Start from 27 curated places around Mesa, AZ, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Worth Takeaway
A bright downtown Mesa sandwich shop building craft sandwiches on local ingredients, from a morning croque madame to a serious Italian grinder. Small, community-minded, and a cut above anything you'd expect from 'a sandwich place.'
República Empanada
A boho downtown spot in a repurposed midcentury building turning out Latin American empanadas across a dozen-plus fillings, from pernil to the raisin-and-olive El Capitan. Relaxed, colorful, and unlike anything else in the area.
Trails & outdoors
Wind Cave Trail, Usery Mountain Regional Park
A moderate roughly 3-mile round trip climbing the flank of Pass Mountain to a shallow cave alcove streaked with mineral colors, with valley views opening up the whole way. The signature hike in Usery Mountain park on Mesa's northeast edge.
Pass Mountain Loop, Usery Mountain Regional Park
The hard option: a roughly 7-mile loop circling Pass Mountain through saguaro forest, with a long climb to a saddle and big views over the Valley and toward the Superstitions. Real desert mileage close to town.
Things to do
Organ Stop Pizza
A pizza hall built around the world's largest Wurlitzer theater pipe organ, over 6,000 pipes, played live every evening as the console rises out of the floor amid bubbles and flashing percussion. Gloriously over-the-top, a only-in-Mesa institution since 1972.
Mesa Arts Center
Arizona's largest arts campus, four theaters, art studios, and a contemporary art museum wrapped in a striking shaded-canyon design downtown. Hosts everything from touring concerts and dance to free rotating gallery shows.
Landmarks & sights
Mesa Arizona Temple
The 1927 LDS temple set in formal gardens with reflecting pools and palms, one of the oldest and most photographed in the West. The grounds and visitor center are open to everyone, and the gardens are a genuine green oasis in the desert.
Mesa Grande Cultural Park
The remains of a Hohokam temple mound built around 1100 AD, a massive earthen platform that anchored a community that engineered the canals this whole valley still loosely follows. A quiet, under-visited window into who was here a thousand years before the city.