Let's Eat: Phantom Horse Grill offers Valentine's Day dinner

The Phantom Horse Grill at the Arizona Grand Resort is offering a Valentine's Day dinner that's as flavorful as it is unique.

Robert Graham, executive chef of the resort, said they chose a lot of the menu ingredients that are considered amorous: artichokes, avocados, quail, cherries and chocolate, among others.

Couples have a choice of duck confit salad and tomato bisque, for starters. The duck legs are cured with green salt and slowly cooked in the duck fat for eight hours. The tomato bisque is served with avocado creme fraiche and toasted brie oche.

Appetizers include crab artichoke ravioli, served with sauteed spinach and a lemon grass cream, or wild rice stuffed quail with black bean fritter and peach ragu. To cleanse the palate, a strawberry zinfandel sorbet will be served as an intermezzo.

The entrees offer a choice of braised short ribs with boursin herbed cream cheese and cherries that have been brined in brandy and a grilled arctic char, served with procuitto wrapped asparagus, basil pesto risotto and lemon dill butter.

The last course is oak ice cream chocolate s'mores. Graham said they take oak bark and infuse it into cream to give the sense of a wood camp fire. The ice cream will be served with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows, and Graham said he plans to take a sugar cane and skewer it through marshmallows and ice cream and light that on fire as it goes to the table.

Cost is $65 per person, and reservations can be taken beginning at 5:30 p.m. For more information or to make a reservation, call (602) 431-6476.

New offerings

On Feb. 1, the Arizona Grand Resort opened 95 new one- and two-bedroom villas, bringing its number of rooms up to 735. A new free-standing lobby is also under construction and is expected to be finished at the end of March or beginning of April. The lobby will have a new three-meal-a-day restaurant called the Lobby Grill, a lobby bar, golf pro shop, retail shops and a marketplace cafe to get espresso and coffee.

Richard Behr, managing director for Arizona Grand Resort, said the new lobby will create a central focal point for the property and allows us to have a real sense of arrival. The staff of the Phantom Horse Grill will also be moving over to the Lobby Grill once it's open.

"Phantom Horse restaurant for years has been the resort's three-meal-a-day restaurant, but because of the location on the fringe of the property it hasn't always been convenient for everyone," Behr said. "Now (the Lobby Grill) fixes a lot of our challenges from that perspective. Now we can say, ‘Hey I'll meet you in the lobby for a drink.'"

The resort plans to reopen Phantom Horse in 2010 as an Italian restaurant, Behr said.

Graham said the Lobby Grill will be primarily focusing on local, simple, top quality ingredients.

"Nothing too crazy, just food that everyone can recognize and enjoy," Graham said. "But if you have a steak it's going to blow your mind. It'll be like the best steak you ever had."