What was TapHouse Kitchen?
TapHouse Kitchen was the craft-beer gastropub of The Shops at Hilton Village, and for eleven years, under three owners and three names, it was where the Paradise Valley side of Scottsdale Road went for a flight and a burger.
It opened in spring 2014 at 6137 N Scottsdale Road, Suite 108, in the suite that had been Blue Wasabi, a sushi bar from 2008. Phoenix New Times had announced it in September 2013 as a 3,500-square-foot upscale gastropub with 24 taps, Bavarian pretzel bruschetta and build-your-own grass-fed burgers. The company behind it was Tasty Brand Holdings, a Scottsdale restaurant group that already ran American TapHouse in Gilbert, Pinnacle Peak Patio, Zinc Bistro and Sand Bar, and the chef was Patrick Karvis, whose résumé ran through Wright’s at the Arizona Biltmore, Lon’s at the Hermosa and Eddie Matney’s kitchens. He told New Times that summer that if he were to open his own restaurant, this would be it.
The idea was simple and, in 2014, still fairly new on this stretch of road: 20 craft beers on tap, just under half of them from Arizona breweries, four-beer flights, and a beer and a wine pairing printed next to every dish. By August 2014 the draft system also poured five wines and eight whiskeys. The food was modern American pub cooking, lamb pops with jalapeño mint jam, chicken and dumplings, a ham and brie sandwich, shrimp mac and cheese, served to a crowd of Hilton Village lunch regulars, resort guests from across the street and Paradise Valley couples who did not want to drive to Old Town for a decent beer list.
What followed was a textbook case of how a good neighborhood bar changes hands. A second location opened in Phoenix in 2019, a Southern California brewery group bought in during the pandemic, a bankruptcy closed both rooms, a related investor reopened the Scottsdale one in 2023 as Urge Taphouse Kitchen, and a 2024 remodel renamed it Taphouse Kitchen by Eppig Brewing Co. Phoenix Magazine reported in its July 2025 roundup that it had gone dark. Our verdict: a well-run beer bar in its first life, a slightly lost one in its last, and a loss for a center that now has no tap room at all.
What the menu and the bar were
The pairing menu was the hook. Every dish on Karvis’ original card carried a suggested beer and a suggested wine. New Times’ April 2014 opening notice listed the lamb pops with jalapeño mint jam, a ham and brie sandwich of Black Forest ham, watercress, brie, basil and whole-grain mustard sauce, and chicken and dumplings with braised carrots, sugar snap peas, roasted corn and white wine mustard sauce. The burger was build-your-own on grass-fed beef. By the 2019 Phoenix opening the list had grown to include Creekstone beef sliders, crispy calamari with Calabrian chili aioli, a house pretzel with Kona Longboard beer mustard and cheese fondue, wood-fired pizzas, grilled salmon, a steak and wedge salad and an Arizona-raised prime New York strip.
The beer list was local by half. Twenty taps at the start, with Grand Canyon, Four Peaks and Papago among the Arizona names and ten more bottles including Lumberyard’s Knotty Pine and Oak Creek’s Nut Brown. Four set flights of four 4-ounce pours, or build your own; the Arizona Hwy flight was SanTan Devil’s Ale, Four Peaks Kilt Lifter, Grand Canyon American Pilsner and Papago Coconut Joe. After the 2020 sale the lines filled with the new owner’s own brands, TAPS Brewery, Mason Ale Works and Newtopia Cyder from Southern California, and the 2023 reopening added AleSmith and Las Vegas’ Beer Zombies. See our note on Scottsdale breweries and beer for where the taps went after.
Happy hour was the business. Seven days a week, 3 to 6 p.m.: $2 off every tap and house wine, $1 off wells and house cocktails, and a $6 small-plate list of shrimp mac and cheese, THK wings, a mini mushroom grilled cheese and four flatbreads. New Times graded it in its Happy Hour Report Card in March 2016. The 2023 relaunch revived a daily $20 craft-beer-and-burger special with a $5 second pint, added sushi, fish and chips, lamb pops and smoked prime rib, and ran bourbon, beer and wine dinners; a Garrison Brothers whiskey dinner was on the calendar for October 26, 2023. Neighbors on Nextdoor noted the reopened room kept much of the old staff and added breakfast.
The room shrank on paper. The 2013 announcement said 3,500 square feet; San Diego Beer News, describing the 2024 remodel, called it a 2,000-square-foot space. Whether the footprint was cut or the numbers were loose, the press does not say. The last version had a golf lounge and Eppig, Mason and Beer Zombies on tap.
Who went. Hilton Village is a resort-adjacent center on the Central Scottsdale line, so the crowd was Paradise Valley neighbors, Hilton guests, and the happy hour regulars who knew this stretch of Scottsdale Road had few other bars.
Three owners, two closures and a bankruptcy
TapHouse Kitchen belongs to the 2010s craft-beer wave, when every Valley shopping center wanted a tap wall and the groups that ran steakhouses and bistros opened beer bars to keep up. Tasty Brand Holdings was one of those groups, and American TapHouse in Gilbert was the template. The Scottsdale version, with a chef of Karvis’ pedigree, was the upscale edition, and it worked well enough that the company opened a second TapHouse Kitchen on January 4, 2019, at 32nd Street and Shea in Phoenix, with 40 taps and the same menu.
Then the ownership chain got complicated. Phoenix Magazine reported that the Phoenix location “has undergone several ownership changes since it first opened,” and that in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Joseph Manzella and his Tableside Partners, the company behind TAPS Fish House and Brewery in Southern California, bought the turnkey operation, added booths and poured their own beer. The arrangement did not survive COVID. A March 2023 press release from West Coast Ventures and Resources, a Southern California firm led by Randy Teffeteller, says Manzella’s bankruptcy ended the investment partnership and led to the closure and liquidation of the Tableside portfolio, including both Arizona TapHouse Kitchens. A Yelp reviewer who arrived in February 2023 found a sign on the door; one snippet dates the closing to December 22, 2022.
The same release announced the comeback: WCVR had bought the Scottsdale restaurant out of bankruptcy and would reopen it on June 20, 2023, with former director of operations Jessica Hedglin and chef Victor Delgado as operating partners. It traded as Urge Taphouse Kitchen, borrowing the name of Grant Tondro’s San Diego gastropub chain, which had spawned Mason Ale Works. In July 2024 San Diego Beer News reported Tondro putting the finishing touches on an overhaul of the room, which reopened mid-month and would “soon bear Eppig’s name,” Eppig being another San Diego brewery under the same umbrella. The Phoenix property, meanwhile, was sold to a local Mexican restaurant group, with escrow closing May 1, 2024.
The last chapter is one line long. Phoenix Magazine’s July 2025 roundup, published August 4, listed it under closings: Taphouse Kitchen in Scottsdale’s Hilton Village “has gone dark.” No reason, no date, no farewell post that we could find. The same roundup recorded Famous 48 at Gainey Ranch, The Drunk Munk in Old Town and Z’Tejas at McCormick Ranch closing in the same season, which says something about the summer. The suite had no listed tenant in the Hilton Village directory in October 2026, while Born & Bred, in the old Humble Pie at the north end of the center, took over the burger trade.
Honest assessment: the 2014 TapHouse Kitchen was a genuinely good idea executed by a real chef, and the pairing menu and Arizona flights deserved the loyal crowd they got. Everything after 2020 was ownership churn, a San Diego beer group trying to run a Scottsdale strip-center bar by remote control through a bankruptcy, and the Eppig rebrand never gave the neighborhood a reason to relearn the name. It belongs in the lost column of our bars and clubs list as the first and, so far, only serious tap room Hilton Village has had.