About Bar Mar by José Andrés
José Andrés is not a celebrity chef in the conventional sense. He is a James Beard Award winner, a World's 50 Best Restaurants luminary, and the founder of a group that operates restaurants across the globe — including multiple Michelin-starred concepts in cities that define international gastronomy. The José Andrés Group's decision to bring Bar Mar to VAI Resort in Glendale is therefore not a brand extension or a franchise agreement. It is a genuine commitment to the West Valley, and it signals something significant about where Arizona's dining scene is headed.
Bar Mar is Andrés' seafood concept — a showcase of coastal Spanish and coastal American cooking that merges brilliantly in the chef's hands. The menu centres on iconic seafood preparations executed with technical precision and theatrical presentation: ceviches that require genuine skill to balance, paella prepared with the attention the dish demands, and shellfish towers that arrive as visual as they are delicious. The cocktail programme is festive and sophisticated, drawing on Spanish and Latin American traditions while acknowledging the Arizona appetite for bold flavour.
The design, by acclaimed Spanish designer Lázaro Rosa Violán, transforms the VAI Resort space into something visually distinct from anything Glendale — or indeed most of Arizona — has encountered before. Rosa Violán's portfolio includes restaurants in Madrid, New York, and London that consistently rank among the world's most visually arresting dining rooms. His work at Bar Mar brings that international design language to the West Valley, creating an interior that makes arriving fee