Stogie ban fires up parties

The Arizona Biltmore Resort will be celebrating the first day of the statewide smoking ban by throwing a cigar dinner party.

Of course, the raison d’etre will be banished to the patio.

A few blocks away, steakhouse Morton’s is throwing its final cigar dinner inside the restaurant the night before the big butt ban.

It will be the restaurant’s last cigar-centered event till fall, said John Simich, Morton’s Phoenix sales and marketing director.

The elegant eatery, which has been conducting quarterly cigar lovers’ dinners for more than a decade, has canceled the summer version, Simich said, since all future events will have to be held outside.

“For 11 years, we have been Arizona’s premier cigarfriendly restaurant,” he said. “Cigar culture has always been associated with Morton’s. But on May 1 we’ll enter a new era of being smokefree. Fortunately, we have (a) patio that will accommodate smokers.”

At the Biltmore, the restaurants and all public areas of the resort — except the bar — are already smokefree, said marketing manager Becky Blaine.

On May 1, the bar will ban smoking, too.

But that hasn’t hindered the resort’s plans for starting a monthly cigar-centered dinner series.

Launching it on the first day of the legislated smoking ban was just “a coincidence, but interesting,” said Matt Rinehart, Biltmore’s food and beverage director.

“We were doing such successful wine dinners we wanted to expand our special events,” he said. “We have a lot of local guests who would be interested in a series of cigar dinners,”

The resort has been hosting wine dinners for 17 years, he said, and the cigar series concept has been in the works for a while. The only change to original plans — smokers will have to puff away on the croquet lawn.

The Biltmore’s cigar soirees, which will co-star Jack Daniel’s whiskey, will serve up cigars, drinks and appetizers on the lawn, the next two courses in the dining room, followed by desert, coffee and smokes on the patio, Rinehart said.

The patio doors will be left unlocked during dinner so anybody who can’t manage the middle part of the meal without a nicotine jolt can go outside between bites to smoke, he said. Like Morton’s, Biltmore’s cigar dinners will take a break until the weather does, Rinehart said. After the debut event, the next dinner won’t be held until October, he said. Rinehart isn’t worried that the smoking ban will hurt business.

“Most smokers are educated and understand the impact of smoke on others and are accepting of that,” he said. And the cigar dinners prove the Biltmore can still cater to all its guests’ desires, he said. ”It underscores our commitment to our legal responsibility and our responsibility to our nonsmoking guests and still accommodates our smoking guests,” he said.