At Lake Tahoe, Traci Des Jardins of Jardinière and Mijita in San Francisco will create the signature restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Highlands slated to open in the fall at the Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort.

"It's a combination of my two passions - cooking and skiing," says Des Jardins, who was named Best Chef: Pacific by the James Beard Foundation in 2007 and gets in about 20 days of skiing each year.

The hotel's contemporary restaurant and lounge is being designed by Johnson Studio of Atlanta. It will feature natural colors and materials, and will have an open kitchen and views of the mountain visible from everywhere in the restaurant. Des Jardins says the restaurant will be a less formal version of Jardinière. Although she has not yet written the menu, she says she plans to focus on local and sustainable food, offering dishes such as rotisserie-grilled Wolfe Ranch quail from Vacaville and leg of lamb from Prather Ranch.

Des Jardins has not yet chosen her on-site, day-to-day chef. What she is more intensely focused on is the food itself.

"Food always tastes so much better in the mountains," says Des Jardins. "You're usually much hungrier than you normally are, and quite simply I just want it to be a fabulous food experience at the end of a ski day."