster and replacing it with the most ambitious one. That is a signal about where Central Avenue thinks its ceiling is, and residents who bought in this corridor during the leaner years are the ones benefiting from the answer.

If you have been weighing what living in Uptown Phoenix looks like year to year, or thinking about how the North Central corridor fits your next move, The Ackerman Team knows this stretch of Central block by block. Reach out when you want a straight conversation about what the neighborhood is becoming and what that means for your home. Work with Arizona real estate experts.