Passing the Seasons in Shadows of Santa Rosas

The teapots are from all over the world. They can be seen during high tea in the Santa Rosa Room at La Quinta Hotel. The pots are English, Chinese, Japanese, Irish and Scottish. One, made to look like an Irish cottage, is just like the pot I bought in Galway.

Head chef Brad Nelson, who directs the hotel’s food staff of 150, was showing me around on a sharp, windy day not long before Christmas. La Quinta, which means country estate, and the town that grew up around it have seen the seasons come and go in the shelter of the Santa Rosa Mountains for more than half a century. The 65-year-old hotel carries a slightly worn elegance, with not a scrap of chrome or mirrored wall in sight.

Nelson has been executive chef since 1987, and during his tasty tenure he has built the Sunday brunch into a spread that might have made Lucullus fire his staff of cooks.

The brunch is presented from the first Sunday in October to Father’s Day in the La Mirage Room. The large center table features a huge ice carving. Last Sunday, the sculpture depicted twin marlins. The carvings are done by Rene Rivera, who is also sous chef of the El Adobe Grill, the Mexican restaurant upstairs.

The meal begins with salads and trimmings. Then there are crudites and a vegetable display that looks like a Frans Hals still life. What Nelson calls compound salads come next, six of them, including potato, rice and water chestnut concoctions. There are six pates, venison with peppercorns, a salmon and sole terrine, smoked salmon, eel, trout, crab, oysters and clams. Nelson says some people eat platefuls of one or two things while others sample everything, although I don’t see how that is possible.

Ceviche. Caviar. Sushi. Fresh and dried fruit. The carving station with baked ham and roast beef. Grilled catfish with crayfish sauce from Louisiana. The crepe station, where a chef makes plain or chocolate crepes and fills them with seven kinds of stuffings. Then the dessert station, a pastel picture with chocolate accents.

Nelson is a past president of the Palm Springs chapter of Les Toques Blanches and a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, where he earned the Most Promising Graduate award. He changes menus often to accommodate the freshest ingredients. He has developed Christmas menus that belong in Queen Victoria’s royal dining room. Prince Albert would have loved everything: roast goose, seared loin of venison, turkey, duck, roast beef, butternut squash soup.

Nelson lives in the cove in La Quinta with his two dogs, a husky named Samantha, and Katie, a yellow Lab. He is from Seattle, so his landscaping matches the green city where he grew up.

La Casa, the large Spanish-style residence on the hotel grounds, was the desert hideaway of Greta Garbo. Irving Berlin lived there when he wrote “White Christmas.”

Recently, the hotel staff turned La Casa into a winter wonderland for children, with Santa and Mrs. Claus, a full cadre of elves, games, presents, and a place to write letters to Santa. The biggest hit of the day was a petting zoo with a llama, a miniature pig and goats. Proceeds went to the Boys and Girls Club of the Coachella Valley.