Christopher's at Wrigley Mansion

A chef director at the glass-walled pass

Christopher Gross works the pass as chef/director at Christopher's at Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix, where the kitchen sits in open view beside a wood-fired grill. The room is new to the estate, opened in spring 2021, but Gross brings the long discipline of a French-trained American career to the station: ownership at Christopher's Fermier Brasserie & Paola's Wine Bar, ownership at Christopher's Restaurant and Crush Lounge at Biltmore Fashion Park, and the recognition of a James Beard Award in 1995. At this address he holds both creative and operational authority, shaping the menu while carrying the daily mechanics of service. The restaurant grew from his partnership with Wrigley Mansion owner Jamie Hormel, who had already been restoring the house and its grounds, and from a three-year design and construction process with architect Wendell Burnette. Gross’s task here is not revival cooking inside an old room. He works in a contemporary structure adjacent to the mansion, using modern French fine dining as the frame and adjustment as the method. The menu changes, the architecture stays spare, and the hand remains visible.

French structure, fire, and the moving menu

The program is built as an ever-changing tasting menu, with modern twists on classic French fare rather than a fixed canon of signatures. Certain dishes carry the house grammar clearly: the ABC Terrine, Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup, and Smoked Truffle-Infused Filet sit beside courses that have included egg with caviar, Wagyu with tableside béarnaise, lamb with sauce and watercress mousse, smoked salmon, seared scallops, grilled sea bass, chocolate tower, and cheesecake. The open kitchen matters because the work does not disappear between order and plate. Diners can see the grill, the pass, the sequence of hands. Gross uses the format for control: small courses, precise saucing, the rhythm of a formal room without closing the door on warmth. The wine program runs at the same scale of ambition, with the mansion cellar shaped by Jamie Hormel’s investment and led today by sommelier Jason Caballero after Paola Embry’s tenure. Pairing here is not decoration; it is part of the architecture of the meal.

The room above the city

The restaurant is glass and steel against the older Wrigley Mansion, a structure built in 1931-1932 by William Wrigley Jr. as a gift to Ada Wrigley. The contrast is the point. Catalina tile, hand-painted ceilings, a marble fireplace, and Filipino walnut paneling belong to the mansion’s older rooms; Christopher’s sits beside them with cantilevered glass walls, a retractable roof, and a black, open-air geometry that looks toward the Phoenix skyline and Camelback Mountain. Inside the dining room, floor-to-ceiling windows make sunset part of the service without turning the room into scenery. The counter, the pass, and the grill keep the eye close to the craft. Candelabras and low light soften the edges after dusk. The room stays quiet enough for the work to register.

A mansion brought back into service

The larger house nearly gave way to condominium development in 1991-1992 before Geordie and Jamie Hormel rescued it and returned it to public life as a dining and events estate. That history gives Christopher’s a particular charge: Gross is cooking in a new building, but he is working on ground that Phoenix has watched for generations. The next plate may change with the menu, yet the address holds steady around the grill, the glass, and Christopher Gross.