Rosewood Sand Hill Takes You On a Vacation

Getting Away From It All, Right Here

Sometimes an escape is just your state of mind. You can sit in your backyard with a good book and feel far away from the day-to-day, a reminder that getting away from it all doesn’t have to be location-based. Similarly, there are places for escaping much closer to home than a far-flung island vacation—a staycation of sorts—that takes you into the realm of reset.

Right here on Sand Hill Road, the epicenter of venture capital amidst the hustle and bustle of global tech finance, sits Rosewood Sand Hill. In an unassuming cluster of similarly colored office buildings, right off the 280, you’ll find an opportunity for an immersive retreat.

The Rosewood brand as a whole is committed to regionality, meaning that any of the hotel properties you visit all over the world will feel like the place they sit. Art, food, culture, nature—all of the elements that make a place a place—are important to preserve and contribute to the reason we travel. Rosewood understands this well, and at Sand Hill, a place that may already be quite familiar, you will feel this sense of place.

Escape On The Plate

At Madera, the hotel restaurant, Executive Chef Roman Petry is a true believer in this regionality as well. He is quick to extoll his gratitude to our local producers, farmers, vintners, bakers and fisherfolk.

Originally from Germany, and growing up in a family of green grocers with big reverence for vegetables and seasonality, Petry says he was lucky enough to work all over the world before he finally visited the Bay Area. He says “it was really special; it reminded me of being in Europe.”

He thinks this area is unique due to “the abundance and passion that goes into it from all the farmers and vintners, with such a deep respect for nature and having that ecosystem here. We have to support it as much as we can. We have a great responsibility. That’s really what makes cooking here so special, and it also makes it almost easy. You go to the farm and you see something that grows, you just treat it so differently, with so much more respect.”

While he acknowledges that there’s already an appreciation in our community for local produce and seasonality, he says that his position as a hotel chef means that “when you have guests coming from all over, it’s an opportunity to show them.”

The menu is full of these acknowledgments and learning opportunities as well, in the form of seasonally changing dishes that shift frequently to include whatever is available to the kitchen. Petry’s favorite risotto is a reflection of this, always on the menu and made with simple ingredients. In the late spring it was Sacramento Delta asparagus with morel mushrooms and in the fall it is made with matsutake mushrooms, using a mushroom tea instead of a typical broth, then topped with shaved raw matsutake and pine nuts. Petry notices how this dish is so connected to place, commenting that when you sit over a bowl of the risotto, “you can smell the forest, and then look outside and see the Santa Cruz Mountains.”

The commitment to local is also notable. The kitchen and bar only use Dandelion chocolate in all preparations, such as the super decadent chocolate hazelnut cake or the Grasshopper after-dinner cocktail. While the pastry team may beg for some creamier or sweeter options, Chef Petry sticks to his decision to only have 75% or higher chocolate from the SF bean-to-bar brand. And Madera’s menu is peppered with farm names within the dish descriptions, from Brokaw to Dirty Girl to Fifth Crow to Don Watson.

Carol Sato, director of communications at Rosewood Sand Hill, emphasizes this. “It’s local, all the way down to the salt … 95% of our ingredients!”

Sense of Place

The design throughout the property is also very place appropriate. Neutral tones, nubby textures and understated elegance all evoke a sense of where we are in California. The rooms have special touches, like the glass candy bowl with paper-wrapped chocolates and smoky jewel-colored glassware. Bath products are from Flamingo Estate in Los Angeles, a special property that grows and produces their own olive oil and creates their body products from it. Rosewood also partners with Flamingo Estate for the afternoon tea, served in the library every weekend showcasing Flamingo Estate’s honey paired with organic fine teas, pastries and tea sandwiches.

Their Bici coffee shop brings an Italian riviera vibe in the bicycle-themed colorscape (bici (pronounced like beachy) is short for bicicleta in Italian). It’s quickly become a favorite for our own cycling community, who stop by before, after or during a ride to grab a Manresa Bread pastry or Cat & Cloud espresso drink. The gelato cart, serving gelato made by the culinary team in a variety of classic and seasonal flavors, is parked in front of Bici and hard to miss. You also can’t skip Spritz O’Clock on the bocce court, a vintage cart that appears every weekend during happy hour.

Full Immersion

But since this is really a story about escape, let’s focus on that spa, recently refreshed into the new Asaya Spa, a designation that Rosewood only gives to certain spas that meet specific criteria. It is here that you will find the ultimate sanctuary: Immerse yourself into serenity and wellness. With several treatment rooms and private men’s and women’s lounges, the elegant space is united with a large coed lounge area that opens into an outdoor courtyard with a green tiled waterfall feature.

Asaya also offers a multitude of experiential programs, from the Bici Run Club that is free to join all the way to an immersion package with a 90-minute Resonance Ritual massage treatment. This incorporates chimes and Tibetan singing bowls on top of your body and lightly run along your arms and legs to transfer the vibration, a whole body and mind unification. The sounds are played by the practitioner, who softly walks around the massage table to create a circular sound that takes over the space.

The package also comes with a star chart reading by Kendra, an individualized look at your sun, moon and rising signs and what that even means. “It’s very complementary to wellness,” she says, about doing a reading after a massage treatment, when you are present and grounded in healing. These readings are also available to book separately, as are private sound bath sessions, guided by Spencer who also teaches a weekly Ashtanga yoga class, the more structured traditional series style of yoga poses (free for overnight guests). “92% is you, 3% is me, and the other 5% is magic,” he says about the power of the parasympathetic activation that sound frequencies can provide from his concert gongs and Empyrean crystal singing bowls.

Day Guests & Locals Welcome

You don’t need to be an overnight guest to tap into Rosewood’s offerings. Asaya Spa is open to the public with their full menu of treatments, and the popular Lifestyle Membership gives locals access to fitness classes, the spa and pool. Sato says that Asaya spa is definitely the most popular thing that locals utilize, especially after the recent refresh. But “the Lifestyle Membership has also been popular with the community,” she adds, noting that members
like to use the pool to do laps, especially on weekdays.

We can visit Madera restaurant and the atmospheric Madera Bar anytime. The Flamingo Estate Afternoon Tea, Bici Coffee and Gelato Cart are always open for the public, as well as the monthly Clubhouse Series events, where guest speakers and educators visit. The hotel can also put together a myriad of curated itineraries, even for non-guests, to take you deeper into reset mode. These include hiking excursions, wine tasting tours, falconry, even custom scent blending workshops with the onsite Swirl Works. And something to look forward to is the At the Table Dinner Series. Each of these dinners features a local farm that Chef Petry sources from, and he prepares a four-course meal with wine pairings to showcase the seasonal harvest. At the end of the night, you can take home a complimentary farm box packed with produce as the best kind of dinner party gift.

Time to book those experiences or even pack your bags, but no plane ride needed!