Is Kid Chilleen's Badass BBQ Still Open? Bar Rescue Update

Kid Chilleen's Badass BBQ was a family-run bar and barbecue spot in the Arizona desert north of Phoenix, where Jon Taffer found bartenders drinking on shift and patrons allowed to run motorcycles and even horses inside the building, creating hazards for both customers and the family's investment by the time of "A Horse Walks Into a Bar." The recon and stress test exposed a business that had let its rural, anything-goes reputation get ahead of basic safety and service standards. The rescue team retrained the staff on service fundamentals, tightened up safety practices around the bar's more unusual traditions, and rebranded the business Chilleen's on 17, a modernized nod to its original name and desert highway location, for the relaunch.

The renamed business has stayed in the family: Aleah, who had worked behind the bar during the Bar Rescue years and later finished a journalism degree, took over Chilleen's on 17 from her parents in 2016 at around age 20. She subsequently built a wedding and event venue on the property's back grounds, now operated as The Venue at Chilleens, which the business's own website describes as growing out of the barbecue bar's continued operation rather than replacing it. Yelp's listing for Chilleen's on 17 at 33150 South Coldwater Road carried 550 reviews as of a July 2026 update, and the venue's own website remained actively updated with 2026 blog content describing ongoing wedding bookings at the same address.

The property's dual identity as both a barbecue bar and an event venue traces directly back to the Bar Rescue-era rebrand, and no subsequent ownership change outside the family or additional rename turned up in this research pass. The barbecue side of the business has continued serving lunch and dinner throughout the week, according to Yelp's posted hours as of the July 2026 update, keeping the original bar-and-restaurant format running alongside the newer wedding operation.