Over the summer, Hidden Ace, a speakeasy at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley, has transformed its private dining room for a series of themed dinners, each highlighting a spirit behind its bar.
A Patron tequila dinner turned the mountain venue into the tropics, followed by a Bacardi rum event with touches of Cuba and the Caribbean. Next, a High West Distillery dinner, set for Friday, Sept. 25, will embrace Utah’s own Western heritage.
According to of Hidden Ace General Manager Normandie Baylis, the series draws on the feeling of a family dinner party, or at least the ones her grandmother threw.
“She would go all out for holidays or any event. Any time she could make a theme, she would. Of course, classy and chic; she’s my Miss New Yorker,” said Baylis. “It would be around a certain dish or certain drink that she was drinking that month.”
So when tasked with creating a concept that would bring locals, food lovers and spirit enthusiasts to the hotel on the still-growing East Village base, Baylis drew from those memories.
“I’ve been in the industry for about 22 years, and I’ve realized that the times are changing. People are really craving something different when they go to dinner,” she said.
The Crafted Experience is designed to be immersive. Baylis and her team go all out with decorations and interactive elements in line with the theme of the night. The Bacardi dinner was one of her favorites. There was a Cuban hat wall so diners could dress the part, menus were designed like newspapers and customized with names, cocktails were served in tiki cups and white hibiscus flowers and folding fans were part of the decor.
For the High West dinner, Baylis said she wants to raise the bar even further.
That dinner will be held outside on the hotel’s Hailstone Terrace that overlooks the Jordanelle Reservoir, with a wooden structure over the table decked with lights, blankets and, if Baylis has her way, a miniature pond in the middle of the table.
“My team, they want to pull out their hair half the time when we’re decorating. But I’m like, guys, we’re building an entire experience that transforms them instead of just sitting on a normal table with a few candles on their table and a menu,” Baylis said. “Allowing guests to see the creativity, I think, shows how much we love what we do.”
From the chef perspective, Chef de Cuisine Michael Bauer said having a team to go that extra mile complements his work in the kitchen.
“It really creates the whole ambiance. It makes it easier, almost, for me to speak on my dishes,” he said. “The food can only make it so far, right? I could make the best dish in the world, and if the server sucks at their job, that’s it.”
Bauer works under the hotel’s executive sous chef, Alessandro Silvestro, and together the two design menus for the six-course dinners.
Their challenge is not only to pair the food to the spirit, but also to bring as much of the kitchen out to the dining room.
“I think people kind of are intrigued (about) behind the scenes,” Baylis said. “I think we see it through a lot of television shows. Like I know a lot of people love ‘The Bear.’ There’s the movie ‘Burnt’ with Bradley Cooper.”
For the High West dinner, they have a few interactive table-side elements planned, Bauer said. For the first salad course, chefs will plate a whole tray of microgreens live at the table. Later, a salt-baked snapper will again be finished in front of diners, removed from the salt crust, de-boned and sliced to serve. For dessert, a High West Midwinter Nights Dram-infused sauce will be poured over a chocolate “balloon” to melt the garnish.
The interactive elements also extend to the drinks, said Baylis. At one point during the event, each guest will be given a miniature shaker to prepare their own basil martini, and those shakers will also be a takeaway gift.
“We could do this all back of house, but again, people are craving to watch us do it up front,” said Baylis. “Having the creative dishes with the built-out decor and the simple, personal touches, I think it just makes it worth your while. I know times are rough, economy’s not the greatest, and I want people to be like, ‘It was worth every penny for me to come to this.’”
Bauer and Silvestro both lead the culinary program with seasonality at the forefront, something Bauer has noticed Utahns wanting. Originally from New Jersey with a career in New York, Bauer first moved to the state for the role at Grand Hyatt, and she has since learned more about what the state’s culinary scene has to offer.
“I was really, really surprised with how much good produce, how many good distilleries and breweries are here,” he said. “Utah is actually very seasonal. I think there’s very big game meats here, very big in bison, elk, lamb, etc. And I really, really enjoy working with that.”
The hotel works with local farmers whenever possible, he said, and the microgreens from the salad course are grown by request from a farmer in Midway.
“The farmer he comes in, dirt all over his fingernails, like a real, real farmer guy,” Bauer said with a laugh.
With seasonality as the base, the culinary team also uses the chosen spirits as a road map for the dinner.
“Pairing is one of my favorite things,” said Bauer. “It almost gives me guidelines that I have to follow. It’s not just do whatever I want. It gives me a general idea of what the menu is going to be already.”
High West’s Double Rye will pair with the citrus-forward crudo to start, the strong rye flavor helping cut the acidity of the dish, the chef said. The live salad, which will be served with goat cheese and beets, pairs best with the smokiness of High West Campfire. One of Bauer’s favorites is a juniper-crusted venison loin served with a black garlic jus.
“I really like that whole dish because it’s kind of a full circle: The (deer) eat the juniper berries in the forest. That’s going to be served with the Rendezvous Rye,” he said. “That dish itself is to kind of encapsulate Utah.”
Baylis encouraged people to attend even if they’re not the biggest whiskey drinkers. Giving spirits another shot is part of the reason she designed the series around different alcohol styles.
“We all have our drink of choice, and I think highlighting different types of spirits kind of brings different people,” she said. “People open their minds to different spirits and different cocktails that they normally wouldn’t try.”
After this month’s High West dinner, the Park City distillery will again be the star of the next iteration in December, currently coined as the “12 nights of High West” featuring the various acts of its Midwinter Night’s Dram. Next will likely be a Valentine’s Day version in February.
“From the last two events that we’ve done, we’ve really seen people wanting more of this. So we’re hoping that we can continue this series year round every two months,” said Baylis.
Bauer said Future events will likely have the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley’s own honey now that the hotel has its own bees. He said he loves how the series has brought him back to the creativity of his job.
“They’re crazy fun. I think from all sides, the energy in the kitchen is super high the whole time in (those of) us putting it on, and that’s transferred in the food and the service,” Bauer said. “We really strive to create that positive environment stemming from the back (of house), and then that translates to the guest experience.”
Being “the lone man on the mountain,” Grand Hyatt is doing what it can to welcome locals as well as out-of-town visitors, said Baylis. The Crafted Experience series is one way to show that the hotel is for everyone.
Tickets for the 21-plus event, which runs from 6:30-9:30 p.m., are priced at $180 per person and can be purchased at hiddenacedv.com/event/the-crafted-experience-high-west.
“I want guests to feel like they’re family,” said Baylis. “This is why I want to do dinners like this, because it makes other strangers talk to other strangers and exchange phone numbers. The moment I see