Sedona for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Sedona eats early and eats outside. The town sits at the mouth of Oak Creek Canyon, and the restaurants that matter here have learned to work around a landscape that pulls the light through the dining room and empties the streets by 21:00. The list below is 12 places worth a table on AZ-89A and the 179 corridor, from a 06:00 diner counter to a steakhouse that stays open on a Sedona schedule. It skews to the west side of 89A, in the 86336 postal area, because that is where most of the town's independent kitchens have settled. You will find a Thai kitchen that treats its own website like a promise, a pizzeria that keeps late hours on the weekend, and a raw-and-organic cafe that runs its own hours around the ChocolaTree calendar. Skip the chain-branded patios along the highway; the locals eat where the phone still gets answered, and every venue below prints its number on the door.