Does this Valley restaurant have the best pizza in town?
‘Bachelor’ finds his favorite at Frasher’s
Former “Bachelor” lead and pizza connoisseur Clayton Echard’s search for seriously good pizza in the Phoenix area is over.
The 29-year-old online personal training coach, who moved to Scottsdale after filming “The Bachelor” in 2021 and made a permanent home there last year, had been scouring metro Phoenix for a slice that rivaled his favorite pizza place back home in St. Louis, Missouri.
Turns out, it was waiting to be discovered at Frasher’s Smokehouse — at Indian School Road and 32nd Street in Phoenix — this whole time.
“It’s the best pizza in Scottsdale. I found it finally, my gosh,” Echard said in a Feb. 15 Instagram Story. “I’ve been looking for a St. Louis-style pizza. This place called Frasher’s — it’s St. Louisstyle
pizza with the Provel cheese you can only really find in St. Louis and now here. So super pumped.”
The restaurant is technically in Phoenix, since it’s west of the Scottsdale border at 64th Street.
Apparently, leftovers from Frasher’s hold up. Echard took a “morning after” slice out of the fridge and showed it off to his 281,000 followers before taking a bite.
“10 out of 10, baby!” he said.
What is Frasher’s Smokehouse?
Owner George Frasher, who also hails from St. Louis, ran Frasher’s Steakhouse and Lounge for more than 15 years in south Scottsdale before closing that to open Frasher’s Smokehouse in 2015. He opened Frasher’s Tavern in Scottsdale at the beginning of 2020 as a reincarnation of the former steakhouse,
The Arizona Republic reported that year.
Frasher told The Republic in 2019 that pizza accounted for a quarter of all sales at his previous steakhouse. His mother would send Imo’s pizza crust and Provel cheese from St. Louis to keep Frasher’s Arizona fan base happy.
“It’s been a staple on my menu for 20 years,” Frasher said. “It’s pizza that I grew up on as a kid.”
Though Frasher’s might be Echard’s personal favorite, it didn’t make the most recent list of the country’s top 100 pizza spots. Yelp’s ranking, released at the end of January, included My Slice of the Pie Pizzeria, Base Pizzeria and Pizza A Metro in Phoenix as well as Pizzeria Bocce in Cottonwood.