The new restaurant will replace Full Speed Chicken & Ribs on Roosevelt Street between Fourth and Fifth streets.
“I feel like there’s such a need for scratch kitchen, homemade, counter service restaurants,” Rocco says.
The restaurant offers what his father Ricky Raschillo describes as the greatest hits of his decades-long culinary career, with fan-favorite specialty burgers and crinkle-cut fries at the center of this all-day eatery.
The senior Raschillo started the concept as a food truck in Chicago in 2018, and “it blew up,” Ricky says. “The menu comes from over 25 different restaurants – all my menus put into one.”
The wall above the booths in the dining room features the restaurant's precursor food truck.
Sara Crocker
“It was just me and him there every day for the first three years before we wanted to venture off and do another one,” Rocco says.
The Roosevelt Row location of Culinary Gangster will serve much of what diners can find at the Scottsdale outpost. Plus, the Phoenix location will boast a full bar (in Scottsdale, Culinary Gangster is BYOB).
Culinary Gangster’s menu starts with breakfast burritos and protein bowls loaded with eggs, roasted sweet potatoes and cherry tomatoes, sauteed spinach, red onion, avocado and feta. Diners can also choose from lighter salads and quinoa bowls, as well as wraps and starters that include a tempura cauliflower with Sriracha aioli.
“We’re a scratch kitchen, so we make everything in-house,” Rocco says.
Culinary Gangster’s signature offering is its 8-ounce burgers, including regularly rotating specials. Among the restaurant’s most popular options is the Spicy Gangster Burger, which is layered with heat from jalapenos, habanero sauce and a sweet chili sauce.
“I love our burger. I put our burger up against anyone,” Rocco says.
Culinary Gangster’s Chi Town Burger, meanwhile, is an homage to McDonald’s Big Mac. It’s made with two beef patties, white American cheese, secret sauce, red onion, lettuce and pickles. Order a burger with a side of crinkle-cut fries, or have them dressed up with gyro, tzatziki, cheese sauce, cucumbers, tomatoes and red onion.
The restaurant also serves carnival-worthy funnel cake fries and an Oreo churro – a chocolate churro made with Oreo cookies and stuffed with an Oreo creme.
Though this is Rocco’s first restaurant and the Valley’s second Culinary Gangster, there are six franchise locations around the country, Ricky says, with plans to add more.
“So far, everybody who comes on vacation (to Scottsdale), that’s who’s bought franchises,” he says.
Culinary Gangster
Opens July 1513 E. Roosevelt St.
