Why he matters
Aaron May is the chef most Scottsdale residents have eaten from without knowing his name. He started Over Easy, the breakfast place whose waffle dogs and crisp hash browns got it onto Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and turned it into a chain of about twenty. Then, through the 2010s, he became one of Old Town’s busiest operators, opening and flipping bars and restaurants at a pace few chefs try: a gastropub in the old Mabel Murphy’s, a beer cafe on First Street, a cabin-themed burger bar, and the wood-paneled tavern that is still on Stetson Drive.
He is also a cook first, a Scottsdale-trained chef with a Paris finishing school on his résumé and years as a Guy’s Grocery Games judge. The restaurants changed hands; the cooking reputation stuck.
Where to find his mark today
Over Easy. The Scottsdale location at the Ancala corner, 11162 N Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. He founded the chain but is now a minority partner.
Goodwood Tavern. The dim pub at 7330 E Stetson Dr in Old Town that he and his partners made out of Shotgun Betty’s.
The ghosts. Mabel Murphy’s corner on Main Street, where his Mabel’s on Main ran from 2010 to 2014, and the Pischke’s corner on First Street, now Bootleggers, where he ran Iruña and then Praying Monk.
A Scottsdale-trained chef
May started working the pantry of a Chicago steakhouse at 15, dropped out of political science at the University of Arizona, and was in Scottsdale Community College’s culinary arts program by 20. A year at L’Ecole Ritz Escoffier in Paris followed. His first professional job was at the Four Seasons in north Scottsdale; then he went to Deseo at the Westin Kierland to cook for Douglas Rodriguez, followed Rodriguez to Manhattan for about two more years, and finished at Mario Batali’s Casa Mono.
He came home to open Sol y Sombra, a Spanish tapas restaurant at DC Ranch, in 2006. New Times named it the Valley’s best tapas restaurant that year. It closed after he and DC Ranch’s developer could not agree on a new lease, and a more casual Spanish place, Iruña, followed in Old Town in the space that had been Pischke’s.
The Old Town years
Over Easy opened in Arcadia on December 31, 2007, a concept he developed with his father, Brad, and came to north Scottsdale about a year later. Then came the bars. Mabel’s on Main opened quietly at the end of January 2010 in the old Mabel Murphy’s, a gastropub with braised pork belly and deviled eggs with caviar, and he sold it in August 2014 to Genuine Concepts, which turned it into The Beverly. Praying Monk, a beer cafe on First Street, ran from May 2012 to October 2013. The Lodge, the Sasquatch Burger cabin he ran with partner Quinn Goldsberry, closed in Scottsdale in November 2014 and moved to Tempe, and that same month he and his partners bought Shotgun Betty’s on Stetson Drive, which became Goodwood Tavern.
The full story
By 2012 May and Goldsberry ran their restaurants through a company called Eatwell and Drinkalott, and Phoenix New Times listed his places that year as Over Easy, The Lodge, Mabel’s on Main, May’s Counter in Tucson, Praying Monk in Scottsdale and Renegade Tap + Kitchen, with Sol y Sombra, Autostrada, Vitamin T and Iruña already closed. He was named to the Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame as Chef Extraordinaire in 2010.
Over Easy grew past him. It added Gilbert and Mesa by 2013 and a Tempe location at The Yard in 2015, which closed after about seven months, and by February 2016 May had sold his majority stake and stayed on as a minor partner. By 2020 Valley locations were being run by other partners, and as of October 2026 the chain’s own site lists about twenty restaurants, mostly in Arizona and now one in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
His television career ran in parallel. He has judged Guy’s Grocery Games since 2013 and Guy’s Ranch Kitchen since 2017, and in 2026 appeared on Food Network’s Top 10 and as a judge on Flavortown Food Fight. Food Network’s bio describes him as executive chef and culinary director at Bullseye Event Group, cooking at big sports and music events, while still overseeing The Lodge and Goodwood Tavern.
A note on what this page leaves out. Several websites publish birth dates, family details and even obituaries for Aaron May that contradict one another and that no reliable outlet supports; the chef was on Food Network in 2026. This page uses only reporting from Phoenix New Times, Food Network and his restaurants, and gives no birth year.