“I want my guests to walk away and say that the food is really
yummy." - Chef Nick Oltarsh of Lobby
at Hotel Twelve
By Heather Sperling
May 2007
Walk into the restaurant of any boutique hotel
near you – chances are, the white tablecloths and lone pianist
of hotel dining’s days of yore are nowhere to be found. They’ve
been replaced by dark wood bistro tables or sleek, low banquettes,
and familiar electro-lounge music played from an iPod – most
often the chef’s. Dishes arrive not under domes, but on plates
made for sharing, the presentation rustic as opposed to towered.
Even room service has changed: at Lobby at Hotel Twelve
in Atlanta all room service is pre-packed in to-go boxes, then reheated
in each room’s personal kitchen. From menu and service to
décor and pricing, the focus is on bringing modern style
in both food and design to a genre that, in recent years, was not
renowned for its cool.
The cuisine is one of comfort, but not in a down-home
way – culinarily it gives a nod to both the familiar regional
classics and the traditional French background from which most hotel
food came. The design is consciously cosmopolitan, be it rustic
or mod. The bottom line is always comfort, where the common thread
between the like-minded locations appearing across the country.
Dishes draw from a range of flavors and techniques,
but are always familiar and accessible. The focal point at Lobby
is an open kitchen that divides the space in two and serves a rustic,
homey menu of wood oven pizzas and entrees meant for sharing. Wave
in the W Lakeshore Chicago has a list of hot and cold small plates
21-deep and is, in Chef Kristine Subido’s words, “unpretentious
and friendly service and food – not too fussy or fabricated.”
Chef Tom Fleming of Central 214, next to the Kimpton’s
Hotel Palomar, writes menus with a classical bent that are “approachable
for everyone who walks in the door of my restaurant” –
but his shrimp cocktail, tossed in a brandy tomato sauce and plated
with fried potatoes, avocado and basil, looks nothing like the once
de rigueur glass of ice, tails and sauce.
The Kimpton Group is often credited with originating
the idea of the stand-alone (“adjacent,” in Kimpton-lingo)
restaurant with full hotel duties. The Palomar in Dallas is a perfect
example of the Kimpton structure: independently-operated restaurants
that share a wall with the hotel property, but have their own management
team and street entrance, which aids in encouraging non-hotel guests
to come in. A similar deal structure exists with Lobby
at Hotel Twelve, owned by the Novare Group, a local real estate
development firm, but managed by restaurateur Bob Amick’s
Concentrics Hospitality (Concentrics was hired to consult on the
development of the concept from lease to opening day, and continues
to manage the restaurant on a contractual basis.).
A major aim of boutique-style hotels is to be
more than just a room. And as dining out rises in the ranks of national
pastimes, hotels need their restaurants to be real destinations.
So it’s no surprise that this style of hotel dining outlet
has been met with success across the country – it’s
transformed stodgy, impersonal hotel dining into a hip but comfortable
experience.
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