John Sharpe, chef at the acclaimed Turquoise Room restaurant at the historic and massively successful La Posada hotel in Winslow, Ariz., revealed a few newsworthy items in his regular email newsletter Sunday.
First, construction on all the hotel’s rooms is about to come to an end. Sharpe said:
We are presently at 49 and will top 53 by April. More guests staying here translates to more people to feed so we will have to be ready by April.
Second, La Posada is about to expand further:
We have made some modifications to the kitchen that will help us do just that (expansion). Allan is relocating our management offices to the area that used to be the original front desk of the hotel.
This is to facilitate the next phase of the hotel’s expansion eastwards into the Depot and the grounds surrounding this area. We are hoping to have increased seating by the spring of 2013 in the form of a patio. It will be entered from the east end of the dining room where you now see us going into the management office. This building, known as the “Spam Room,” is to be demolished. It will make way for the partially enclosed patio. As a footnote – the “Spam Room” is where the spam sandwiches were prepared during World War Two. Many troop trains stopped in Winslow as they carried the troops to war and back home again.
There will be the planting of a “Chefs’ Garden” as well as a vineyard. All of this will enhance the eastern entrance to what will be the transformation of the Depot into art gallery space also being referred to as the Museum project.
The back of the kitchen will be thankfully hidden behind walls and so that the eastern part of the property can be as desirable a place to walk as some of the other areas. Construction is due to start on this later in 2012. I will keep you posted through my newsletters and blog.
La Posada sits next to Route 66 on one side, and the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad tracks on the other.
La Posada’s owner, Alan Affeldt, also seeks to renovate and reopen the long-closed El Garces in Needles, Calif. Like La Posada, El Garces was built as a Harvey House.