Almost every night for the last month I keep having the same dream: I am biting into a smoked grape, enrobed in a soft Arizona goat’s cheese and covered with chopped pecans and pistachios, served on a long skewer. Typically, I panic at some point in my dream because the platter is getting empty and that’s enough to wake me. Usually it is 4am, I sit up and try to comfort myself by saying “well, you ate the other 6, though saying that doesn’t help me get back to sleep. I was served these sleep altering morsels at a Heitz Cellar wine dinner at the Arizona Biltmore hotel. I never would have tried them with what I know now. “Just one more” I heard myself saying to several waiters! Have these amuse-bouche changed my sleeping pattern forever? I am no longer amused...
The two very young chefs created this amuse-bouche by smoking red and green grapes, lightly. Then, they are chilled and covered with a creamy goat cheese and rolled into a 50/50 blend of finely chopped pistachios and pecans. It wasn’t the only thing I ate that night but it’s the only thing that haunted me. There was a 5-course dinner to accompany the smoked grapes along with a line up of all of the Heitz wines for each course.
When the main course of Veal Osso Bucco arrived I heard guests at all the tables that surrounded ours say “they didn’t bring the Martha’s Vineyard this year!” This revelation circulated around the dining room like pouring water on a grease fire. Talk about ‘wining’! I was fine with it, I still had the smoked grape taste in my mouth and nothing mattered.
My sister and I have wanted to go to the Biltmore wine dinners for the last couple of years and we never need an excuse to leave Maine when daylight is so brief at this time of year. And choosing from 8 pools to swim in wasn’t a terrible hardship either. This gem of a Hotel took my breath away like Paris always does. “The Jewel of the Desert” as it’s called, designed by Albert Chase McArthur - who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago - is spectacular.
Not leaving anything to chance we flew in and arrived at 1am the night before ‘the big dinner.’ At the front desk we were hardly greeted by a 28-ish man with an attitude in a suit that didn’t quite fit. It didn’t go well. He showed us where our cottage was on a tiny 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch map that condensed the layout of the whole 38 acre resort. He circled where we needed to go. My sister took off her glasses as I was putting mine on. That still didn’t help.
We ventured out into the darkness waiting for our tired retinas to snap to, that didn’t happen. We wandered for 10 minutes, the whole time I wished that I had left a trail of blue potato chips to find my way back to the front desk and JAMES. By this point, I would have slept in our rental car but we didn’t rent one because we were too tired and opted for a cab.
Walking around in a few more circles in the dark we made our way back to the front desk. “James, we can’t find our cottage” “Really? I circled your cottage on the map” Silly us, we would like to be escorted, thank you!
A porter took our luggage and us as steam poured from my ears. I knew it wasn’t the porter’s fault but what kind of hotel still keeps James to be the first one to greet their guests? I was a bit worried seeing we had just flown 2600 miles for dinner. My sister assured me that “it isn’t like THAT here”. She has been in love with the Biltmore for years. Okay, I’ll trust her. I was starting to ‘let go’ when I realized that the porter couldn’t find our cottage either.
He turned around twice more with us in tow; it was nearly 2am at this point. I asked him if he wanted to use my flashlight on my I Phone. He assured me that he thought we were almost there. My sister gave me one of ‘those looks’ to butt out. I was just trying to help, really.
Our cottage had a private yard with a heavy metal gate as we continued to follow the 6’4 shadow and the sound of the wheels on our luggage all the way into our room. To be fair, I should tell you our cottage was lovely: the most important thing to me in a hotel is quality of the mattress and the sheets - this place is a 10. James was a distant memory as I crawled into the cushy bed.
My sister and I woke up at sunrise and ran like kids to the 110 degree whirlpool spa, specifically the one next to Marilyn Monroe’s favorite pool. We soaked as the sun came up over the art deco two story water slide and fountain.
We had the whole place to ourselves. Maybe no one was around because it was 45 degrees but it felt balmy to us. As I sat in the hot bubbling water I said to my sister, “why didn’t you tell me that all the citrus tree were loaded with fruit? You were just here.” She said she never noticed.
So much for a relaxing vacation - I wanted to cook! I was so excited to be surrounded by this much citrus - I ‘needed’ a kitchen to make marmalade. When the sun grew warmer we explored the grounds on a citrus tree tour.
There were lots of old varieties of oranges, included a ‘sour orange’, two varieties of lemons, old fashion pink grapefruit - before ruby ones came into fashion - and potted kumquats lined the walk way to our cottage.
Healthy trees loaded with beautiful fruit and no one noticed but me?
The morning we left my sister climbed the trees before sunrise and picked me quite a selection to take home so I could make ‘Biltmore marmalades’ in Maine and now I know why they call it the Jewel of the desert...
ARIZONA BILTMORE: 2400 E Missouri Ave Phoenix, AZ 85016 - (602) 955-6600
Brenda Athanus runs a small gourmet food shop in Belgrade Lakes, Maine with her sister Tanya called the Green Spot.
The Green Spot
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