Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North Archives - Page 4 of 4

27 New Ways to Eat (and Drink) Local

Posted on October 25, 2016January 22, 2024 by Rebecca Troyer

Natives of Buenos Aires will tell you that you haven’t fully experienced Argentina until you’ve enjoyed an authentic asado-style meal – a revered weekend dining ritual where families and friends grill meats, tables are filled with salads and appetizers, and local red wines flow freely. You haven’t tasted Indonesia, locals say, until you’ve sampled babi guling, aka roast suckling pig, from the beach in Bali. And in Florence, it’s an unwritten rule that la passeggiata (a traditional evening stroll) is incomplete without a scoop of creamy gelato.

The fastest and most enjoyable way for travellers to immerse themselves in the culture of any corner of the world is to dive into the culinary scene – order traditional dishes, explore food markets and local farms, and speak to chefs and home cooks about their favourite recipes.

Taste of Place, a new series of fine dining experiences from Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, is designed so guests can do exactly that. Its goal is to bring travellers and locals who have an appetite for exploration together with the flavours and cultures of places like Cairo, Koh Samui and Lanai.

During these epicurean adventures, you’ll visit markets and farms to sample and gather fresh ingredients commonly used in local cuisine. Many experiences include cooking classes alongside expert chefs, where you’ll learn how the traditions and customs of a region are reflected in the preparation and seasoning of its food. And each Taste of Place offering includes one or more chef-prepared meals, served in an unforgettable setting.

Scroll through the gallery above to get a taste of specific food tourism offerings around the globe.

Taste of Place joins an already extensive portfolio of Four Seasons culinary innovations, including the recently launched “Culinary Discoveries” itinerary on board the Four Seasons Private Jet. This new itinerary, developed in partnership with René Redzepi and the Noma team, is a once-in-a-lifetime cross-continental culinary journey through the finest kitchens, freshest markets and most exquisite dining experiences in the world. Learn more about how you can see Europe and Asia through the eyes of a Michelin-starred chef here.

YOUR JOURNEY BEGINS HERE

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Spring Cocktails With a Twist

Posted on April 18, 2016March 1, 2021 by Alexandra Sheehan

One of the greatest rewards of travel – or reminiscing about a journey – is the engagement of the senses: New sights, sounds, smells and tastes come together to portray a destination in its fullness.

Wander along the beach in Punta Mita and listen to the waves lapping at the shore as you smell – and taste – the salty breeze blowing through your hair. Take a hike in the crisp mountain air of Jackson Hole and feel delicate snowflakes melt on your face, or the delicious steam of hot cocoa after a day on the slopes.

These are the types of flavours, scents and experiences that inspire Four Seasons mixologists. Add seasonal harvests from local gardens – think flowers, herbs and even mushrooms – and the result is spring cocktails that capture the spirit of global destinations.

Here’s a taste.

Lisbon: LX Purple Bloom

Recipe card for LX Purple Bloom cocktail

Every spring, Lisbon’s first jacaranda blossom serves as a sign that a new season has arrived; next, the city streets are lined with beautiful purple, violet and lavender. Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon celebrates the occasion with a jacaranda-themed cocktail.

In the months where the city flourishes into lavender, it seems only fitting that the cocktails at the Ritz Bar follow suit.

It was the violet view of the city from the terrace at the Ritz Bar that inspired the LX Purple Bloom, a refreshing mix of Portuguese Gin Nao, St-Germain liqueur, Pêra Rocha purée, grapefruit juice and a spritz of rose water.

Scottsdale: Tip of the Cap

April showers bring not only flowers but also mushrooms to the Scottsdale area. In a surprising twist on the change of seasons, chefs at Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North delicately infuse this local harvest with citrus and herbs to achieve a fresh, earthy taste.

Fruit and floral notes are predominant in springtime cocktail menus, but the rich umami aspect that mushrooms bring [is often] bypassed.

A variation on the traditional dirty martini, Tip of the Cap replaces olive brine with a porcini “tea” made of local mushrooms, herbs and lemon. That tea is combined with Stoli Elit vodka in a Sercial Madeira–rinsed rocks glass and garnished with a pickled porcini mushroom, a twist of lemon and a sprig of thyme.

Doha: Rose Gold Julab

Recipe card for Rose Gold Julab cocktail

Vast desert landscapes and a bustling, cosmopolitan city greet visitors to Doha. Tradition is not lost here; a thriving coffee house culture makes for unique opportunities to learn more about Qatar and the Middle East. It’s not uncommon to see locals adding rose water to their caffeinated beverages, lemonade or milk.

Rose water has a very distinctive flavour. It’s aromatic, which makes it refreshing in the hot sun.

At Four Seasons Hotel Doha, rose water is an essential ingredient in the Rose Gold Julab. Mixed with a simple syrup and vodka, served over crushed ice with mint leaves and rose petals, it makes a fine treat.

Seychelles: Hibiscus Shower

Recipe card for Hibiscus shower cocktail

Quintessentially tropical hibiscus flowers brighten your stroll around the grounds at Four Seasons Resort Seychelles. They’re a beautiful addition to the scenery – and they’re full of fresh, citrusy flavour.

In our tropical environment, we often have rain showers which make these beautiful flowers bloom.

The Resort’s Kannel Bar makes the most of that citrus flavour – and the abundance of blossoms. The flowers in its Hibiscus Shower cocktails are handpicked from the property grounds. Hibiscus iced tea, Cointreau, local Takamaka coco rum and pineapple juice combine for an unbeatable chilled drink.

Chiang Mai: Siam Honey Breeze

Recipe card for Siam Honey Breeze cocktail

In Northern Thailand, spring comes with plenty of rainfall. It can be seen in the lush green blankets of vegetation on the surrounding mountains, and tasted in the sweetness of Thai honey.

Thai honey is at its most delicate and delicious in April and May.

Thai honey isn’t the only local ingredient at its peak in spring. At Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai, mixologists merge camomile-flower tea – brewed using fresh blossoms from the Mon Jam district – with local honey and Thai rum, lemon and ginger ale to create the Siam Honey Breeze, an original cocktail with a fresh perspective.

Editor’s note: While some of these spring cocktails may no longer be listed on the menu, most can be made upon special request.

5 Unexpected Tea and Coffee Cocktails Around the World

Posted on January 28, 2016January 2, 2018 by Amber Gibson

Encountering the unexpected during a journey is one of the many joys of travel. Imagine, for example, sitting in a rooftop bar in China – the country where tea drinking originated and remains a meaningful part of daily culture – and asking the bartender to recommend a local drink. Instead of offering something with tea leaves, as you might expect, you’re served a complex coffee-inspired cocktail with an equally enriching tie to Asian culture.

#CocktailQuarterly, the year-long initiative focused on cocktail trends, techniques and ingredients, turns its attention to tea and coffee cocktails. In celebration, mixologists at Four Seasons hotels and resorts around the world are shaking, stirring, steeping and serving drinks inspired by these classic brews – and working hard to eschew convention with their concoctions.

Here is a taste of the mixologists’ creativity.

Florence: Grog in Florence

The Grog in Florence cocktail is served in a teapot and topped with an edible flower for a beautifully elegant presentation.

Coffee is such an integral part of Italian culture that even the U.S. has adapted the Italian vocabulary for its favourite drinks. Whether it’s leisurely sipping cappuccino or a quick shot of espresso at the café before work, coffee is part of every true Italian’s morning ritual.

Excellent coffee is available in plenty at Atrium Bar at Four Seasons Hotel Firenze, but when creating his newest cocktail, Grog in Florence, Assistant Bar Manager Luca Angeli was inspired by the oriental flavours of lapsang souchong.

“It’s a different way to serve afternoon tea in a cocktail style.”
–Luca Angeli

This bright, citrusy drink is poured from a classic teapot and sipped from teacups. Ginger-infused rum, 23-year Zacapa rum and Amaro Nonino form the boozy base, while cranberry and lime juice along with house-made lapsang souchong syrup lighten up the drink with fresh top notes.

Four Seasons Hotel Firenze

Beijing: Kopi Luwak Martini

The art of drinking tea originally developed in China during the Tang dynasty, and hundreds of varieties are produced and enjoyed in that vast country today. However, Opus Lounge, the rooftop bar at Four Seasons Hotel Beijing, is getting creative with another caffeinated beverage.

Bartender John Cheng’s Kopi Luwak Martini is mixed with a rare Indonesian coffee, made from coffee cherries eaten and excreted by the Asian palm civet, a small mammal found in Southeast Asia. (Producers and connoisseurs claim that kopi luwak’s flavour is improved by the fermentation that occurs in the civet’s digestive tract.)

At Opus Lounge, bartenders use a Neapolitan coffee press filled with dry ice that diffuses the delicate coffee aroma while Kahlua and Malibu rum add the alcoholic element. The smoking cocktail is finished with an elegant dusting of espresso powder.

Four Seasons Hotel Beijing

Mumbai: Madras Café

While you may think tea reigns supreme in India, Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai is using South Indian coffee to create this unusually delicious drink.

Like China, India is a major tea producer, and Northeastern India is known for its large tea estates. Travel to the Southern region of the country, though, and you’ll find plenty of coffee. In Mumbai, business is often conducted over one of these brews, and each household has its own favourite blend or preparation of tea or coffee to start the day.

Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai embraces the city’s rich history of coffee drinking with the Madras Café. The cocktail, served at AER and San-Qi, combines South Indian–style coffee with curry leaf, passion fruit purée and pineapple juice to make a shaken drink that’s an unusual balance of sweet and bitter, spiked with Absolut vodka and served on the rocks.

Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai

Scottsdale: Two Birds With One Stone

U.S. Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea, but Assistant Manager Nick Padua at Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North chose to create his latest concoction with organic tea. Inspired by the environmental extremes of the Sonoran Desert, Two Birds With One Stone is a drink that can warm you up on a cold desert night or leave you refreshed after a round of golf under the sun.

At Talavera and Onyx Bar & Lounge, the cocktail is served either hot or over ice, mirroring the desert’s hot days and chilly nights. The innovative drink pairs Rishi Tea’s organic loose-leaf camomile tea with Dewars White Label scotch, sweetened with local Sonoran honey and house-made orange marmalade. The tea-infused cocktail is brewed and served tableside with candied citrus rinds.

Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North

Maldives: Kuda Coffee

For an island treat in the Maldives, try the Kuda Coffee, which infuses both local and Asian ingredients.

While sai (a sweet tea) is a traditional beverage enjoyed by local Maldivians, Indonesian coffee and local ingredients are the staples for the Kuda Coffee cocktail at Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa. A kopi toraja variety of coffee from the Sulawesi island of Indonesia is combined with fresh Maldivian coconut, kopi leaf and Sri Langkan arak that add local flair.

In honour of the Resort’s sundowner happy hour tradition, these stirred drinks will be available on a buy-one-get-one basis between 5 and 7:30 pm each evening at Sunset Lounge. Ask Chinnappan for a cocktail class, and he’ll teach you how to make the drink from scratch.

Editor’s note: While some of these coffee and tea cocktails may no longer be listed on the menu, most can be made upon special request.

Read more about #CocktailQuarterly trends, like spicy margarita recipes and spring cocktails.

Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa

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Unique Day Trips Around the World

Posted on December 5, 2014April 10, 2017 by Kristin Newman

No one enjoys a day inside a beautiful hotel more than I do, but you can’t come home from your trip with nothing but stories about the signature cocktails at the bar. To mix things up a bit, here are four of the most unusual day trips I’ve taken from some of my favourite Four Seasons destinations. And don’t worry—when you return in the evening after your day of adventure, that cocktail will still taste great.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Just north of Buenos Aires is Tigre, a picturesque delta town situated among rivers and canals that is famous for its weekend floating produce market.

Photography courtesy Nico Kaiser

It’s easy to forget that Buenos Aires is a river city, but an hour-long train ride north of Buenos Aires brings you to the delta town of Tigre, renowned for its weekend floating produce market. Stroll around, shopping for flowers and fruit offered by growers who motor down the river from their farms deeper in the region, or take a boat tour around the swampy, beautiful inlets to see yacht clubs, swanky porteño weekend vacation homes and simple houses filled with fishing kids who will wave as you motor past.

Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires

If you want to venture further, a two-hour boat ride from Tigre reaches the island of Martín García. Once a military outpost, and then a penal colony where Juan Perón spent a few days after his arrest, the island is now a National Historical Monument and Flora and Fauna Reserve, where crumbling pieces of history mix with beautiful delta forest and creatures.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

At Elephant Nature Park, an hour away from Chiang Mai, watch, feed and play with these gentle giants for an unforgettable experience.

Photography courtesy Christian Haugen

Chiang Mai is a bustling city that could very well have drawn you for many reasons, but there’s no way you planned a trip here without wanting to see elephants. An incredible rescue preserve called the Elephant Nature Park is located about an hour north of town in the green mountains of Northern Thailand.

Here, elephants rescued from horrific conditions are left to wander—unridden and unbothered—in a gorgeous natural valley. You get to feed them, kiss them, and, when they decide to wander down to the perfect river flowing through the whole place, follow them in and bathe them. Be careful: If you’re like me, you will fall in love and give this wonderful place all of your money.

Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai

Scottsdale, Arizona

On a family visit to Scottsdale, be sure to take time to drive north to Slide Rock, where kids and adults alike will love slipping over the wet red sandstone.

Photography courtesy Ted

Two hours north of Scottsdale is Slide Rock—a natural water slide that looks as if it were manufactured by a theme-park designer. Neatly carved by clear water through the red, soft sandstone is a person-wide, angled slide covered in just enough algae to be fantastically slippery and yet still not gross. The sandstone banks on either side are flat and smooth, ideal for sunbathing. Crawl out of the chilly water and lie under the blue sky on the sun-warmed sandstone, and remember days spent as a kid warming up on the hot summer concrete by the pool.

Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North

Los Angeles, California

Day trip to Joshua Tree National Park, California

It’s only a two-hour drive from Beverly Hills to Joshua Tree National Park, which covers three of California’s ecoregions and boasts more than 800,000 acres (323,749 hectares) for exploring.

Photography courtesy Spencer Goad

You’ve done the Venice boardwalk and Rodeo Drive. Today you’re going to experience a quirkier side of California. Two hours east of Beverly Hills is Joshua Tree, a desert national park famous for its signature cactus tree that looked to early Mormon settlers like Joshua holding his arms up to the Lord in prayer.

First, go to the nearby Integratron for your sound bath. Built in the 1950s by Hughes Aircraft Inspector George van Tassel after alleged alien communication, this wooden dome was supposed to refresh the human body and spirit. But the acoustic qualities of the building have led to its use as a recording studio for bands such as the Arctic Monkeys, and as an excellent spot for a truly rejuvenating retreat. You’ll lie on mats for what the Integratron website calls “kindergarten nap time for grown-ups,” while a woman rubs an array of quartz bowls, creating sounds that she claims are massaging and cleaning your filthy chakras. At the very least, the beautiful and calming sounds of the ringing bowls will make every organ in your body vibrate. One warning: The acoustics are perfect, so your snores will really travel.

Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills

After your chakras are clean, head west a few miles down a designated California Scenic Drive to Pioneertown, a relic originally built as a live-in Old West set for movies that have been filmed here since the 1940s. Today, take a stroll down an old-timey desert street, lined with fake storefronts and found-art installations of weathered school desks and ancient typewriters set in gardens of broken coloured glass and ’50s children’s toys.

Along with other cowpeople, bikers and artists, mosey into Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace—a former cantina set and outlaw biker burrito bar turned barbecue haven and indie-music den—for a beer, a sandwich and maybe a show. Robert Plant and Vampire Weekend play here, as well as local family bands. Toto, you’re not in Beverly Hills any more.

Amman, Jordan

The entrance to Petra rests at the end of the Siq, a narrow gorge surrounded by stone cliffs. Reaching 80 metres (263 feet) high, these striking walls kept the city hidden for more than five centuries.