Visitors at Montage Deer Valley this Easter weekend have the opportunity to experience the full range of its pastry department, which spares no effort when the infamous bunny hops into town.
On this sweets-filled holiday, Executive Pastry Chef Romie Fisher is in her element. Does it help that she’s donned an Easter bunny suit once or twice before? Maybe. But what really gets her excited for the season is the colors.
“When we started planning this one, my head always goes to, ‘OK, (it’s) the changing seasons. What represents Easter and spring for us?’ It’s when you can actually bring all the colors at once,” Fisher said.
Her chocolate creations are rarely brown, and each year for Easter, she challenges herself to create a colorful display for the annual Sunday brunch that’s almost entirely edible. Two years ago, the Easter bunny’s treehouse was the centerpiece, decked in pastel teals, yellows and greens. Last year, her team recreated the Park City shoe tree in chocolate, with rainbow-colored shoes hanging from its branches.
For this year’s display, Fisher said she found herself thinking back on her childhood in Argentina: a rusted blue wagon full of flowers harking back to springtime memories.
It was actually a wheelbarrow, Fisher admitted, that she used to sit in as a child, pretending she was riding a spaceship with an umbrella held above her head as the roof. Over time, with the help of Argentina’s fertile soil, the wheelbarrow became overgrown with wildflowers.
“When I was thinking about Easter and the meaning of Easter, I thought about that memory,” Fisher said. “We left it alone, and it just became something beautiful on its own.”
The cart, made with about 70 pounds of chocolate, is painstakingly painted to look weathered, down to its rusted screws.
Pinwheels placed around the table are another homage to Fisher’s Argentinian roots.
“In Argentina, when the warm weather starts, usually we go to the zoo, and at the zoo it’s very common to walk around with pinwheels,” she explained with a laugh. “There is a lot of love in this display.”
Hanging above the display are paper hot air balloons, a small nod to Fisher’s spring morning dog walks in the Heber Valley.
“We always challenge ourselves to bring a little bit of Utah into it,” she said. “Every morning I see the hot air balloons, and it just makes me smile because it makes me feel like, OK, warm weather is here.”
For the buffet, Easter-themed treats reflect the creativity of Fisher’s pastry team. Bonbons, tarts, cupcakes and cookies shaped like chicks, sheep, bees, butterflies, carrots, strawberries or lemons are part of the spread, along with macaroons, brownies, Rice Krispies treats and tres leches, all decorated in pastel rainbow colors.
The Easter brunch at Montage will be held from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday following an Easter egg hunt at 10 a.m. that morning. Both events are open to the public, and reservations can be made on their website.
