Sara Crocker
Audio By Carbonatix
After 12 years as a brunch and coffee destination in uptown, Fà-me Cafe will settle into a new home this fall.
The long-running cafe will take over a former Scramble in the Biltmore neighborhood on 24th Street and Camelback Road.
Ivan and Maria O’Farrill launched Fà-me as an all-day restaurant on Central and Highland avenues in 2014. The restaurant’s name means “hungry” or “famished” in Italian and is regional slang in northern Spain.
The restaurant is a further mix of cultures. The couple blends their Spanish and Mexican roots with French techniques and American fare they’ve mastered along the way. The result is an eclectic menu made with local and organic products. Chilaquiles, French toast and Parisian-style omelets share billing with cheeseburgers, Cobb salad and croque madame.
The counter-service joint has a rustic, industrial feel with wood-clad walls and a chandelier made from a railroad tie and Edison bulbs. Above the bar, wooden crates hold sparkling wine and bags of coffee.
Of their dozen years serving customers along Central Avenue, the last few have brought a sense of uncertainty, the O’Farrills explain. They decided to look for a new space because their current strip mall has long been considered for redevelopment. Though nothing is imminent, they’ve been on one-year leases for the last two years, Ivan explains.
“We want to be here in Phoenix for the long term,” he says. “Unfortunately, as a restaurant, it’s not very easy to operate that way year to year, not knowing what the future will hold.”
Sara Crocker
More space, more food coming
When they began looking for a new space, the couple chose a three-mile radius, “just to stay as close as possible to the neighborhood that saw us grow, start and support us,” Ivan says.
The future home of Fà-me sits just within that perimeter, on the main floor of 24th at Camelback, an office complex. For eight years, the space was home to fellow brunch spot, Scramble, which exited in 2025.
The Biltmore location offers more room for diners and for the team to grow the menu. When the restaurant first opened, it offered housemade pastries and served dinner. The owners quickly shelved the evening service when they ran into parking challenges. They paused the pastry program when prep space became a premium and customers gravitated toward breakfast plates. With the move, both are coming back.
The owners hope to add butter and chocolate croissants, conchas, churros and the Mexican upside-down cupcakes, garibaldis to the sweet selections alongside the cafe’s popular banana-walnut bread. At lunch, diners will find more salads and soups.
“We like to eat fresh, we like to eat healthy and we like to do things from scratch, so we will have that on our menu,” Ivan says.
Most notably, Fà-me’s owners plan to add dinner service in 2027 — something the O’Farrills haven’t offered since the cafe’s first months in business. That menu will include some past dishes, including aguachile and tacos on house-nixtamalized corn tortillas, along with steak frites and burgers. Breakfast, lunch and brunch will remain counter-service, with tableside service for dinner.
“In the morning, we are all busy, and at night we definitely should shut down a little bit and enjoy our time at the table,” Ivan says. “If you want to sit for three hours, you should sit for three hours and enjoy your meal.”
Sara Crocker
Fà-me currently boasts a modest bookcase’s worth of market items, including local honey, artisan pantry staples and homemade granola. At Biltmore, they’ll expand the market to include grab-and-go food, beer and wine.
The Biltmore dining room will feature around 86 seats — the same as Uptown — with areas carved out for a bar and those who want to sip coffee and work. The patio will be considerably larger, with room for about 40 seats, shaded by umbrellas, and access to a sunken courtyard just a few steps from the restaurant. Diners will be able to park in an adjacent covered parking garage.
The owners have partnered with interior designer Kaitlyn Wolfe to transform the space, and they plan to bring the decor and furniture from Fà-me.
“It has to feel homey,” Maria says.
Though the cafe won’t officially move until later this year, the Fà-me team has brought a coffee cart to its new home, serving espresso drinks and banana bread from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m., to give Biltmore a taste of what’s coming.
The owners don’t yet know when they’ll shutter the uptown restaurant, but they hope to have only about a week of downtime between spaces. Leaving the building and neighborhood where Fà-me started is bittersweet for the O’Farrills, but they’re looking forward to the future.
“We’re closing this chapter, and we’re opening a new one with everybody,” Ivan says. “Everybody’s coming with, including our team, our guests, and, you know, our essence; it’s coming with us.”
Fà-me Cafe
Currently open: 4700 N. Central Ave.
Opening this fall: 2375 E. Camelback Road, #115
