March marked the opening of the much-anticipated restaurant, Carcara, located in the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown. The ground-floor eatery is one of the final components of the hotel’s top-to-bottom renovation, and it serves as an ode to the Grand Canyon state. In addition to the locally sourced menu, Carcara nods again and again to the 5 C’s of Arizona in its design—think woven cotton textiles, copper accents and Cara Cara orange trees lining the 2,000-square-foot patio. But there are subtler homages to the Sonoran setting, too. Consider the custom terrazzo floor, for example, which blurs the indoor-outdoor boundary. Or the wallcovering designed to look like rammed earth in a private dining area. On the patio, guests can cozy up next to the handcrafted fireplace, which is framed by a wood trellis and lemon vines. These details are eye catching, but the unequivocal centerpiece is the open dining room’s 14-foot tree-inspired installation with glass and metal lanterns dangling from the canopy of “branches.” Arizona has never looked better.
