Family spirit
Snowbasin, Compass Rose Lodge, Dubai perfume, Cypsèle, La Cigale, Gina, Pauline, Nakaji, MORE
ASK FOUND
One PROMPT for which we seek your intelligence:
Tell us about your favorite hotel in the world, one worth booking an entire trip around.
More answers or questions? Hit reply or email found@itsfound.com.
GETAWAYS • Utah
Dry powder
While Park City spent two decades converting Olympic afterglow into a full-fledged luxury product — Ikon Pass integration, celebrity sightings at High West, lift lines that suggest Manhattan briefly relocated to the Wasatch range — Snowbasin took a different path.
The resort, 33 miles northeast of Salt Lake City, sits above Huntsville, population 603. The median age is just over 50. Median home values recently crossed $650,000. A boomtown, it isn’t. It’s a place that’s aged in place.
Earl Holding bought Snowbasin in 1984, when it was still a modest day area. When Utah landed the 2002 Winter Games, Holding built the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City to house sponsors, then quietly poured capital into Snowbasin itself: Canadian spruce lodges, lift infrastructure built for throughput, and a downhill course Anderl Molterer once called the best in the world. The family still runs the resort, maintaining independence while most comparable mountains continue getting absorbed into pass ecosystems.
On paper, Snowbasin offers 3000 acres and 3000 vertical feet. More importantly, it holds powder days for longer after storms, like the two feet of snow it received this week.
You can park for free without having to plan ahead. The food is homespun and tasty: Earl’s Lodge at the base serves fresh-carved turkey and curry noodles. The Needles Lodge, higher up, pours proper cocktails. The infrastructure borrows from timeless European alpine codes — places built to support skiing first, real estate second — translated to American scale.
The tricky bit can be deciding where to stay, as most hotels are a drive and there’s not a lot of on-mountain lodging. Down in Huntsville, my choice is Compass Rose Lodge (above). Opened in 2018, it’s a handsome 15-room boutique hotel with a unique observatory for guests to survey the night skies.
Down the block from the Compass Rose, the Shooting Star Saloon has been operating since 1879. During Prohibition, word traveled faster than the authorities. Dollar bills from 70 years of patrons cover the ceiling. Buck, a 298-pound Saint Bernard who once held a Guinness record, died in 1957; his stuffed head still watches the room. The menu fits on a napkin dispenser. The Star Burger (two patties, Polish knackwurst, grilled onions) and $3 beers maintain their reasonable pricing. Cash only.
Park City turned its Olympic moment into a perpetual performance. Deer Valley refined restraint into a marketable luxury aesthetic. Snowbasin simply kept doing what it’s always done: grooming to high standards, providing access to powder, and serving actual food at lodges. It doesn’t shout about it, and that’s the appeal. –Colin Nagy
→ Snowbasin Resort (Huntsville, UT).
→ Compass Rose Lodge (Huntsville, UT) • 198 S 7400 E • Reserve.
GETAWAYS LINKS: A century later, Paris hotel Le Bristol remains a beacon of hospitality design • Provence in bloom • Checking in to Pulitzer Amsterdam, within 25 restored canal houses • Previously Andaz, remade Alilah Mayakoba opens on Riviera Maya • Jamaica’s Half Moon (and resort-inside-resort Eclipse) set April reopening • I went to East Africa.
REAL ESTATE • Portugal
Three properties currently on offer on the island of Madeira.
→ Santo António (Funchal, Madeira, above) • 3BR/5BA, 3089 SF house • Ask: $2.82M • newly built villa with infinity pool and barbecue area • Agent: Stephanie Russo, Sotheby’s.
→ Arco Da Calheta (Calheta, Madeira) • 3BR/3BA, 4305 SF house • Ask: $4.9M • modernist house set on cliffside with swimming pool and firepit • Agent: Links Home Real Estate.
→ Porto Moniz (Funchal, Madeira) • 7BR/7BA, 5338 SF house • Ask: $5.28M • large contemporary villa with heated saltwater swimming pool • Agent: Stephanie Russo, Sotheby’s.
RESTAURANTS • Paris
Island away
A famous tourist trap on Île Saint-Louis gets a makeover by two cool operators — one, a gutsy young chef, the other, his talented sommelier (and business partner). There hasn’t been so much carefully calibrated buzz about a restaurant here since the ‘80s, when the Baroness Marie Helene de Rothschild held beau monde dinner parties at her Hôtel Lambert and a slightly catty, la-vie-en-rose atmosphere tinged the late actor Jean-Claude Brialy’s flower-filled restaurant L’Orangerie. Maybe Cypsèle will make the Île Saint-Louis sexy again?
Still gelling after opening in November, but already frequented by a promising mixture of aristocratic locals, like the three poodles accompanying a studiously disheveled divorcee (she told the waiter as much) and the handsome older man with her (who was, also by her telling, her grandfather). Also, alert Parisian design fiends (for the brilliant décor); a regularly changing regiment of young chefs and their friends here to support two of their own; and fashion folks and photographers. This is a friendly, unpretentious place with a winning, tough-to-pull-off equilibrium between the relaxed ambience of a country auberge and the precision of supervailing big-city service. –Alexander Lobrano
RESTAURANTS • San Francisco
Old flame
The newest French spot in the village of Glen Park, La Cigale is the brainchild of chef Joseph Magidow and his wife Daisy Linden. Its wood-burning grill fired up at the start of fall, serving 15 seats twice per night from a daily, scribbled menu of dishes cooked over live fire. It’s gotten some heat for its seating policy, and neighbors have complained about the restaurant’s wafting smoke. But if you love rustic French fare, it’s an illuminating experience.
The Burgundy red storefront looks out on tree-lined Chenery Street. I found myself second in line when I arrived at 4p, which is advised: The restaurant starts taking names for the early and late seatings at 430p, and it fills up quickly. I made it into the first seating at 6p. After killing an hour at the library, we bellied up to the omakase-style counter. Every seat has a full view of the custom grill, which is tricked out with levers, pulleys, and ducks twirling on strings.
Magidow balances a chalkboard on the bar, from which you choose three courses plus supplements. Two people dining together can try most of the menu, which is inspired by Occitania, an ancient corner of southwest France. –Becky Duffett
AROUND FOUND • Other Notable Intel & Recs
→ LONDON: Pastry chef, cookbook author and Junior Bake Off judge Ravneet Gill shared the trials and tribulations of building a debut restaurant with her followers, before finally opening Gina (above) with her husband (chef Mattie Taiano) last summer. On the high street opposite Chingford station, the restaurant is technically in London, though only just — but Gina’s outstanding, simple food shortens the distance.
→ MIAMI: After reemerging on Collins Avenue last summer with a sophisticated lobby bar, The Shelborne by Proper (intel) debuted its marquee restaurant, Pauline, in November. Built on South Florida’s coastal bounty, with Caribbean and Latin influences, the restaurant is a homecoming for Florida Keys native chef Abram Bissell, who honed his craft in some of NYC’s top kitchens, including Eleven Madison Park and The Modern.
→ NY: Tucked inside Canal Arcade, Nakaji serves a phenomenal, 16-course ($365 per) Edomae-style omakase with a particular knack for sourcing the auction-grade uni of your dreams. When Nakaji first opened weeks before lockdown in March 2020, he offered an optional add-on uni tasting. Now, those extraordinary bites are built into the menu, and he’s earned serious street cred for the unparalleled quality he sources.
ROUTINES • Restaurants
Select answers to the FOUND Routine query, What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
→ ELLIA PARK, co-founder, Na:eun Hospitality (Atomix et al), (NY): I really love loungewear, and I recently purchased silk loungewear from Comme Si. It’s incredibly soft, and it feels wonderful both when I’m sleeping and waking up.
→ ROMAIN PILATO, artistic florist, Maison Ciero (Paris): A Puzzle bag by Loewe! I absolutely love the brand.
→ MARK LOBEL, co-owner of Lobel’s Original; butcher & (5th generation) co-owner of Lobel’s Prime Meats(NY): A 36” Weber flat top griddle.
GETAWAYS • Dubai
Olfactory overload
Last fall, I booked a last-minute trip to Dubai. Having done zero research, a very stylish and well-traveled friend gave me one recommendation: a perfume and oils store at the Dubai Mall.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to FOUND Global to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.