The Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, NM
PLAZA HOTEL
Ince upon a time in the Wild West, the Plaza Hotel reigned supreme over the picturesque town square of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Built by land baron Don Benigno Romero in 1882, the Plaza’s brick-red facade, ornate cornices, and cast-iron columns welcomed travelers getting off the newly built railroad to do business in the boomtown, earning the hotel the nickname “the Belle of the Southwest.” The Plaza Hotel prospered through the Gilded Age — for decades, Las Vegas was New Mexico’s largest shipping and trading center, as well as the wool capital of the United States.
But the town’s fortunes changed in the 20th century, and now a much sleepier and more off beat Plaza Hotel plays host to a trickle of curious travelers — along with a steady stream of movie stars working on films in the area, many of whose photographs (Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Edward James Olmos) adorn the plush halls outside the rooms they’ve stayed in. Freshly renovated in 2014, the hotel retains its Victorian charm and showcases a strong commitment to local history. It’s easy to imagine the parlor-like lobby filled with bustled women and topcoated men ascending the grand staircases to their suites overlooking the plaza. And on a golden fall weekend, it’s a good place to let time stand still, listen to some ghost stories, and enjoy an impressive steak and some righteous chile.
To the right of the lobby sits the bar, Byron T.’s Saloon, named after an early owner of the hotel, Byron T. Mills. Mills, who died in 1947, is said to haunt the hotel, specifically Room 310, which was purportedly his office. He’s a friendly ghost — a cigar-smoker and drawerrattler, according to lore — and perhaps a lonely one. He loves the ladies. A desk clerk said that reservationists try not to put women traveling alone in 310, as they’ve heard serial reports of inappropriate taps and squeezes in the night. At least one traveler on Yelp, however, boasts of a delightfully erotic encounter with Mr. Mills, and swears she’ll be back.
The bar is a local institution — Thursday nights for karaoke, Fridays for live music — and its eclectic vibe is true to the checkered landscape of Las Vegas today. Though its bones — marble bar, tin ceiling, and Victorian encaustic tile — match the rest of the hotel, the furniture is more suited to a VFW or conference room. Under one of the large TVs that dominate the room, I enjoyed the menu’s effervescent Old Thyme Victorian cocktail of Hendrick’s Gin, thyme syrup, lemon, and soda while questioning a couple of bartenders about ghostly events in the hotel. One told us the goosebump-inducing story of a recent guest and her young daughter, who encountered a silent man in turn-of-the-century dress in the lobby and rode the elevator with him to the third floor. The next day, the daughter saw a photo of Mr. Mills and insisted the man in the elevator had been him, down to the exact same shoes. Another bartender smirked about a persistent, mysterious knock at the saloon’s back door when he’s closing up for the night. There is never anyone there when he goes to open the door.
The hotel’s restaurant, the Gilded Age Dining Room, has been lovingly restored by local artisans, with golden Venetian plaster walls, baby-blue columns, and handsome furniture. Hung with Navajo rugs and vibrant santos, the room affords a fine view of the plaza as well as a pretty good meal. One dinner began with a fiery vegetarian green chile stew that had a lovely homemade simplicity. (In keeping with the small-town charm, our server told us the hotel’s chile is supplied by a local doctor.) Another appetizer, a grilled Romaine salad accented with a heap of quinoa with sliced almonds and strawberries, seemed to echo the somewhat out-of-step character of the bar’s furniture; the lettuce arrived undressed, and though the ingredients were high quality, their combination seemed haphazard.
We questioned the server about ghosts, of course, and were rewarded with another eerie tale. This one concerned a young girl with Down’s syndrome who visited Molly Boyle The New Mexican
the lobby some years ago. One patron noticed the girl interacting enthusiastically with no one, and took an interesting photograph, which is kept at the lobby desk. We asked to see it, and the server promised to find it. But first she brought to the table the meal’s highlight, my pal’s massive, nicely seasoned dry-aged rib-eye steak. Though he had ordered it medium rare, its temperature was on the rarer side, a slight misstep he said mattered not one bit once he had taken his first bite. Its char was a perfect crosshatch, and the sides were sublime — roasted rosemary fingerling tomatoes and a plump tangle of glistening calabacitas.
Having recently spent a happy hour picking raspberries at the Salman Ranch north of Las Vegas, I couldn’t do without ordering the Salman salmon, which arrived alongside an addictively tangy raspberry-caper sauce. The fish was moist and savory with its accompanying roasted broccolini, more quinoa, and a glass of dry Acrobat Pinot Gris.
Dessert was a outsize hunk of cinnamon-laced monkey-bread pudding swimming in a light caramel sauce and topped with fresh whipped cream and mint. Its soft, chewy, complex sweetness kept us in the real world as we examined the strange photograph the server had dug up from the lobby. The faded image showed the young girl talking animatedly to the blurred, ghostly figure of what looked very much to be another little girl.
After lingering longer than we should have outside Room 310, waiting for something to happen, we spent a comfortable night upstairs in the former room of Romaine Fielding (1867-1927) — a dashing silent-film actor and director who made dramatic Westerns in Las Vegas. Here, we experienced no ghostly visitors but a few odd dreams among the well-maintained period decor and furnishings. The early morning dining room was suffused with bright, comforting sunlight, and the names of the breakfast items on the menu, like Byron’s Blue-corn Hotcakes and Billy the Kid’s Breakfast Tacos, paid sweet tribute to local historical figures. I sipped a wellfoamed cappuccino while awaiting an order of Fred Harvey’s Huevos Rancheros, a nod to the industrious builder of the Castañeda Hotel across town, which is currently under renovation by the Plaza’s owner, Allan Affeldt, and slated to reopen in 2019. (Affeldt co-owns another former Harvey House, the impeccably restored La Posada hotel in Winslow, Arizona.)
Accented by the same sinus-clearing green and red chile from the night before, the hefty plate of huevos provided more than enough fuel for the drive home, with buttery scrambled eggs, real-deal charro beans, and crispy papitas under a melted lake of Jack and cheddar cheese. The Pendaries French toast, named for one of the original hotel partners, featured locally made cinnamon bread, sliced bananas, and a storm of powdered sugar.
We returned our (real!) keys and stepped out onto the leafy plaza, where I looked up at the hotel’s imposing facade, accented at the roofline with an odd broken pediment that resembles a pair of wings. From its territorial heyday to decline and abandonment by the 1970s, then restoration beginning in the ’80s, the Plaza Hotel remains in flux, much like the city of Las Vegas itself. It’s often remarked upon in town that the hotel can’t keep an executive chef for more than a year or so — and indeed, that position is currently vacant, though we found our meals to be much better than adequate for a weekend visit.
But according to Affeldt, 2018 marks the restaurant’s takeover by Matt DiGregory, owner of Bernalillo’s Range Café and Albuquerque’s Standard Diner. DiGregory is also said to have signed onto the Castañeda’s food-andbeverage program, which means big changes are afoot in the small town of Las Vegas — as usual.