Mariscos El Dorado Sinaloa reopens, blending family tradition with modern flair

Mariscos El Dorado Sinaloa in South Phoenix celebrated its grand reopening on Feb. 8 after a three-month transformation of its 9,000-square-foot restaurant and live music venue. The revitalized space offers an even more vibrant dining experience, blending traditional flavors with an energetic atmosphere.

The grand reopening festivities included a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a captivating charrería performance, choreographed dancing horses and a live band. Carlos Cardenas, founder of the restaurant and the creator of most of its 120-or-so menu items, does nothing in half-measures.

His fresh, imported seafood, behemoth sushi rolls and sizzling carne asada all draw inspiration from his home state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico. There, a 650-mile Pacific coastline and the inland Sierra Madre Occidental mountains cradle vast farmlands. The restaurant's eclectic menu reflects that surf-and-turf diversity.

You can enjoy juicy ribeye steaks paired with lobster tails or shrimp, served alongside vibrant vegetables and their signature sweet potato puree, or try the go-to ribeye aguachile, a dish featuring grilled steak slices topped with shrimp flash-marinated in lime juice.

One dish Cardenas brought from his home state to metro Phoenix is the popular $37 Torre de Mariscos El Dorado. It’s a seafood tower on a plate, a fusion of aguachile, octopus, tuna, crab, El Dorado-style cooked shrimp and the secret house sauce topped with sliced avocado and garnished with cucumber. Diners can share this feast with tostadas and tortilla chips.

Like many of the dishes on the menu, Cardenas first dreamed it up while driving.

"My dad just has a lot of ideas,” his daughter Yamilex Aranda says. “He'll randomly come in and start putting things together. Sometimes it works. Other times, we're like, 'I don't know about that one.'"

Other menu items, like the Kate del Castillo tostada — a $23 platter of crab meat, snail, octopus, shrimp ceviche, cooked shrimp, aquachile, scallops and avocado slices, named for the popular Mexican and American actress — are holdovers from the family’s formative days of running a food truck. Those humble years allowed Cardenas and his wife, Minerva Aranda, to pay for Yamilex's college education — and to hone their vision for the future.

As their daughter finished high school at ASU Prep South Phoenix in 2015, Cardenas and Aranda assured Yamilex they'd help her pursue her degree at Arizona State University. The snag, as is the case for so many families, was money.

"None of us knew where to start," Yamilex says. "We assumed college would cost around $100,000, which felt impossible. My dad, remembering my grandfather’s experience selling mariscos in Mexico, suggested we follow that path also — using our family recipes to start something of our own."

Cardenas and Aranda prepared food at their south Phoenix home, then Cardenas set up a pop-up in front of businesses around town where he sold molcajetes and ceviche. They saved and bought a food truck. Parked in front of an auto repair shop on Seventh Street and Broadway Road, they gradually built a reputation for making fantastically involved Sinaloan dishes.

For instance, their signature Molcajete El Dorado — grilled shrimp, fish, octopus, cooked shrimp and chicken in red or green sauce, embellished with cactus paddle, Anaheim pepper, cheese and caramelized onion — has been a mainstay of their menu for a decade and counting.

When Yamilex showed off the new renovations on Facebook Live, viewers commented that they still remember the food truck molcajetes. Some of those early customers attended the grand reopening.

"It was a full-circle moment from the food truck," she says.

Even in those days, their current South Central Avenue location caught Cardenas' eye as he shuttled his kids to school or picked up ingredients.

"Originally, it was a McDonald’s, then other Mexican restaurants, and then it was a cafe,” Cardenas says. “I always used to say, ‘One day, we will open a restaurant here.'"

The family took it over in 2018. In 2019, Aranda graduated from ASU with a political science degree and the business was thriving.

Then, another snag. A light rail expansion project along their street put the business through years of construction hassles that disrupted traffic and parking. At the time, Cardenas told Phoenix New Times that he feared he'd have to shut down and lay off some 20 employees.

“They're not thinking about the businesses,” he said then of the city's project. “They don't care who they're going to destroy.”

As construction dragged on, the pandemic hit. Luckily, the restaurant had a drive-thru window from the old McDonald’s days. The family got by on take-out orders and by spacing their dining room tables six feet apart, with plastic walls between them. In 2020, the family opened a second mariscos location in Glendale.

After the statewide restrictions were lifted, business picked up, but the family held back on building out the South Phoenix location until last year, when the light rail construction let up.

Over the past three months, Cardenas commissioned a Frida Kahlo-style mural from an artist in Mexico, decorated the walls with hanging flowers and installed splash-paint wallpaper with gold accents that catch the light shining through the lamp covers from Guadalajara.

Overhead, you'll notice exposed beams, pipes and shiny fittings. The heavy iron exit doors are airbrushed to make them appear distorted, like set pieces from a Tim Burton movie. Slatwall behind the bar ties it all together, adding a subtle Japanese vibe as a nod to the cornucopia of sushi on offer.

A playful, maximalist seafood menu

On the Rollos de Sushi sub-menu, there’s a gamut of Mexican-Japanese fusion treats.

The Kardashian’s Roll comes with shrimp, avocado, Philadelphia cheese, tuna,  salmon and Tampico crab salad, all topped with sesame, more avocado and chipotle and eel sauce. You'll find a similar lack of restraint in the El Dorado roll. It's a baked and breaded roll filled with shrimp, crab salad, avocado and cream cheese, with a shell of crab salad, shrimp and mozzarella. The whole concoction is doused in chipotle and tangy eel sauce and a flurry of sesame seeds.