Like something out of Hansel and Gretel, a larger-than-life gingerbread house made with hundreds of kilograms of sugar and spice has been luring in guests inside a southern Arizona resort.
Much like the fairy tale, people are free to enter and sit down by a roaring fire, but there is no wicked witch.
Instead, there is a server with a three-course menu.
A team of pastry chefs at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain in Marana made a gingerbread building that was more than a display for Christmas this year. The 5.8m-tall “house” has been operating for the past month as a private dining room and has become valuable real estate in terms of the attention.
There is no cost to walk through, but for US$150, you can reserve the whole thing. Up to six people can sit down and order meals and beverages from the hotel kitchen. The fireside fee does not include food.
The idea of a life-size gingerbread house where people could go in and out drew skepticism, even from some hotel workers.
However, head pastry chef Daniel Mangione was confident that it could be done.
“There’s a lot of gingerbread houses out there, but usually it’s just a facade and the inside is forgotten about,” Mangione said.
“But this year we really wanted to see if we could make it different,” he said.
After being operating since the Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 26, the house was to be deconstructed from today.
Mangione said that it would be remade in some form for Christmas next year.
“We want to do something a little different. We’re not really too sure what that might be,” Mangione said. “We might do a sushi counter.”
Pastry chefs first prepped for construction in June by making batches of gingerbread daily. They baked them with a reddish hue and cut them into “bricks.” They also pre-ordered massive quantities of ingredients, including 90kg of ginger powder, 181kg of honey, 2.3kg of cinnamon and 4.5kg of nutmeg.
“It’s a much larger project than what we’re working on day-to-day for banquets,” said Marlene Carollo, another pastry chef at the resort.
Mangione said it took a “baker’s dozen” about four days to tile the exterior.
More than 4,000 ginger bricks made of real gingerbread cover the outside walls and the roof. Gumdrops and peppermints adorn each tile in a precise pattern and the windows are framed with candy-cane trim.
Mangione said they have had to do a quick check of the house every day to see if anything has gone missing. So far, the only hazards have been children caught licking walls or a few peppermints at a child’s eye-level disappearing.
“Parents are very good about controlling their kids,” Mangione said. “We haven’t had any major loss of tile.”
The aromatic abode has elicited strong reactions from adults as well. One man asked if he could stay overnight. Another wanted to buy the house for his grandchildren.
Anne and Vincent Duffy, who were visiting from Los Angeles, happened upon the house while walking around the resort’s lobby.
The couple said they initially thought only the candy was real.
“I was really impressed that they made something of this size,” Anne Duffy said. “I love it.”
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure