Rosewood San Miguel de Allende

Ms. Groombridge and I stayed for 4 nights in the Tower Suite at the new Rosewood San Miguel, and since I hadn’t seen many reviews or photos before we went, I’ll provide a detailed write up here.

Front entrance:

Courtyard:

Public space:

My experiences at other Rosewood resorts (Las Ventanas al Paraiso; Rosewood Mayakoba) have been very positive: the accommodations, public areas, and grounds of those two resorts are world class, and impeccably designed with locally inflected objets d’art and dor. And the hallmark of those resorts: the best pool service I have ever experienced, the area in which Rosewood really stands out in relation to other 5-star resorts. From the complimentary amuse bouche (smoothies, cucumbers for the eyes, popsicles, frozen fruit, frozen chocolate) that arrive virtually every hour to the sunglasses butler to the vigilance with which iced water and Evian sprays are supplied and re-supplied, a full day of relaxation by a Rosewood pool is always a high point in a vacation.

I’ve had less consistently great experiences with food and service and spa treatments at Rosewood resorts, but nothing bad to report. So the highs of great design and great pools were enough for me to select the Rosewood San Miguel when seeking a location with (virtually) guaranteed sunshine for an April escape from the most wet and miserable NYC spring I can remember.

Overall, I’d give the resort a score of 6.5 out of 10. Good enough for a one-time experience, but not special enough to draw me back. Interestingly, the highs and lows were the opposite of what I’d expected. The food, to my great surprise, was the best I’ve had at a resort in many months. The pool service was solid, albeit not as impressive as at the other Rosewoods. But the design was much less dazzling than what I’d come to expect of Rosewood, and there was no personal feel to the service, despite the fact that the resort has less than 100 rooms and should be able to generate much more of an individualized and warm/friendly experience. The spa facilities are beautiful, but several of the treatments we had were underwhelming.

We chose to fly into Mexico City and booked via Rosewood the car transfer from there, a 3-hour drive. The other option would have been to take a second flight from Mexico City to Queretaro, and then drive ~1-hour from there, but the overall travel time and cost would have both been higher. The car transfer was very comfortable: impeccable roads the entire way in a very comfortable vehicle, with ice water and lavender-stuffed neck pillows embroidered with the Rosewood San Miguel logo.

They provided us with cool and sweet hibiscus tea while reviewing and signing the paperwork, and then escorted us to our room. The resort consists of one very large building, which consists of several courtyards surrounded by the guest rooms. It is all new and clean and in perfect condition, but also felt a bit soul-less in its bulk, rather like a condominium complex or apartment building. There is a lack of nuance and detail in the design that I found disappointing. Indoor and outdoor public areas are liberally located in and alongside the various courtyards, and at night-time lanterns with candles bestrew the walkways, but it still felt to me as if the large expanses of flat, painted (red, orange, etc.) walls lacked the sort of detailing, and maybe the sort of accents that foliage and additional dor could provide. I’m all for minimalism, but that’s not what they’re going for here—instead, it just felt less beautifully designed than I would have expected of an urban resort in (possibly) the most attractive town in Mexico. And it just feels awfully big and monolithic for a resort with less than 100 rooms—and out of scale with the charm of the historic centre it borders. I kept thinking that you’d want a much smaller, more boutique feel to a resort attempting to integrate itself with San Miguel, and that Aman’s approach and scale would have been much better suited to this town. And again, it felt more than anything like a large condominium complex, not an intimate bolthole in a baroque Mexican town.

We’d booked one of the top suites, the Tower Suite, which has a roof-top terrace at the tallest point of the buildings that comprise the resort. (The information on the website claims that it is accessed by a private elevator, but that’s not the case.) The suite checks all the boxes for luxury accommodation (clawfoot tub + separate shower; heavenly pillows and sheets; numerous flat-screen TVs; fireplace; dining table), but for some reason, didn’t appeal to me. You enter directly into the living room, which felt overcrowded with furniture: a large wooden dining table + large wooden sideboards + a sofa + two easy chairs. The bedroom contained a desk/chair as well as an easy chair, and an attractive (but firm) bed with spiraling wooden posts. Throughout, the floors are wood, but have a sort of surface beveling that I find very unattractive, which works against the effort to create a sense of antique Mexican aesthetic that plank floors or a more rustic approach would have achieved. The bathroom, on the other hand, felt under-designed, with much space but nowhere to sit. The Tower Suite has a balcony with sofas and a table immediate off the living room, and then up a flight of stairs is a large terrace that spans the entire roof of the suite. As elsewhere, though, the lack of thought and nuance in the design undercuts the value of the terrace. It is vast, and feels thoughtlessly furnished—a few padded benches, four sun chairs, a long dining table, haphazardly grouped together, and with no landscaping or verdure. So it wasn’t a place I wanted to spend any time, and I’d only recommend this suite if you need to entertain a large group of people, as it really doesn’t make much sense or provide much benefit for a twosome.

Tower Suite:

Stairs to rooftop terrace of Tower Suite:

Rooftop terrace of Tower Suite:

This is the area in which this resort truly excels. The breakfasts in the main restaurant “1826” are just sensationally good – locally sourced ingredients of the highest quality, applied to quintessential Mexican dishes, such that the chicken enchiladas were the best I have ever tasted. We requested a dinner on our terrace one night, and the chef went out of his way to tailor two separate menus: one for me paired with 6 dairy-free courses for Ms. Groombridge, including a cre brule that required them to experiment with many different dairy substitutes in order to find one that would produce acceptable flavor. The most successful of all the public areas of the resort is the rooftop tapas bar Luna, which has the best sunset views in town, looking out over the entire hillside on which the historic centre stretches, with the unapologetically pink Parroquia church gloriously astride the ridge a kilometer or so away. The service in the restaurants is the best we encountered in the resort, everything you could want and expect from top restaurants worldwide.

Luna TapasBar on Rosewood's roof:

Restaurant "1826":

Despite our having booked one of the top suites, we found the service entirely impersonal throughout, and the one of the concierges, clearly inexperienced and inadequately trained was particularly weak, offering to book us tickets to a cultural event, and forgetting to do so, and then also forgetting to reschedule our return transfer despite committing to do so. We had to resort to much more follow-up and reminding than should have been required of us to make sure our arrangements were, well, arranged. Housekeeping provided a daily bowl of fruit as well as some sort of hors d’ouevres—I’m not sure if that’s because we were staying in a suite or if they provide that for all guests. Housekeeping was fine, other than us discovering that here was a layer of sand in the bathtub when we checked in to the room, preventing use of the bathtub the first night.

The massage I had was one of the least inspired I’ve had in the past year. Ms. Groombridge was similarly nonplussed with a pedicure, but had a good facial. The facility has a shared relaxation room, and the heated, lavender-stuffed neck pillows they provide to aid relaxation prior to and after the treatment are really a pleasure. There are also small sauna and steam facilities for separate genders in the changing areas.

lacks the drama of the sexy/curvaceous one at Las Ventanas and the Mayan-tiered monumentality of the main pool at the Rosewood Mayakoba. It consists of approx 8 cabanas (first come, first served) lining a rectangular pool, with a children’s pool and two small pools on a separate level. It faces the high, flat walls of the resort complex, so there’s not much beauty of scenery or architecture to absorb, but the service is good and it’s works fine as a place to enjoy sun, shade, sleep, and water on a hot day. It’s perhaps too much to have expected a more dramatic and aesthetically satisfying pool at an urban resort, where there is less of an opportunity to capitalize on views of ocean, lagoon, or mountain . . . but I was disappointed by the design nonetheless.

Through the concierge, we booked a walking tour of the historic centre with a local guide, but we would probably have done just as well to have wandered ourselves, as not a lot of history or local interest was supplied by the guide. Rosewood offers excursions to nearby sites and attractions, including an ATV tour, but we didn’t avail ourselves of any of those, since there was plenty to soak up in the town itself, with lots of shops sourcing local arts and crafts. And the town itself is really a pleasure for a stroll, outside the heat of the day, far more attractive and charming than any town I’ve seen in Mexico. And we happened to be there during the Easter festivities, which are apparently a huge draw, and date back to the 18th century. I hadn’t realized this when I’d planned the trip, but it really is a terrific time to be in San Miguel—not just because the sunshine is virtually guaranteed throughout April, but also if you’re interested in seeing Mexican Catholicism at its most fascinatingly ritualistic and communal, with literally thousands of mourners participating in a macabre and gorgeous funeral for Christ, carrying images of saints bedecked with flowers, hundreds of candles, and strewing the roads of San Miguel with fragrant chamomile. I’m not Catholic myself, but in the same way that I loved watching Buddhist monks in Bhutan spin in the trance of their festival dancing, I really valued the cultural experience of San Miguel on Good Friday. And for those experiences, I’m glad that the Rosewood drew me to San Miguel, as much as the resort itself is one that ultimately disappointed my high expectations. Pics below: