When Colleen Seekins was a little girl, the restaurant at the top of the Hyatt Regency Phoenix seemed mythical.
At the time, Seekins sang in a barbershop quartet group that performed at the hotel year after year. Above them was The Compass, the revolving restaurant that slowly offered diners 360-views of her desert city.
“I always wanted to go to the spinning restaurant on the top,” she remembered. One year, she finally got a peek inside. “It’s weirdly a core memory.”
Years later, when Seekins was dating her now-husband Alec, she told him that story. He remembered. So, when it came time to propose, he knew exactly where to take her.
After a memorable moment the Compass staff switched the restaurant’s music to her favorite song and a server arrived at the table with a viewfinder. This was all part of Alec’s elaborate plan, and he dropped to one knee. The restaurant even sent over Champagne and dessert.
For a restaurant that literally never stops moving, The Compass has a remarkable talent for becoming a fixed point in people’s memories. That may be the true reason generations of guests return through life’s celebrations, and the best part of the story behind its 50th year.
Hyatt Regency Phoenix and its famous revolving rooftop space celebrated a golden anniversary in 2026. The early Compass experience looked very different from the one diners know today. Chef de Cuisine Mike Swift says the space began as a Playboy-inspired cocktail lounge with an all-female staff that was trained by an actual Playboy Bunny before evolving into a restaurant a few years later.
By the 1970s and ’80s, dinner meant the kind of opulent fine dining that defined the era, including prime rib, dessert carts, and generous portions. Yet, ask Swift what has survived all those changes and he doesn’t start with the food.
“Tradition and celebrating are a big part of Compass’s identity,” he said, adding that he regularly hears from diners who have been returning for decades. Some celebrate an anniversary there every year. Others come back to the place where they proposed. “You often have people say, ‘My grandma took me here, so I’m trying to take my kids here and continue that tradition.’”
The view definitely creates those kinds of memories. From the 24th floor, the dining room completes its slow rotation around a downtown that has spent the past five decades changing beneath it. The Compass remains Arizona’s only revolving rooftop restaurant.
The rotation also creates a few strange problems that the staff are willing to work around for the effect. For example, because the dining room floor is continually moving, Swift says plumbing cannot simply rotate with it, complicating plans to add a bar to the space.
Food runners have another issue: the table they are looking for may no longer be where they left it. To help with the latter conundrum, small numbered markers around the room help staff keep their bearings. The restaurant can also play a trick on anyone returning from the restroom to discover that their table has, quite literally, moved.
The room may move slowly, but the kitchen has recently taken a quick turn. Swift launched a new small-plates-focused menu this summer, a dramatic departure from the hulking prime rib dinners associated with an earlier era.
“Small plates are inherently antithetical to the opulent, large portions of yesteryear,” he explained.
His larger idea takes inspiration from the restaurant itself. Compass offers a visage of Phoenix and the surrounding areas as whole, so Swift wanted the food to do the same. Arizona ingredients provide the starting point, then dishes borrow techniques and flavors from around the world.
“We’re looking out in every direction, and we’re using cuisines from all over the world to showcase these Arizona flavors and ingredients,” he said.
That philosophy now officially appears on the menu. Spaghetti al Limone pairs Sonoran Pasta Company spaghetti with Meyer lemon and chiltepin. A K4 Ranches Hanger Steak comes with ají verde, crispy tepary beans, Grana Padano, and lime. Swift’s Compass Wedge riffs on the steakhouse staple with smoked buttermilk dressing, green chile, and pickled I’itoi onion.
One of the most fitting dishes may be dessert. We’re talking Baked Alaska, a name that would have been perfectly at home during Compass’s earlier fine-dining years and is on the current menu again. This time, it arrives with passionfruit sorbet, yuzu cake, and brown sugar oat crumble.
The past, apparently, has a way of rotating back into view.
Swift hopes the room itself eventually does something similar. The team has discussed warming up the interior and restoring some of the historical context longtime diners may remember. Old placards once helped guests identify what they were seeing outside the windows. Swift would like to revisit that idea with archival photographs showing how radically the landscape has changed.
After all, The Compass has spent five decades watching Phoenix fill in around it while the people at its tables have been growing up, getting engaged, celebrating anniversaries, and eventually bringing another generation upstairs.
Colleen Seekins’ story spans only a small portion of those 50 years, yet it captures why the restaurant has lasted. A little girl once looked toward the top of the Hyatt and wondered what it would be like to eat in the spinning restaurant. Someone she loved remembered. Years later, one of the biggest nights of her life happened during one of its turns.
The skyline keeps changing, but some memories manage to stay exactly where they are, like this true Phoenix landmark.
Visit The Compass Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 11 p.m. 122 N. 2nd St., Phoenix, thecompassarizona.com
