WITS Virtual Tour: Phoenix, Arizona

For all the traveling I’ve done, I’ve yet to spend much time in the Southwest. Sure, I visit my sister’s family in San Antonio every year, and I’ve taken a couple trips to Southwest-adjacent Salt Lake City, but that’s been the extent of it. Yet I’ve had dozens of Southwestern destinations—from Santa Fe to White Sands National Park, Sedona to the Grand Canyon—on my must list for years. What this means: it’s high time I get out there and start exploring. And a good place to start is Phoenix, which lies along the Salt River.

The first of my virtual tours at this year’s Women in Travel Summit came courtesy of Visit Phoenix. Led by an exceptionally friendly bunch of people, it highlighted several of the city’s female makers and service providers.

We started at the Phoenician, a AAA Five Diamond luxury resort in nearby Scottsdale, at the base of Camelback Mountain. On 350 acres of scenic desert landscape, the hotel has plenty of room to spread out. Still, they’ve got plenty of covid protocols in place. Marketing director Denise Seomin walked us through a few, including reduced occupancy in their restaurants, spa, and rooftop pool; a mask mandate in public areas; and enhanced cleaning. This summer, they’re also planning a slate of outdoor movies to give guests another option for kicking back on-premise.

At the Phoenician, we watched a kitchen demonstration by Rebecca Tillman, the property’s executive sous chef. Using a variety of indigenous and Arizona-grown ingredients—citrus, fresh figs, jicama, chiles, pomegranates, and sunflower sprouts—she crafted a colorful, summer-ready salad. The recipe also included watercress, Cape gooseberries, pickled cauliflower, and ninja radishes, and was topped with what Tillman called “the quintessential flavor of Arizona”: prickly pear, in this case made into a vinaigrette.

She garnished the plate with a handful of edible pansies—“We want to be able to eat with our eyes first,” Tillman said. Try not to salivate (weep?) onto your keyboard.

From there, we zipped about 10 miles away to Greenwood Brewing, near Phoenix’s city center. This boutique brewery and beer garden—one of just a handful headed by female brewmasters (I’m lucky to live near one of the others, in Hillsdale, New York)—were founded by Megan Greenwood, a former engineer working in the corporate world.

Megan recounted her overachieving start as a home brewer—though if I were a betting woman, I’d say not many hobbyists serve eight on tap out of their garage. But, she says, “I felt like I was having the most honest and raw conversations with people when I would go and have a craft beer with them.” Thus, the idea for Greenwood Brewing was born. When she started surveying the women around her about what they wanted in a brew/brewing company, she found that 77 percent felt underrepresented as drinkers within the beer industry. So she set out to create craft beverage brand that would appeal to women just as much as men.

Greenwood’s flagship beer is the HerStory Pale Ale; the Purpose Pilsner is also popular. In addition, Greenwood brews—in small batches of less than 500 cans—IPAs, a spice ale, and a wheat beer. Whenever possible, they use locally grown ingredients, like rosemary, mango, and prickly pear, and they hire local artists to design the can labels.

During the tour, we also talked about a few of the changes Phoenix has undergone, and some of its up-and-coming areas. One of these is Roosevelt Row, an arts district with an especially strong mural scene. Early in the pandemic, I wrote about how street art was having a pivotal moment. I still believe art will be one of the enduring testaments to how we survived this era, which makes artists the ultimate story-keepers of our time.

And that puts Roosevelt Row, along with Greenwood Brewing, the Phoenician, the inimitable landscape of the Southwest that’s so easy to enjoy in Phoenix, on the top of my list of places to visit—a visit that’s long overdue.

Like what you see? Share it!