Hearsay at The Esplanade: Biltmore’s Best Venue in 2026
Hearsay at The Esplanade has quietly become the best private event venue in the Phoenix Biltmore. If you caught my piece in the latest Biltmore Stroll, you already know the bigger picture. The Biltmore is having a moment, and a lot of the business that is reshaping Phoenix right now is being introduced over food, drinks, and conversation inside the 85016. This is the longer version, focused on the one venue at the center of it.
Read the magazine version first: “The Biltmore On The World Stage” in Biltmore Stroll Magazine.
I have photographed events all over the Valley for a long time. There are a handful of rooms in Phoenix I will recommend without hesitation, and Hearsay at The Esplanade sits at the top of that short list. The reason has very little to do with any single event I have shot there. It has to do with how the room is built and who is running it.
Inside Hearsay at The Esplanade: The Room and Why It Works
Hearsay opened inside The Esplanade Biltmore in late 2024. The short version is that it is a social kitchen, which is a useful clue to how the floor plan works. There is a main dining room with a long counter for passed food, a bar that anchors the whole room, an outdoor patio that opens up the footprint when the weather cooperates, and a few private rooms that can be opened, closed, or combined depending on the size and shape of the night.
For a photographer, that flexibility is the first thing you notice. For a host at Hearsay at The Esplanade, it is the only thing that matters. You can do an intimate dinner for twelve in the private dining room with the bottle wall and marble fireplace, then walk one room over and run a standing reception for a hundred in the main hall. The transitions happen without anyone feeling like they got moved.
The room I want to call out specifically is the back lounge. Curved cream velvet sofa, floor-to-ceiling deep blue bookshelves stocked with vinyl, art, and books, and the kind of warm candlelight that turns a side room into the place everyone ends up. It is not the room you see in most listings. It is the room you should ask to see in person.
Who Runs Hearsay at The Esplanade
Hearsay is operated by Episcope Hospitality, the group led by David Morton, son of Morton’s Steakhouse founder Arnie Morton. The group spent years running concepts in Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, and Houston before bringing Hearsay Social Kitchen to Phoenix in late 2024. The reason I am calling them out is that the staff is the part of the venue that you cannot photograph in a real estate listing, and it is the part that decides whether an evening lands. On the night I shot most of these images, the bartenders kept a busy room moving without ever looking rushed. The captains were a step ahead of every passed tray. The kitchen put out food that held up across a long evening and a discerning crowd. I have worked with venues where the design does most of the heavy lifting and the service quietly undermines the night. Hearsay at The Esplanade is the opposite of that.
The food and beverage program is part of the same story. When a private event has a hosted bar with a custom menu, the team will style the bar with seasonal florals, copper barware, and the kind of details that make the moment feel intentional rather than rented.
The Night That Prompted This
The specific evening you are seeing in most of these photos was a corporate kickoff reception hosted by CBRE under the Halo Vista name. I am not going to make this post about the host. The reason I am referencing it at all is to be honest that the photos came from a real event with real guests at Hearsay at The Esplanade, not a styled walk-through. If you want a sense of what the room looks like in motion, that is what you are seeing. You can browse more of my corporate event photography in Phoenix for additional context on what coverage looks like.
Why the Biltmore, Right Now
I made the broader argument in the magazine. Phoenix is in the middle of a real shift, and the Biltmore is one of the rooms where the city introduces itself to people who are deciding what to do with their next investment dollar. TSMC’s Arizona campus is part of that story. So are the law firms, the developers, the brokers, and the restaurants. Hearsay at The Esplanade sits at the intersection of all of it, which is why it keeps showing up on my calendar even when the event itself has nothing to do with any of those industries.
The Esplanade as a property has quietly turned itself into one of the most useful corners of Phoenix. Hearsay at The Esplanade is a big reason for that. So is the leasing strategy, the patio design, and the fact that Playbook took a long-vacant restaurant footprint and put something in it that the neighborhood actually needed.
If You Are Thinking About Hosting at Hearsay at The Esplanade
If You Are Thinking About Hosting at Hearsay at The Esplanade
A few practical notes. Tour the back lounge in person. Ask about the indoor and outdoor combinations if your headcount is between fifty and a hundred and fifty. Ask the Episcope team about the catering menu in detail because the standard program is better than the one-pager makes it sound. And book farther out than you think you need to, because Hearsay at The Esplanade is on more people’s calendars now than it was a year ago.
One more option worth knowing about. Directly across from the Hearsay entrance, Playbook and The Esplanade operate a dedicated conference center that came out of the property’s recent 8000-square-foot expansion. It accommodates groups up to a hundred people and includes a tech studio, a boardroom, work lounges, smaller meeting rooms, and a training classroom. Pair it with a reception at Hearsay and you have a half-day or full-day program handled inside one building, which is unusual for the Biltmore.
Hours and Location
Hearsay and Perks sit inside The Esplanade at 2501 E Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85016. Reservations and private event inquiries: (602) 791-2687.
Hearsay is open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner from 11 AM to 8 PM, with happy hour from 3 to 6 PM. The full Hearsay menu is on their site.
Perks is open Monday through Friday from 7 AM to 4 PM for coffee and breakfast.
For parking, use the visitor/AMC parking ramp on the south side of the complex off Esplanade Way and present your ticket to the staff for validation.
Photography for Your Next Event at Hearsay at The Esplanade
If you would like coverage for a private event of your own here or anywhere else in the Biltmore, reach out through the Photo Fusion Studio contact page. Stop by the studio, send a note, or say hello if you spot me out in the neighborhood.
Before the camera, there was the dining room. I grew up in restaurants, from my family’s place to fine dining, and later studied wine with the Court of Master Sommeliers. That background is the reason I notice the details I do in rooms like Hearsay, and the reason hospitality coverage has stayed at the center of what I shoot.
