While Palm Springs’ slow season is upon us, you’d never know it from the scene inside Bar Issi, the new downtown restaurant from LA-based Boujis Group, the visionary team behind LA hotspots Olivetta and Chez Mia. We booked into the Thompson Hotel to check out what locals had been telling us was the hottest opening in years. On a recent Thursday night it’s clear word had gotten out about the California-Mediterranean spot at the new Thompson Hotel and shops on North Palm Canyon Drive: the dining room is packed with locals in their best party attire, guests sip cocktails two deep at the horseshoe-shaped bar, and diners brave the heat at the outside tables under misters on the patio.
Jakob Layman
Even though temperatures can hit 110 Fahrenheit, there’s an intelligent art to making the most of summer season in Palm Springs: room rates dip to their lowest prices, crowds thin, and if you pick the right resort, time your pool time right, and book in to the best restaurants that are open for the season, you can have a lower-cost, high-impact, getaway. And the combination of Bar Issi and the Thompson make for an indulgent double dip.
Jakob Layman
Designed by Fettle, Bar Issi is a maximalist stunner: with high ceilings (gold mohair-lined and radiating like an indoor sun above the room no less); whimsical wallpaper of cavorting alligators, chic banquets, colorfully-upholstered bar stools, and dining chairs in jewel tones; and tall windows letting the place glow inward by day and outward by night. The room has a high energy theatrical air that makes the place feel like a mashup between the best brasseries of Paris and the restaurant at a grand Italian coastal hotel.
Catherine Dzilenski/@cathdiz
The food on the wide-ranging menu channels the convergence of coast, country, and California: burrata and sun gold tomatoes, marinated lamb chops, blistered pizzas, branzino, gougères, pastas, caviar service—a greatest hits of the European good life. Weekend brunch is equally indulgent: ricotta toast is also topped with crab; lemony ricotta is folded into fluffy pancakes.
Catherine Dzilenski/@cathdiz
Bar Issi adds to the many appeals of the Thompson, which has quickly established itself as one of Palm Springs most desirable modernist resorts. The sleek, whitewashed art-filled modernist campus is elegantly landscaped with desert plants and boasts enough indoor and outdoor spaces, pools, and dining options to make for an immersive weekend one-stop getaway: the rooms boast patios, some with mountain views; the sizable rooftop pool has its own bar; the Levantine-influenced restaurant Lola Rose is all chic earth tones; the lobby opens up to the outside and offers numerous cushy lounging areas with a DJ booth that’s both a design piece and host to resident turntablists.
Catherine Dzilenski/@cathdiz
Our strategy for hacking Palm Springs at the Thompson in the summer is: run or hike first thing in the morning, hit the pool in the balmy, not-too-hot morning, break for lunch at Lola Rose, nap, hit the pool again when the evening breeze kicks up, indulge in aperitivo hour and a Mediterranean feast at Bar Issi… and repeat.