While there are notable exceptions, it’s unlikely that dining in a hotel restaurant is at the top of many savvy travelers’ must-do list. Certainly not mine. Good meals can be had (I’m thinking steak tartare at the Polo Lounge or designer meatloaf at Swifty’s), room service can be a treat (hello, Regent Hong Kong), and if you happen to be somewhere with a cuisine you can’t stand, European hotel food can offer safe haven. But most large and many smaller cities have far better dining options than that place off the lobby. And yes, I once ate at Gray Kunz’ Lespinasse in New York’s St. Regis and it wasn’t all that.
Yet, every time I go to Palm Springs, as I did this Thanksgiving, I’m drawn to the Parker, a hotel so discrete, I sometimes I have to circle the block twice to find its entrance. Its three restaurants, each with a distinct personality, differ in almost every respect except their quality, both culinary and visual.
The discrete entrance to The Parker Palm Springs.
My first meal at the Parker was a huge breakfast at Norma’s on one of my first visits to Palm Springs. There, breakfast is served on an alfresco terrace done up in sherbert colors from 7 AM to 10 PM, (for those who want to sleep until just before their gig at Stagecoach or Coachella). Portions are decadent even if you don’t opt for the Zillion Dollar Lobster Frittata topped with ten ounces of caviar. Norma’s also serves lunch and dinner, but for me, its breakfast—even just scrambled eggs and sausage seasoned with desert air—is a better eye-opener than a bloody bull.
A couple years ago, the Parker debuted Counter Reformation, a wine-with-food bar that’s as hard to find as the hotel itself; the concierge desk provides an escort to ensure you’ll get there. The small-plates menu changes monthly, so like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll get, but its sense of adventure is on display in the current menu, which offers amusing mouthfuls the size of triple amuses-bouche in a narrow, atmospheric room reminiscent of a Catholic confessional.
The outdoor seating area at Norma’s.
The bar at Counter Reformation
At this crackpot communion, “your wine is sacred but the trappings are not,” say the designers at De Viq, which created the place. “Catholic imagery informs… the logo, the illuminated manuscript place mat… the ‘holy wafer’ coaster. After your meal, you will receive a hollow red hymnal with your check and a few of the 14 different cards describing the lives of actual catholic patron saints for vintners, alcoholics and everyday sinners.”
This Thanksgiving, we opted for a sinful holiday dinner at Mister Parker (pictured at top), the hotel’s purposely over-decorated main dining room (conceived by Jonathan Adler), all dressed in leather and dark wood and linen, with a mirrored ceiling and walls encrusted salon-style in kitschy art. Diners ranged from men in sequins to women in cowboy hats and thigh high skirts, and one mother-daughter duo with, I swear, matching face-lifts. Chef Pedro Baroso, who supervises all three restaurants, had a fanciful take on the traditional turkey dinner with roasted pumpkin salad followed by a heritage turkey roulade for $125 per person, not including a wine tasting. He also served enough, no one needed to ask for seconds.
Why tell you this now? Because Mister Parker also has special menus for the eves of Christmas and New Year’s, with Duck a l’Orange leading the first, Wagyu and Stone Crab the early New Year’s meuno, and a more elaborate five course meal for those seeing in 2025, featuring langoustine risotto, poached rockfish with Osetra and either that same luxe surf and turf or Duck Wellington. But at $395 a head, one wonders, shouldn’t breakfast, if not a hotel bed, be included, too?