I’m not sure I’ve ever been at the geographical center of Scottsdale, or at least I’ve never found it. There is a very pleasant Old Town and a Fashion Square, but aside from those there’s not much of a downtown.  Which is of little consequence because the appeal of Scottsdale, as opposed to Phoenix, its sprawling, smoggy neighbor, is all that makes up its desert landscape, which includes an omnipresent view of Camelback Mountain.
    As with so much of the desert of Arizona, trekking is of prime interest to many visitors, with more than 30,000 acres and over 200 miles of trail in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. For reasons that escape me, people like to attempt the boulder-strewn climb up Camelback, but I’m told the sunset from the top of Tom’s Thumb Trail is worth the five-mile round-trip.
    For me, Scottsdale is much more appealing for the way its best architecture fits into the landscape, as home to some of the finest American designs of the last century, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West (above; there are 90-minute tours); Ralph Haver’s Villa Monterey; Paolo Soleri’s visionary, never-finished Arcosanti; and Will Bruder’s Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (right).
    The last, awkwardly dubbed SMoCA, was rehabbed from an old movie theater, adjacent to the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, in a thoroughly minimalist design of bright desert colors and a shimmering, wraparound galvanized steel and glass exterior. Inside ramps lead to floors set with various exhibits of modern art with a focus on Arizona.
    The Arts District itself in Old Town, aside from cafés, restaurant and boutiques, is chockablock with art galleries, many displaying the usual Southwest works of sad Native Americans, cowboys on bucking broncos and landscapes galore. Every Thursday for the past 40 years, America’s Original Art Walk (left) takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. along Main Street, which is particularly lovely because at night the neighborhood’s lines of palm trees are hung with strings of lights. In January the Arizona Art Expo and the Celebration of Fine Art are major draws, followed in March by the Scottsdale Arts Festival.
    My own favorite arts venue in Scottsdale is the wonderful Museum of the West in Old Town, one of the finest of its genre I’ve seen. It’s of an ideal size so that you can easily cover it all in one visit, from the artwork of some of America’s finest painters and sculptors to its dazzling collection of Navajo chiefs’ blankets, six centuries of Hopi pottery and 1,400 examples of Old West cowboy gear. When I was there this summer I was enchanted by a comprehensive exhibition (now closed) dedicated to the so-called cowboy artist and author Will James (1892-1942), whose knowledge of horse anatomy (right, "Young Cowboy," 1935) was based on personal, up-close experience and whose action-filled line drawings are as fine as anything done by the better-known Frederick Remington, whose work is also there. James was a beloved childhood hero of mine among my favorite authors. He had a deceptively straightforward style of capturing the life of the west with nonpareil detail in his artwork and whose spare prose had the drawl of a cowboy telling good yarns around a campfire about horses named Smoky, Sand and Scorpion.
    I had no idea that Philadelphia-born modernist Stuart Davis spent time in the West, finding that the landscape intimidated him in his work, “because the place is always there in such a dominating way,” he said.
    Currently there is an exhibit of the photographs of elder statesman Barry Goldwater in the Arizona Highways Collection, and, if hyperealistic portraits of mountain men, fur traders and moon landings make you giddy, artist Paul Calle’s work is spread over several rooms upstairs. 
    I stayed at the Mountain Shadows Resort (left and below) in Paradise Valley, which dates back to 1959, when it became a mecca for the Hollywood crowd of its day. Many life-size photos of the celebs and orchestra leader Dick Halleman  are arrayed on its walls. Soon a golf course and private residences were added, then the resort went through a declining management phase by Marriott, which closed the property in 2004. In bad shape, the property was bought by Westroc Hospitality and Woodbine Development Corp. in 2014 and completely rebuilt as a thoroughly modern resort that opened in 2017 with 183 rooms and two 75-foot swimming pools. (Winter rates are currently from $179.)
    The use of Native-American motifs and rugs gives the resort’s rooms an echo of the region’s history, with a basic palette of gray and beige walls contrasted with the emerald green of the golf course and the cornflower blue of the skies. I shall be writing soon about the resort’s fine restaurant, Hearth ’61, in an article about eating around Scottsdale.

While Queens is still New York’s predominant Indian neighborhood, Manhattan from the East Village up to Yorkville is dotted with Indian restaurants, increasingly with a regional appeal rather than what had long been an entrenched Mughal style of cuisine. Chola, which has been on East 58th Street for twenty years and was recently refurbished, is one of the best and most representative of the vast sub-continent’s culinary diversity.
    Named after a Tamil Dynasty that dates back more than 2,000 years, Chola is a smart-looking, contemporary long room with an upfront bar that owners Shiva Natarajan and Min Buhjel have redecorated with Indian photos, hardwood floors, very comfortable gray leather chairs, and soft overhanging lights with brass accents. The sound level is quite amiable for conversation.
    One of the many pleasures of Indian restaurants is the aroma of cooking spices that float through the dining room, making you even more hungry than you were a moment ago. Cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, cinnamon all commingle and the smell of freshly baked breads make it all the more alluring.
    The familiar dishes are available at Chola—saag paneer, murgh vindaloo, chicken tikka masala and much more, all now updated—but it the panoply of unique dishes that distinguish the menu, which now emphasizes seafood. I asked Min Buhjel to send out an array of the new signature dishes, which began with lasoni gobi ($10), a generous dish of spicy cauliflower in an assertive ginger-garlic paste. The joy of Indian cuisine is in the variety and balance of seasonings, not mere fiery heat. So the tunde ka kebab ($15) were tender lamb patties principally spiced with fresh mint, while dhabewali murgh tikka ($13) came as morsels of chicken that had been marinated and tenderized in sour cream and lime juice then quickly grilled.
    Lata Shetty’s Kori Gassi ($22)was a chicken stew of high heat curry from the Bunt community in Mangalore on the Indian coastline. Another chicken dish was a creamy masala (blend) of not-so-hot, slightly sweet spices ($23). It was rich and very savory, a slightly sweeter stew of coconut curry.
      Indian cuisine is rife with long-simmered lentil dishes called dals, and Chola’s dal malai marke ($12) is laced with cream and tomato.  Adrak ki gobi )$17) was a keema dish of minced cauliflower, powerful green chili and freshly grated ginger, while a classic lamb biryani was a hearty rice dish layered with lamb, as in Japanese dim sum. Pungent mustard and spices coated tandoor-cooked burrah kebabs of lamb chops kasundi.
    Other specialties include cafreal paneer tikka ($11) of grilled cheese and green masala; Khekda nariyal ($18), a sautéed crab dish with coconut and mustard seeds; and several vegetable dishes like doodhi chana ($13), white pumpkin with yellow chana dal.
    There were, of course, Indian breads slapped against the wall of the tandoor, emerging moments later, steamy, puffy and charred, with the aroma of yeast in the air. All the chutneys are made in-house.
    I’m one who enjoys Indian desserts, most based on cheese and cream, with pistachios made into ice cream-like sweets, and Chola’s are as good as those served by competitors on the upper East Side.
    Chola hasn’t stayed around for twenty years without adapting to changing tastes, and those that currently fill a menu that is smaller but more cogent than others’ give a better focus on the kitchen’s strengths. Its new décor also makes it one of the most attractive Indian restaurants in the city. 

Open daily for lunch and dinner.