After 13 years, Cartwright's, the sophisticated Southwestern restaurant in Cave Creek, is getting an upgrade -- cowboy style.
Recently, partners Eric Flatt and John Malcolm, who also own Cave Creek's Tonto Bar & Grill, completed a remodel of their restaurant, named after the historic Cartwright family of the late 1800s, that includes an updated look and a new menu, as well as the addition of lunch service.
"It's the kind of place where fine suits and blue jeans are equally appropriate," says Flatt.
Here's what diners can expect.
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Ranch-style meat and seafood dishes, prepared by chef Montez Crane and put together with things like heirloom spices, chili peppers, and molasses, still dominate the menu. Steaks and seafood are butchered in-house, and many ingredients are cultivated in the surrounding desert.
Expect new starter dishes like Rough Rider bison buffalo and Anasazi bean chili, red chili "Elk Balls," and Blue Point oysters with cilantro lime mignonette, horseradish, Sonoran-spiced cocktail sauce, and Arizona citrus. For entrees, think New York steak served with red chili and hibiscus flower butter tobacco onions, chili and molasses lacquered pork shoulder, and red chili dusted scallops.
For dessert, there's a chuck box-style dried apple and date cobbler and S'mores served up in a Mason jar.
Cartwright's remodeled interior includes an expanded bar area accented with glowing Manzanita branches and new carpet in the dining area to complement the restaurant's historic photos, reclaimed wooden chairs, and restored table tops made from the floors of railroad boxcars.
See the complete new menu for Cartwright's after the jump.
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