Summary: warm greeting, excellent service, adequate wine list, good food. Nice night; we'll be back.
Agree with recent Yelper - Sean does a great job. Good balance of casual, friendly and professional service.
Restaurant has a clean, very contemporary although slightly stark design. It's slightly loud in the dining room, owing to the design I think as there weren't many people there yet.
Started with cactus quesadillas - very tasty. Served with a cactus crème fraîche, interesting but a bit sweet.
She had the NY strip. Was cooked perfectly to order and we both agreed was very flavorful, although we've had slightly more tender renditions (to be fair, our go-to steak is a ribeye).
I had the duck, also cooked exactly to order. Duck came with leek crepes as the starch; interesting. The duck was very good, could have been killer with a more substantial sauce.
Had the "Ahnala Pie" for dessert, thick chocolate crumb crust, topped with a layer of chocolate then coffee gelato, drizzled with caramel, very nicely presented. Some of these types of desserts can be intolerable sugar bombs; this one, although sweet, was worth the calories.
All about $120 incl tip and $30 of wine. I was satisfied with the value.
Happy to have eaten here. We've put Ahnala on our list of only 2-3 "nice" restaurants in Fountain Hills (a very tough market since 1/3 of the locals pack up and leave for half the year, and it's too far for most to drive from the valley).