The Satisfied Frog: 80-Year-Old ‘Crazy Ed’ is Back, Again

For 15 years, In&Out Magazine has been the definitive source of “Everything that’s going on” in and out of the community. We thank you, our readers, as well as the businesses that support the magazine through advertising, for that opportunity. But with little going on, and many businesses suspending or canceling their ads during the Covid-19 crisis, we are suspending publication of the magazine and web sites for the month of May. 


satisfied frog owners ‘Crazy Ed’ Chilleen and court roberts
Court Roberts with his macaw Indigo talks about the Station renovation with his new business partner, serial restaurateur ‘Crazy Ed’ Chilleen. Photos by Robert Roy Britt

A new restaurant, coming this fall to the vacant historic New River Station building on the frontage road north of Anthem, has its own colorful history stretching back five decades.

Ed Chilleen opened Crazy Ed’s restaurant in 1964 at Deer Valley Road and 19th Avenue. He opened the Horny Toad in Cave Creek in 1972… then sold it in ’74. When he returned to Cave Creek in ’82 to open another restaurant, he was pondering the name.

“Name is everything,” Chilleen said the other day. “A guy who worked for me, Buffalo Rick was his name… said, ‘If they’re the Horny Toad, we can be the Satisfied Frog.’ Man, that just lit me up.”

Then Crazy Ed, as he’s known, closed Satisfied Frog in 2007 and moved to Mexico.

“I swore I would never, ever, ever get back in the restaurant business,” he said. In 2014, he opened a Satisfied Frog in Puerto Peñasco, that’s still in business. At 80, Chilleen was recently eyeing the Station property—once a stop on the stagecoach route—but couldn’t afford the $875,000 asking price. “Might as well have been $8 million,” he said.

Court Roberts, a resident of Desert Hills and formerly Anthem, recently bought the property. Roberts, a high-energy 56-year-old who owned nightclubs in Northern California years ago, was considering converting the building to a feed store when a friend, who turned out to be Crazy Ed’s grandson, introduced the two. They clicked.

“Ed is ideal because he’s very experienced and grounding,” Roberts said.

“I’ve made all the mistakes already,” Chilleen said. “And the people who are successful are the people who’ve gone broke a couple times.”

The latest incarnation of the Satisfied Frog will feature steak, smoked barbecue, seafood, fried chicken, tacos and margaritas, with plans for outdoor seating and live music.

The Station, on the frontage road between New River and Anthem, has been many things, from a stagecoach stop in the Old West to a two-pump gas station before I-17 was a dream.
Robert Roy Britt
NoPho resident Robert Roy Britt has written for In&Out publications since its inception in 2005. Britt began his journalism career in New Jersey newspapers in the early 1990s. He later became a science writer and was editor-in-chief of the online media sites Space.com and Live Science. He has written four novels. .

Robert Roy Britt

NoPho resident Robert Roy Britt has written for In&Out publications since its inception in 2005. Britt began his journalism career in New Jersey newspapers in the early 1990s. He later became a science writer and was editor-in-chief of the online media sites Space.com and Live Science. He has written four novels. .

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