Why he matters
For two decades, eating Beau MacMillan’s cooking meant driving up the side of Camelback Mountain. He ran the kitchen at Sanctuary from 1998, and elements, its cliffside dining room, became the Valley’s best-known view table partly because of the chef in it. In 2006 he went to New York and beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America, and for the next fifteen years he was the closest thing Scottsdale had to a resident TV chef: Food Network appearances, charity dinners, and a long-running reputation for produce-first cooking with Asian accents.
What makes him worth a profile now is the second act. In 2022 he came down the mountain and became a restaurateur, and as of October 2026 he is the culinary partner in Clive Collective, the Scottsdale group behind several of the city’s busiest rooms. If someone asks you who is behind CALA or the speakeasy under The Americano, the answer is the same man.
Where to find his mark today
elements. The room that made him, still open at Sanctuary, still facing the Paradise Valley sunset.
CALA. The coastal-Mediterranean restaurant at Senna House on Camelback Road, opened 2022.
The Americano and Tell Your Friends. The north Scottsdale Italian steakhouse he took over in 2024 and the jazz lounge two flights below it.
The mountain years and the TV years
MacMillan arrived with a hotel cook’s résumé: Johnson & Wales, then the Hotel Bel-Air and Shutters on the Beach in Los Angeles. Sanctuary hired him as executive chef in 1998, when the resort was still being remade from the old Ranch on Camelback, and elements became the place where he worked out a style: seasonal American food, clean and bright, with Asian technique doing the work that butter does in other kitchens.
Television followed the food. Food Network’s people met him at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic in 2005, and in March 2006 he faced Bobby Flay in Battle American Kobe Beef on Iron Chef America and won. In 2010 he co-hosted the first season of Worst Cooks in America with Anne Burrell, and in 2011 he went out in the fourth episode of The Next Iron Chef. He has since been a regular in Guy Fieri’s lineup, as a judge on Guy’s Grocery Games among others. None of it moved him out of Arizona, which is the part locals remember.
The restaurateur years
In January 2022 Phoenix Magazine reported that he had resigned as Sanctuary’s executive chef, handing the kitchen to longtime banquet chef Landon Post. Later that year he opened CALA with Mikis Troyan and Justin Massei of Clive Collective, a 5,000-square-foot room at the new Senna House on the site of the old Don & Charlie’s.
The group grew quickly. In May 2024 Creation Hospitality, which owns The Americano, announced that Scott Conant was stepping away and that MacMillan would take over its kitchens; the same month Tell Your Friends, a Clive and Creation joint venture, opened beneath it. Neon Spur, a 1970s cowboy dive on Mill Avenue in Tempe with his burgers-and-comfort-food menu, opened in January 2025. For the 2020s Scottsdale he is less a chef in a kitchen than the name on the menu at half a dozen rooms, with cooks he trained, like CALA’s executive chef Clinton Lomayma, running the lines.
The full story
Beau MacMillan was born in Maine on March 4, 1971. He started cooking at 16 at the Crane Brook Tea Room in Carver, Massachusetts, went on to Johnson & Wales, worked his way to sous chef at La Vieille Maison in Boca Raton, then cooked at the Hotel Bel-Air and at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica.
In 1998 Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain hired him as executive chef. The resort’s cliffside restaurant, elements, which this site dates to 2001, is where, over two decades, he became the Valley’s most visible chef. The Iron Chef America win over Bobby Flay in 2006 put him on national television; Worst Cooks in America in 2010 kept him there. Through the 2010s he stayed at Sanctuary while the restaurant world around him reorganized itself into groups.
He joined one in 2022. Clive Collective, founded by Troyan and Massei, opened CALA with him that year, and by April 2025 the group was describing him as partner and director of culinary operations and announcing five new concepts: Kuza, a coal-fired Japanese robata room in the old Chauncey Social space at 17767 N Scottsdale Road; a second CALA at the Paradise Valley Mall redevelopment in Phoenix; and Ada, Love Call and Kuza Tori in a historic bungalow in downtown Phoenix. Clive’s website lists Kuza in its portfolio as of October 2026; this page could not confirm the opening dates of the other four, so it leaves them as announced rather than open.
Two loose ends. Some biographies credit him with appearances on shows this page could not confirm, so it lists only the ones with a clear record. And the split between Clive Collective and Creation Hospitality at The Americano has never been spelled out in public; Clive’s site now lists The Americano and Tell Your Friends alongside its own rooms, and Creation was named as The Americano’s owner when MacMillan took over in 2024. The new-west era in Scottsdale dining is mostly a story of groups like these, and MacMillan is the rare one whose fame came first.