“Aren’t you going to play PGA West or a Pete Dye
course at La Quinta?”
my wife asked innocently. “Those aren’t desert cool,” I
sniffed. “What
is?” she persisted. Desert Dunes, the Robert Trent Jones Jr.
layout on
the windy side of Interstate 10 in Desert Hot Springs, and the
fun-to-walk Billy Bell course at Tahquitz Creek in Palm Springs, would
qualify. The Arthur Hills layout at Heritage Palms is a new
course with an old desert feel. “You want to avoid the programmed
feeling of the
big resorts”—that’s what Jack McCann advised me earlier
in the weekend. McCann,
a former PGA Tour caddie and two-time college
all-American, is a frequent
visitor to the Coachella Valley. We bumped
into McCann and his
wife, who were doing a little house-hunting in the
area.
There’s nothing programmed about Arnold Palmer’s
Restaurant in La
Quinta. Locals routinely clear out tables in the homey piano
bar for
some serious retro dance action. For the ultimate in ’60s-era golf
memories, I asked for a table in the Masters or U.S. Open dining rooms,
where
vintage sports magazine covers compete for wall space with the
club Hogan gave
Arnie to drive the first hole at Cherry Hills in 1960.
Boasting a superb
comfort-food menu, a lighted nine-hole putting course
and an unbelievable
collection of golf memorabilia, Arnold Palmer’s
Restaurant may be the best night
out in the Coachella Valley.
Especially when the King himself
drops in—four to five nights a week
when he’s in town.
As a restaurateur Arnie still has a way to go to
match Mel Haber,
whose Melvyn’s establishment has been a Palm Springs landmark for
30
years. Haber bought us drinks in the bar and recounted Ol’ Blue Eyes (“Mr.
S.,” as Haber calls him) having his pre-wedding party and nearly
punching out
two paparazzi at Melvyn’s.
It seems everyone has a Mr. S. story when you’re on
a Palm Springs
weekend. I visited Johnny Costa’s Ristorante, where owner and chef
Vince Costa
spun tales about his father cooking for the head desert
rat. “The Purple Room at
Club Trinidad was the Rat Pack hangout in the
’60s,” Costa says. “When my dad
left to open his own restaurant in
Desert Hot Springs, the chef called one night
to say Sinatra was
furious because the linguini and clams were terrible. My dad
carefully
explained, over the phone, how to prepare linguini and clams the way
Frank liked it. The chef from the Trinidad
couldn’t stop
thanking him.”
My own desert Sinatra
story? Peering through the gates of his first
home in Palm Springs, I saw an
Ermine-white 1958 Chrysler 300D, the
famed “forward look” which exemplified the
fast, clean lines of that
decade. It had gleaming sidewalls and chrome-striped
tailfins. How
desert cool is that?
