Best Place to Take Visitors

First-time visitors to Arizona give us a chance to go to some of those slightly cheesy places we secretly love but never get to on our own.

The Satisfied Frog is one of those; it's an outright hoot, and it gives our guests that warm, Western welcome they're expecting. It's comfy, casual -- the kind of place where you could feed the dog under the table, if health codes allowed Fido through the front door.

Tablecloths are checkered. There's sawdust on the floor. Corny sayings are plastered all over the restaurant. The building's set back in what looks like a frontier town right off of a movie set (howling coyote souvenirs all around). Tourists love the Goat Sucker Saloon and the beer garden, featuring the honky tonk piano.

And the cowboy grub here is down-home delicious. Steaks, fish, shrimp, chicken, hamburgers, Mexican dishes and mesquite-smoked barbecue come in such enormous portions, we stagger when we leave. We initiate our guests with the signature deep-fried chiles, and a spicy cream of chile soup.

If that doesn't get us stumbling, the Frog's micro-brewed beer sure will. We've guzzled more than our share of Original Cave Creek Chili Beer, a golden, skunk-and-pepper-flavored ale with a whole chile pepper lurking at the bottom.

Satisfied? You betcha.