Hotels position new restaurants to lure nonlodger clienteles

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 15, 2001 by Carolyn Walkup

CHICAGO -- A growing number of hotel companies here and elsewhere are positioning their restaurants and new dining concepts without any physical links to hotels as independent establishments aimed at nonlodger locals.

In Palm Beach, Fla., the culinary management of a luxurious landmark, The Breakers, even has launched two freestanding, off-property restaurants. They are the year-old Echo, an eclectic Asian showplace, and the month-old Fathom, an upscale, 19,000-squarefoot waterfront seafood restaurant some 15 miles from the hotel in Palm Beach Gardens.

Calling those developments "enormously successful," spokeswoman Kimberly Kenney said the off-site ventures are "an interesting trend" that has relied on the direction and staffing resources of The Breakers food-and-beverage vice president Kevin Walters and his team.

While Echo, which opened in the site that had been New York chef Charlie Palmer's AquaTerra, and Fathom have not played up their epicurean connection to The Breakers, "with cross-marketing efforts and advertising, that message soon will get out," Kenney predicted.

In Chicago, where several new hotels are under construction, the city's broad inventory of freestanding, independent restaurants continues to gain more hotel eateries, many of which are downplaying their hotel affiliations. Some have hired chefs who either are well known locally or have impressive, nonhotel credentials behind them.

Restaurants leading the trend range from luxury to economy properties. One of the high-end hotel restaurants to open recently is NoMI, an acronym for North Michigan Avenue, in the new Park Hyatt Chicago. NoMI's check average runs between $70 and $75.

About 80 percent of guests are local, said Emmanuel Nony of the Park Hyatt's food-and-beverage department. Many patrons live in the immediate Gold Coast neighborhood, including the building's luxury condominiums.

NoMI, which employs chef Sandro Gamba, formerly of Lespinasse in Washington, D.C., soon will get company in Chicago's high-end, high-profile hotel niche. A local branch of the Hong Kong-based Peninsula Hotel group is scheduled to open by midyear, and it will have several restaurants, including an as-yet-unnamed fine-dining flagship and a wine bar.

Also in the luxury category is Le Meridien, scheduled for a spring opening on Michigan Avenue. Its single, three-meal-a-day restaurant is expected to price those meals at $15 to $22 for breakfast, $24 to $32 at lunch and $42 to $62 at dinner.

Le Meridien's restaurant will be marketed to shoppers at the adjacent Shops at North Bridge and Nordstrom Department Store as well as to local residents, said Derrick Stockton, the hotel's sales and marketing director.

Two small boutique hotels in Chicago are positioning their restaurants as neighborhood bistros. One of those restaurants is Mossant, owned by the Kimpton Restaurant Group of San Francisco and located next door to Hotel Monaco, a Kimpton property. The other is Molive in the Whitehall Hotel, owned by S.B. Yen Management Group.

Business volume at Mossant, especially at dinner, has increased significantly since Kimpton hired Steven Chiappetti as executive chef, according to Larry Flam, Kimpton's Midwest regional director of operations. Chiappetti formerly owned two locally popular neighborhood bistros, Mango and Grapes.

About 70 percent of Mossant's dinner customers are local, Flam estimated. "We run the business just as if we were a freestanding restaurant," he said.

To attract Chicago residents as customers, Mossant supports some local charities, promotes pretheater dining and does "guerrilla marketing" to Loop offices, Flam said. "We have a built-in advantage. We never say we're in the hotel; we're adjacent to the hotel."

According to Thomas Belelieu, hotel general manager, The Whitehall, a venerable small hotel built in 1928 that has undergone some ownership changes, formerly housed the Whitehall Place. That fine-dining restaurant was under- used primarily for special occasions Since redoing the 80-seat space and spacious bar, the present owners expect to attract more locals than before.

Molive's executive chef is Bart Hosmer, a San Francisco native who most recently worked at Spoodles and the Flying Fish Cafe at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Among his previous employers in Northern California were Lark Creek Inn, Terra and Annabelle's.

Hosmer is drawing on that experience as well as extensive travels through Europe and Asia for his Californian-Mediterranean menu at Molive. Prices range from $2.50 to $15 for breakfast, $10 to $19 for lunch and $9.50 to $29 for dinner entrees.

In keeping with the economy image of the Hampton Inn & Suites chain, Dearborn Diner opened in December in a prominent, street-level corner space connected to the hotel in the River North neighborhood. Owned by Chris and Mike Schuba, Chicago tavern owners, the diner features a moderately priced menu with no item more than $10.

The diner replaces Fog City Diner, owned by Real Restaurants of Sausalito, Calif, which closed about a year after it opened. A Dearborn Diner employee speculated that Chicagoans did not accept Fog City's San Francisco prices, such as meat loaf for $14.95.