By INsprThDesign @ Adobe Stock
Debbie and I spend a lot of time traveling, and we often stay at hotels where the food is as exemplary as the accommodation. In The Wall Street Journal, Kevin Sintumuang discusses some hotel restaurants that are trying to change the perception that such establishments are boring and overpriced. He writes:
Staying at a hotel for its restaurant might sound like an odd travel strategy, but these days not all hotel restaurants are created equal. Recently, I very deliberately spent a long weekend as a guest at the Henson, a new hotel in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Though several distinctive inns exist in the area, I chose this one because I knew that, after a long day of exploring trails and antique shops, I could go eat at Matilda.
I’d heard about the hotel’s new restaurant from chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra, the duo behind New York City’s Wildair and Bar Contra, who specialize in the kind of inventive food I’d eat everyday if I could.
And because I was staying one flight of stairs up from Matilda, I did eat its food every day over that long weekend, from delicate prawns wrapped in shiso leaves to slow-grilled Amish chicken. Today, Matilda is not as rare as you might think.
For so long, hotel restaurants have doled out “elevated” mediocrity: Think a burger with a brioche bun or a club sandwich fancied up with avocado or a bland crudo. Well-intended Italian and Japanese options often feel like ways to pander to the most basic “international” tastes—and charge a hefty sum for it. But a new breed of hotel restaurants like Matilda is proof that they can be more than a moneymaking scheme or an afterthought. They can be proper, chef-led restaurants that are destinations themselves.
That was the case when I visited Casa Susanna at Camptown Lodge in Leeds, N.Y., where chef Efrén Hernández is cooking some of the best Mexican food on the East Coast. After a dinner that consisted of a squash-blossom tetela and mackerel al pastor, I ignored all the other places at which people had suggested I dine in the area and simply had lunch and dinner at Casa Susanna the next day, too. I wanted to try everything.
A good hotel restaurant can also be convenient. If you’re a food-first traveler, planning for a vacation often means acting as your own dining concierge, compiling a list of places where you need to eat. When your hotel is home to one of those list-worthy restaurants, it’s one fewer reservation to make. A hotel restaurant is as easy as just going downstairs to dinner, the way many of us did as children when our parents hollered that supper was ready.
Another plus to a popping hotel restaurant? Much like a great hotel bar, it can give a property a palatable soul, especially at a time when so many hotels conform to droll, corporate uniformity instead of adopting vibrant personalities. The Lafayette, in San Diego’s North Park neighborhood, exudes the energy of an adult-Disneyland thanks to its many bars and restaurants, including a 24-hour diner, a bar/bowling alley and a Mexican restaurant with an interior salvaged from an abandoned church. Try finding that in your average business hotel.
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