In the Moment at Fearing’s

by Bill Addison

A friend and I sat in the Rattlesnake Bar at Fearing’s Restaurant slurping more on the details of the space than on our strong drinks. The bar’s profusion of rich, masculine woods were in keeping with the stateliness I’d come to expect from the restaurants in Ritz-Carlton hotels.

Then a solicitous server quietly glided next up next to us.

“Guacamole on a tortilla chip?” he inquired, holding out the complimentary nibbles nestled in a luxuriously thick linen napkin.

I blinked in surprise. Guacamole at the Ritz? Biting into that chip, I now realize, was my introduction to the Tao of Dean.

Newcomer that I am, I missed out on Dean Fearing’s 21-year run as the chef at The Mansion on Turtle Creek. Certainly, I knew his reputation as not only one of the stalwarts of Southwestern cooking but as an emissary of Dallas’ blossoming dining scene.

Thus, I’d been counting the days till the debut of his namesake just as anxiously as Mr. Fearing’s bereaved Mansion regulars. So much so that I broke the food critic’s rule of waiting at least a month to try a new restaurant (I barely cheated: It had been open 3 ½ weeks). Consider this simply a first peel, then: Fearing’s starred review will be published later in the fall.

I do have intimate firsthand experience with the work of the man who designed Fearing’s space, Bill Johnson. His Johnson Studio engineers the majority of blockbuster restaurant in Atlanta, where I was a critic for several years. I’ll not be surprised if Mr. Johnson takes on more local projects: His modern sense of drama is right in line with Dallas’ love of splash and flash.

Beyond the staid bar, Fearing’s interior is an ingenious composite of five very different domains that range from casual to formal, cloistered to alfresco. Part of the first-visit experience is meandering through the entire space, eyeballing one stunning chandelier after another and deciding which area you’ll occupy during your next visit. (The same menu is served in each area.)

The idea for the design’s variety arose from a frustration Mr. Fearing faced at his last gig.

“I got beat up over the dress code at the Mansion,” Mr. Fearing said during a phone interview. “Some pf my longtime customers would tell me that if they saw one more person in the restaurant without a jacket, they would never come back. But then their kids would tell me that they didn’t want to dress anymore like that they were going to a country club.”

The hodgepodge effect seems to be paying off.

“The Mansion crowd has found their little place in the Gallery, the most formal room,” Mr. Fearing noted. “They love it, and it’s nice to see some of my old pals.”

On a recent Tuesday night, a hostess seated us in Dean’s Kitchen, the most relaxed part of the restaurant. The L-shaped, earth-toned room wraps around the open kitchen. By 7:30 p.m., the place was full and alive with buzz. (Note: This was early in the week. Weekday reservations are getting harder to snag, and prime-time weekend reservations are booked through early November.)

Even those of us who weren’t old pals basked in Mr. Fearing’s signature royal treatment. He shook hands, hugged or, at minimum, made friendly eye contact with every customer in the room.

The hustling swarm of servers looked flustered at times f=but never let the ball drop. We had a particularly nice moment when one food runner noticed that we’d eaten all the corn muffins out of our breadbasket. Unprompted, he returned moments later with a gluttonous heap f the moist little quick breads.

OK, so how’s the food? Much like the space: a fetching collage of styles. Mr. Fearing has expressed his desire to create a menu “without borders.”  Yet even though dishes like five-spice hamachi with avocado cream and spicy ponzu area among the offerings, a strong undercurrent of Southwestern flavors ripples through his dishes. A crisp taquito filed with autumnal butternut squash flanks buffalo tenderloin. Quail is swabbed with a watermelon-jalapeño glaze. Barbequed shrimp taco includes a smoky citrus vinaigrette.

In fact, if I let myself indulge in one preview criticism, it would be that smoky flavors may dominate a little too much, especially in Dean’s Tortilla Soup. Yet I love the nonregional simplicity of two summer salads: lobster with mango and basil paired with a concise sphere of diced heirloom tomato with basil vinaigrette. And a custardy banana pudding.

Do these creations lean toward Old Dean? New Dean? Cant tell you. All I know is that it’s Now Dean.

Fearings Smokin’ at Ritz

By Alan Peppard

So what exactly has Dean Fearing been doing in the year and a half since he life The Mansion on Turtle Creek and opened his new restaurant, Fearing’s in the Ritz-Carlton?

He’s been practicing the guitar.

At Saturday night’s black-tie gala to christen the just-opened Ritz, Dean and his band, the Barbwires, entertained the crowd. Dean has been holy ghost-filled with the spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan. An avid guitar collector, Dean switched between two Fender Telecasters as he played serious lead licks on tunes writen with his chef pal Robert Del Grande, owner of Café Express casual dining restaurants. Robert also provided slid guitar work on his hollow-body Gretsch while local sax man Johnny Reno was onstage cleaning up any muddy breaks.

The Ritz and Fearing’s opened a month ago, but Saturday’s gala in the Ritz ballroom was the signature opening event.

Among those present were John Goff and Denny Alberts, who as CEO and president, respectively, of Crescent Real Estate Equities oversaw the development of the Ritz condo-hotel development. (Last month, the entire Crescent company, including the Ritz, was sold to Morgan Stanely in New York.)

Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Barbara Fairchild was on hand (the magazine co-sponsored the weekend opening events) as was the indefatigable chef Cat Cora from the Food Network’s Iron Chef America. Cat inducted Dean into the Chef’s Council of the Chefs for Humanity, a food professionals coalition she co-founded to provide emergency humanitarian aid.

Dean cuisine

Former Mansion chef Dean Fearing has a new home at the Ritz-Carlton Dallas

 By JUNE NAYLOR

 If hype were a noise, the cacophony heralding the return of Dean Fearing to the Dallas dining scene would be deafening.

But once you find the volume control once you get past the overture – “Elevated American” cuisine! Bold flavors, no borders!  Seven dining rooms! – you find the important element: It’s still Dean, but tuned up and ready to rock again.

Opened on Wednesday at the terribly grand new Ritz-Carlton Dallas, Fearing’s signals a fresh edition of the dining experience that made this drawling Kentucky-born chef with the giant smile a one-name presence of international renown.  Much as he made the Mansion on Turtle Creek Restaurant a cuisine powerhouse for more than two decades, the charismatic chef who hobnobs with Wolfgang Puck and other certified bon vivants is expected to bring the world to his new home.

Three of us stopped in to see what the fuss was about, finding much to mull over; it will take several dinner visits for anyone to truly absorb Fearing’s overall production.

To wit, there’s the assortment of dining venues, one for each day of the week – or for whatever purpose you have in mind, whether it’s wooing a new love interest or impressing a client.  You can pick a counter seat in Dean’s Kitchen, where the cooking action is in your lap, or opt for the stone Wine Cellar or the elegant Gallery, where we sat amid smoky mirrors rimmed in backlit honey onyx.  In milder weather, the outdoor Live Oak Bar will be sensational; for now, the inside Rattlesnake Bar, with its mellow lighting and leather barstools, as yummy and velvety as Valrhona chocolate, is the best place to sip margaritas and nibble on appetizers.

The apps we tried included Dean’s new signature dish and a play on his most famous creation.  Instead of lobster, he’s putting shrimp lavished with the celebrated Sonny Bryan’s barbecue sauce inside a flour-tortilla taco ($20), along with a mango-pickled red onion salad and a smoky citrus vinaigrette.

There’s also the combo starter of foie gras glistening with a honey-soy glaze atop caramelized peaches hinting of ginger, alongside a slightly browned plump scallop over a watercress salad decorated with a little papaya ($24).   Easy for two to share, it could be also be a light entrée.

Entrees, which, like all dishes, feature ingredients sourced from as many local suppliers as is possible, run the gamut from fish to fowl to meat, including game.  All indications are that the buffalo tenderloin ($44), swept with maple and cloaked in black peppercorns, will be the rage.  True to Dean’s Southwestern sensibilities, it’s served over jalapeño grits with a butternut squash-filled taquito on the side.

For hints of Asia, there’s a dish of pheasant with orange-ginger overtones, served atop curried-shrimp fried rice with tempura-crusted white asparagus and tiny shiitakes ($38).  Want to see where Tex meets Mex?  Try the chicken-fried lobster and spicy filet with queso fresco corn-potatoes and a spinach enchilada ($48).

Oh, and if you’re still hankering for more of the symphony of Dean, do ask for a to-go order of Bliss to Blisters, the new alt-country CD from his chef-fueled band, the Barbwires, now starring Fort Worth’s own Johnny Reno.  Altogether, Dean’s beat goes on.

Dean’s new scene

By Amy Culbertson

Dallas isn’t taking Dean for granted anymore.

Open up a copy of the July or August Bon Appetit magazine, and there’s his familiar face, looking out from a two-page ad inside the cover.  Rest assured that it won’t be the last mention of Dean Fearing showing up in the national foodie mags in coming months.

Some 16 months ago, Fearing dropped a bombshell on Dallas’ restaurant scene when he up and left his gig at the posh Mansion on Turtle Creek after 21 years as executive chef.  Next Wednesday, he’ll be presiding over the city’s most-anticipated restaurant opening in years: his very own place, Fearing’s, in the new Ritz-Carlton Dallas.

At age 52, Dean Fearing is once again Dallas’ most-talked-about chef.

“A lot of people, and not just in Dallas, are going to be taking a look to see what Dean’s up to,” says formerDallas Morning News restaurant critic Dotty Griffith.  “Can he really reinvent himself?”

Breaking from the past

With his Lucchese boots, his rocker haircuts, his larger-than-life energy and his disarming down-home manner, Fearing has been an icon of Dallas fine dining for a quarter-century.  Wolfgang Puck and Jacques Pepin hang out with him.  Cookbooks, TV shows, his own line of sauces, a James Beard Award, the cover of Gourmet magazine – all are on his résumé.

But the young scenesters populating the tables these days at Trece and Tillman’s Roadhouse were still eating Spaghetti-Os when he made his name as one of the creators of Southwestern cuisine.  The trend-obsessed restaurant world has seen a lot of hot chefs come and go since Dean Fearing whipped up his first lobster taco.

And the rap on the Mansion was that it had stood still for a lot of those years, its elegantly appointed tables populated largely by rich blue-hairs.  No longer was Dean’s food on the must-try list for in-the-know foodies visiting Dallas from other cities.  No, they were more likely to head for a cutting edge spot like, say, Shinsei, which just happens to have a former Mansion chef in the kitchen and Fearing’s wife Lynae as co-owner.

None of this has been lost on Dean Fearing, who is deeply happy to be leaving the lobster taco at the Mansion, where it remains as one of the last vestiges of the ‘80s Southwestern revolution on a menu his successor, John Tesar, has recast as “contemporary American.”

“I’ll never have to make it again,” Fearings says with a wry grin.

Fearing says it was the prospect of ownership – something he hadn’t experienced since he opened Agnew’s, the restaurant where he began to be noticed nationally, in the early ‘80s – that precipitated his decision to leave “one of the greatest chef gigs of all time” at the Mansion.

It was Denny Alberts, president of Crescent Real Estate Equities Co., the company that was building the new Dallas Ritz-Carlton hotel and condos, who approached him, as Fearing tells it.

“Denny came to me and said, ‘Dean, I’d like for you to be the chef in the Ritz hotel.’

“We’re at Starbucks in this kind of incognito dress; he’s got a baseball cap over his face.

“I said, ‘Denny, I don’t want to be the chef at the Ritz.  Why do a lateral move?  But if you and I want to become partners and we license the space at the Ritz…’”

The next morning, he says – after “the longest night of my history” – Alberts told him yes, and they began mapping out the plans.

Seven kinds of dining

When asked what he’s going to get to do at Fearing’s that he wasn’t able to do at the Mansion, Fearing doesn’t hesitate for a reply: “Casual food,” he says with feeling.

“I wanted to throw the coats away [at the Mansion].  The problem is everybody got scared.”

“Five years ago I started to see the downplay of people wanting to dress up,” he says.  “People didn’t want to do the 2 ½-hour dinner on a Thursday night any more.”

Fearing has put a lot of thought into how to adapt to that reality.  Obviously, he’s not going to be leaving the fine-dining market behind – not after two decades of building up a loyal following, and not with a menu whose entrée prices start at $34 for a chicken breast at dinner.

The answer, for Fearing, has been to build a restaurant with seven distinctly different rooms, for seven different dining experiences, from a soaring central dining room paneled in Brazilian mahogany to a clubby-elegant-chic bar and a dining room that’s literally part of the kitchen.

Today’s dishes, Fearing notes, tend to be creatures of the moment: “Nobody is making reservations a week out; nobody’s making up their minds what they’re going to eat before they look at the menu.  I wake up daily going, “Tonight do I want to eat curry; do I want to eat sushi?”

So in his new restaurant, he says, “you might get a cold sweet-corn vichysoisse; you might get a Grade A tuna ceviche.”

The local connection

These days, Fearing is describing his cooking with the phrase “elevated American cuisine, bold flavors, no borders.”

“It’s a farm-to-market approach to dining,” he adds.  He’s committed to using local growers and producers, Fearing insists, something that many Dallas chefs pay lip service to but that very few are really serious about.

He mentions herbs and produce from local grower and distributor Tom Spicer, buffalo and game from Louis Mathis’ Maverick Creek Ranch in Central Texas, cheeses and Guernsey-milk butter from Garland’s Lucky Layla Farms, “and Gary, my yard guy has the best Parker County peach connection; he’s a peach fanatic.”

But is all this – the maple black-peppercorn buffalo tenderloin on Anson Mills jalapeño grits and crispy butternut squash taquito, the $60,000 Italian glass chandeliers – enough to set Fearing apart from what dozens of other big-buzz chefs are doing in Dallas?

“Dean still has huge stature,” notes former restaurant critic Griffith, who covered Fearing’s breakout onto the national scene for the Morning News in the early ‘80s.

“If Dean declares it a trend, in some ways it is a trend,” says Griffith, now director of promotions for the Dallas Arboretum.

“I think he can be very cutting-edge.  He will do himself a disservice if he tries to re-create what he was doing,” she adds.

A down-to-earth star

Fearing’s ace in the hole just may be his ability to balance his status as superstar chef with his unpretentious, aw-shucks-I’m-just-a-Kentucky-boy charm and his infectious enthusiasm.  Nobody schmoozes better than Dean – his nightly rounds of the dining room were a not-insignificant factor in keeping customers coming back to the Mansion – and he has not lost his touch.

This is, after all, the chef who put his Granny Fearing’s recipe for Kentucky baked beans into his first cookbook – canned pork and beans, Heinz ketchup, yellow mustard and all – right alongside the warm lobster taco with yellow tomato salsa.  It’s the guy who threw a charity barbecue every year at the Mansion, where he got up on the stage to rock out with his all-chef band, the Barbwires.

Fearing took the months before the opening of his new restaurant, in fact, to record the Barbwires – which he fronts with fellow Southwestern-cuisine pioneer Robert Del Grande from Houston –  in saxist Johnny Reno’s Fort Worth studio.

“Johnny made the Barbwires sound like a million bucks,” he enthuses.  The disc, Bliss to Blisters, will be out just two weeks after the Ritz-Carlton opening, and Fearing seems almost as excited about the new record as he is about his new restaurant.

But not quite.  Standing at his restaurant’s front door, Fearing glances at the traffic coursing by onMcKinney Avenue, then at the hotel’s main entrance to his left, then back up at the door, where the “Fearing’s” sign is yet to go up.

“When that gets on, I’ll really cry,” he says.  “I’ll really know it’s there and it’s mine.”

Menu spans the globe

The lobster taco is gone, though Dean’s Tortilla Soup provides a nod to chef Dean Fearing’s past. Influences on the menu at his new Fearing’s restaurant range across the globe – Asian flavors are particularly evident – and prices are at the top end of the scale for Dallas: At dinner, appetizer prices vary from $12 for the tortilla soup to $24 for foie gras; entrees range from $34 to $50.  Some excerpts from the new menu:

Dinner

Starters

  • Barbecued Bluepoint Oysters With Artichokes, Spinach and Gulf Crab Meat, $18
  • Watermelon-Jalapeño-Glazed Quail on Three-Bean  Salad With Hushpuppy Prawn, $22

 

Main Courses

  • Orange-Ginger-Dipped Pheasant on Curried Shrimp Fried Rice With Tempura White Asparagus and Organic Shiitakes, $38
  • Griddled Wild Sea Scallops on Wilted Brussels Sprout Leaves and Smoked Virginia Ham With Tangerine Essence, $38

 

Lunch

Starters

  • Smoky Red Chile Caesar Salad With Grilled Radicchio, Baby Romaine, San Pedro Cheese and Tamale-Battered Shrimp, $16
  • Chilled Denton Asparagus With Basil Egg Salad, Fried Artichokes and Herbed Dressing, $12

 

Main Courses

  • Sticky Noodles With Garlic Prawns, Broccolini, Stir-Fry Vegetables, Soft-Boiled Egg and Ginger Sauce, $20
  • Chile-Braised Short Ribs With Summer Corn Whipped Potatoes and Crispy Tobacco Onions, $22

 

At Fearing’s, add seating options to the menu

“Step into my little world,” says Dean Fearing on the back loading dock of Dallas’ new Ritz-Carlton hotel. Threading his way through an anthill of hard-hatted workers, he strides through the back door of his brand-new kitchen – which is hardly little.

“Look at this line,” he says in awe.  “I haven’t seen this much stainless steel in years.”

There’s a wood-burning oven and a wood grill, plus a scrubber system to pull the mesquite smoke from the grill.

Which is a good thing, because the kitchen flows into the dining area that Fearing calls “Dean’s Kitchen.” Most “open kitchens” are separated from the diners by windowed walls, but here at Fearing’s, there are no walls between cooks and customers, just a long counter where diners who walk in without reservations can sit, and beveled copper hoods that define the kitchen’s perimeters.

The kitchen may be the heart of the restaurant, but there are six other dining spaces in the 6,000-square-foot Fearing’s:

The Gallery is the most formal room, with its soaring 18-foot ceilings, 9-foot-square Texas painting and massive smoked mirrors framed in milky-gold honey onyx illuminated from within.

But perhaps the most appealing room is the Rattlesnake Bar, enclosed in paneled walls of Brazilian mahogany inset with 8-foot-tall panels of dark leather.  More softly glowing honey onyx frames the back bar and the bar, whose elbow rail is covered in faux rattlesnake skin.

Outdoor patios are raised above street level and planted with 30-foot live oaks; a glassed-in pavilion can be opened up for alfresco dining.

There’s also the Wine Cellar, with a barrel ceiling of Austin stone and a feature that Fearing particularly likes to demonstrate: The glass wall panels are inset with electrodes that, at the push of a button, will change the glass from clear to frosted.

Dead or Alive?

by alex mann

Don’t stick a fork in Southwestern cuisine; Fearing and the gang are making sure it’s well done

In the ‘80s and early ‘90s big hair and shoulder pads weren’t the only things in vogue.  Chilies, cilantro and tortilla soup were making their own statement in the Texas culinary scene, creating a Southwestern cuisine that swept the state.  Who knew food could be trendy, too?  “Food is a lot like fashion.  Things go in and out of style.  When we started out, American cuisine was just coming onto the scene,” says Chef Stephan Pyles, also known as the Godfather of Southwestern Cuisine and guided the cooking movement with local cookbook author Anne Greer McCann, Houston’s Robert Del Grande, Aurora Chef Avner Samuel and former Mansion Chef Dean Fearing.  “We felt that Dallas was really ready for something that was different.  It just took off from there.”

The Gang of Five ushered in the existence of this new brand of eats, creating a niche in the annals of American cooking for themselves and for their Southwestern fare.

“The question I always ask with Southwestern cuisine is: ‘Is it the one true American cuisine?’” ponders Chef Dean Fearing, the Gang of Five’s resident rock star.  “I think it is much in the way the French have regionalized their cooking or Italians with theirs.  I guess there’s California cuisine, but what is that?  Does anybody really know what this is?”  And Fearing has a point.  The primary staple of Southwestern cuisine is its use of local products, incorporating ingredients native to the American Southwest, like spicy peppers and indigenous meats.  And while Georgia may have its grits and Maine likes lobsters, Southwestern cuisine utilizes regional goods extensively – in a way that no other part of the country really does.

“How could you be in Texas and not use chilies and cilantro?” asks Pyles, a fifth-generation Texan and chef/owner of the downtown Dallas restaurant that bares his name.  “That’d be a little like cooking in France and using Italian ingredients.”

It got so popular, in fact, that you’d not only find Southwestern in one of the Gang of Five’s respective establishments, but also at, well, less-reputable institutions.  The fast food industry caught onto the burgeoning success that was Southwestern cuisine and started to peddle Southwestern salads, sandwiches and wraps all over the place, at outlets such as Taco Bell and Wendy’s.

“I was always sort of ambivalent about that,” says Pyles.  “That’s where the title and the description become so important, so that people know that they’re actually getting good, healthy, well-prepared food.”

But since its popularity, the face of Southwestern cuisine has changed.  Where Chef Del Grande and Chef Pyles still serve up some of the state’s best Southwestern Cuisine at Café Annie and Stephan Pyles, respectively, the trend seems to have diminished.

The Mansion on Turtle Creek, once so famous as a Southwestern powerhouse doling out Chef Fearing’s famous Lobster tacos and tortilla soup (and still does even after his departure last year), is now reforming their food to resemble a more European feel under Chef John Tesar.

And the Gang of Five have gone their separate ways.  Chef Avner Samuel has experimented with European, Asian, and Mediterranean styles at Urban Bistro and Aurora, McCann writes cookbooks and Chef Fearing will soon open his new dining destination, the highly anticipated Fearing’s, in the new Ritz-Carlton this month.

Aside from Stephan Pyles restaurant, and to a lesser degree, Blue Mesa, Dallas seems to be lacking the spicy, homegrown grub to which it was once so accustomed.  We just have to pose the question: Has Southwestern’s star faded in the new millennium?  Has the Big D sun set on sour cream, cilantro and spicy chile peppers?

“I don’t think Southwestern Cuisine is dying,” says Chef Samuel, formerly Executive Chef at the Mansion on Turtle Creek.  “There are just so many other options if you want spicy food, like Vietnamese or Thai.”

Chef Pyles, whose restaurant is well known for the signature cuisine, agrees, believing that food trends thrive, fade, and revive on a regular basis.  “Like anything or any food, it’s cyclical.  I’d say now, Southwestern gets overshadowed by Tex-Mex,” he says.  “But I don’t think it’s dying.” In fact, Pyles is evolving Southwestern Cuisine by adding what he terms as a “new millennium” twist.  His more modern update on the style he once spearheaded includes combining Southwestern ingredients with an international touch.  “I think it speaks volumes for where we are in the world with global access,” he says.  “But it can be anything from Arabic fused with Old World/New World Spain – like Mexico and Peru.”

Dean Fearing thinks the food that made him one of this country’s most acclaimed chefs is hardly on the down turn.  “It will always be around,” claims Chef Fearing, whose new restaurant will feature a mix of Southwestern fare and traditional American concepts.  “There’s that spice that draws us to the food.  It’s why people like restaurants.  It has to be interesting, and to me Southwestern Cuisine certainly is.”

But if that’s the case, why isn’t someone stepping up and taking Southwestern Cuisine to new heights?  “I don’t know why someone hasn’t taken the reigns on it.  Stephan and I have talked about that,” says Fearing.  “We think that maybe the younger chefs see that he and I have sewn this thing up and ask themselves, ‘how could I compete against them?’”

Still, Fearing believes there’s a future in the spicy food.  “It will always be around and it will always be modern if it’s something new and if we can keep creat

Dallas’ Ritz gets ready for guests

By SUZANNE MARTA

The Ritz-Carlton Dallas opens Aug. 15, and officials are busy putting the finishing touches on the 218-room luxury hotel in Uptown.

It’ll be the Ritz’s first U.S. hotel opening in nearly four years.

For Dallas, it means having the only Ritz in the Lone Star state and gaining the attention of groups that regularly book the luxury brand for events.”It reinforces that Dallas is emerging as a top destination in the country, with a variety of options for visitors at every level,” said Phillip Jones, chief executive of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.

On any given day, 600 workers are on site as crews install landscaping, complete punch lists and ready the hotel for guests.

“Each day, we turn a corner here,” said Roberto van Geenen, the Ritz’s general manager.

Furniture for the guest rooms began arriving in late May.

More than 100,000 items, such as silverware, goblets, pillows and four kinds of hangers were unpacked last week. Hair dryers, coffee makers and irons were all tested by hotel staff.

The 1,000 imported linen bags– which will be hung on each room door with the day’s newspaper – are still on their way.

This week, celebrity chef Dean Fearing and his team begin trial runs in his eponymous restaurant. Carpets in high-traffic areas will be laid. Murano glass chandeliers and artwork will be installed.

For employees, it’s a lot of details to make sure everything is in place in time for a photo shoot Thursday.

But it’s not all hard work. Someone has to test the spa treatments.

 

16,242: Pieces of silver-plated flatware by German manufacturer Hepp, including special forks and knives for fish entrees

12,000: Plush bathroom towels, including the large bath “sheet” style

5,183: Riedel crystal stemware in a half-dozen styles, so fine it must be hand-washed

4,000: Milk and dark chocolates (just the initial order) by France’s top-end chocolatier Valrhona for nightly turndown services

1,500: Pairs of terry cloth slippers for relaxing in the guest rooms

1,500: Banquet glasses in the Ritz’s trademark cobalt blue

800: Custom-designed porcelain chargers by Rosenthal

436: Imported wood luggage racks

284: Goose-and-duck down mattress tops, custom-made by Pacific Coast Feather

30: Brands of tequila for its two bars