A field guide to Scottsdale, written by someone who has to live with the recommendations.
I’m Matt Cheramie. Scottsdale.tips is my running notebook on this city: where to eat, where to hike, what survives the summer, and how the place came to be. Every page is written from the ground — the parking lot I actually used, the dish I actually ordered, the trailhead I was standing at before sunrise — and every one carries the date I last checked it.
Matt Cheramie
Scottsdale, Arizona • 582 pages and counting
How an entry earns its page
- 01 I go. Restaurants get eaten at, trails get hiked, gear gets left on a dashboard in July. Nothing on this site is written from a press release or a listing.
- 02 I write the version I’d tell a friend. What to order, where to park, when to skip it. The opinions are mine and they are not for sale.
- 03 I stamp it. Every guide shows a “facts checked” date. When something closes, changes hands, or stops being good, the page changes or it moves to the archive.
- 04 I keep the losses. Closed restaurants, demolished resorts, and paved-over parks stay on the site as local history, clearly marked. The city’s memory is short and I’d like this to be longer.
Most recent verification pass: September 2026.
What this site will never do
- Take money, meals, rooms, or product in exchange for coverage. No sponsored posts, no “partnerships,” no pay-to-list.
- Recommend gear I haven’t bought and used. The Amazon links earn a small commission, which is explained in full on the disclosure page. The commission never decides what gets recommended.
- Pad a list to hit a number. If a category only has four things worth your time, it has four.
- Track you. There are no accounts, no ad network, and no analytics script on this site. The only thing it remembers is your reading-depth preference, stored in your own browser.
- Pretend the desert is safe. Summer pages err on the side of scaring you, on purpose.
What’s on the site right now
Counts update with every build.
219
Restaurants
143 open tables and the legendary rooms the city has lost.
33
Resorts
Who each one is for, what it costs, and the story behind it.
50
Parks
Every city park, from the Greenbelt lakes to Pinnacle Peak, on one map.
28
Shopping
The malls, main streets and stores worth a detour, plus the lost ones.
27
Events
The social calendar, decoded — past and present.
13
Neighborhoods
What each district is actually like, and everything on this site inside it.
12
Months
What every month feels like, from the furnace to the perfect March week.
15
Decades of history
Plus 139 year pages and 27 landmark days.
5
Local spots
Verified counters, patios, and bars, with the date to prove it.
6
Gear tested
Bought with my own money, cooked in a parked truck in July.
8
Valley Notes
Long-form dispatches on desert protocol.
Three things worth knowing
- The reading-depth toggle
- Long guides open in “Overview” by default. Pick “Quick read” for the 30-second version or “Long form” for the timeline and the rabbit holes. Your choice sticks across pages.
- Open versus lost
- Anything with an era label like “1957–2015” is gone. Those pages exist as history; please don’t drive to them.
- Neighborhood boundaries
- The neighborhood guides use a local’s shorthand, not the city’s official planning areas. Several “Scottsdale” resorts are technically in Paradise Valley or Phoenix; the guides say so.
When I’m wrong
Restaurants close on Tuesdays without telling anyone, trailhead lots get repaved, and prices move. If a page is out of date, the “facts checked” stamp at the bottom tells you how stale it might be. Corrections are welcome and get folded into the next verification pass; the page date changes when they do.
Start here if you’re new: 48 hours in Scottsdale, what each month feels like, and how to get around.