A new wine bar is slated to open on North Sixth Avenue by the end of September, around the corner from Crooked Tooth Brewing and up the street from Tap & Bottle.
The Royal Room will hold court at 450 N. Sixth Ave. in an area north of downtown that is quickly becoming a hub for food and drink beyond the East Congress Street and North Fourth Avenue corridors.
The space, which will be in the same building as the nonprofit PSA Art Awakenings, will offer a rotating list of wines from around the world, including a healthy selection from Arizona, that will be available by the glass or in flights.
“We want to help start the conversation about wine in Tucson,” said Royal Room co-owner Ian Stupar, who owns two Pita Jungle franchises in the Phoenix area with his business partners. “It seemed like an exciting time and opportunity to do something like this. We wanted to add to the community.”
Stupar is a graduate of the Scottsdale Culinary Institute. In recent years he has shifted his focus to wine, enrolling in the University of California-Davis viticulture and enology program and most recently serving as an intern for Dos Cabezas Wineworks in Sonoita.
“I moved down here to be closer to that stuff,” Stupar said.
In addition to wine, the Royal Room will feature craft beer options and a food menu that will include items meant to complement the wines being offered — things like charcuterie plates, house sandwiches and bruschetta.
“The menu will be small, but there will be the option to build your own with a lot of the items, so you’ll have variety,” Stupar said.
Sizing up at 1,500 square feet, the Royal Room will be the latest addition to the area, which already has Tap & Bottle, Crooked Tooth, Exo Roast Co. and soon Anello, a pizza spot from Scott Girod, a protégé of Phoenix-based pizza guru Chris Bianco.
“If you want a different pace and feel from Fourth Avenue or Congress, we will be right down the street,” Stupar said.
Follow the Royal Room’s progress at facebook.com/theroyalroomtucson.
