Face it: Thanksgiving is one of the only days that many locals think about dining in a hotel restaurant. Whether you're celebrating Turkey Day alone or don't feel like cooking for out-of-town friends and family, the formal dining room of a hotel is a wonderful oasis for a festive meal.
Nashville is certainly becoming a hospitality destination, and with the boom in high-end hotel construction comes a wealth of notable dining spots that just so happen to be located in hotels. Among the standouts are the Capitol Grille at The Hermitage, the Hutton Hotel's 1808 Grill, any of the specialty restaurants at the downtown Omni Hotel and Mason's at the Loews Vanderbilt. While the majority of most hotels' food and beverage revenue actually flows through their banquet and room service divisions, these outstanding restaurants offer inventive menus for travelers and locals alike. Still, few diners consider the challenges faced by hotel restaurants as compared to the experiences of independent restaurateurs.
Capitol Grille is the grande dame of Nashville hotel dining, and a little-known (at the time) chef named Sean Brock made his first big splash there running the kitchen from 2003 until 2006. Now recognized as one of the best chefs in the country for his work at Husk, Brock elevated the cuisine at the restaurant as he experimented with molecular gastronomy techniques and offered 30-course tasting menus to intrepid diners. Since Brock left, some of Nashville's most beloved chefs have passed through the kitchen at Capitol Grille. The alumni list includes Hal Holden-Bache, Bobby Benjamin, Andy Hayes, Ashley Quick, Cole Ellis, James Peisker and Chris Carter (who went on to start Porter Road Butcher), Trey Cioccia and pastry whizzes Megan Williams and Kayla May. The Capitol Grille chef with the longest tenure has been Tyler Brown, who recently announced he would be leaving the property to oversee the agriculture program at Southall, a new development planned in Leiper's Fork. As he did at Capitol Grille, where Brown ran the farm operations at Glen Leven and the cattle ranch at Double H Farm to provide products for the Grille's farm-to-table menu, he will focus on agricultural pursuits at the new venture.
Janet Kurtz, director of sales and marketing for The Hermitage, believes that Capitol Grille shouldn't miss a beat after Brown's departure. "We've always had the plan to build a strong staff of sous and executive sous chefs to run our kitchen, especially since Tyler spent much of his time on our farms. It's a high-profile executive chef job for somebody, and Nashville is an attractive market to move to."
This doesn't mean it's not a pressurized environment, though, admits Kurtz. "As a Forbes five-star property, we have to serve meals 24/7, and there are 550 separate points that are checked as part of the ratings process. There's a lot of scrutiny involved in bringing the whole facility to that level of service, down to the linens on the tables, innovative menu planning and even the uniforms our servers wear."
At 1808 Grill, Chef Jake Strang also understands the importance of getting the details right. Like The Hermitage, the Hutton Hotel enjoys private ownership that offers opportunities that chain hotels cannot provide. "The uniqueness of the property is our freedom and independence," explains Strang. "We have the benefits of being more corporate in the background, which provides investment in the restaurant and better benefits than independent restaurants can hope for. Chains have a challenge to stay within themes and brand guidelines, but we're free to express whatever we're feeling at the time when we write our menus."
As director of food and beverage at the downtown Omni, Roderick Gopiao oversees all aspects of the culinary program at the property, including Bob's Steak and Chop House, Kitchen Notes, Barlines and a Bongo Java outpost, plus banquet and room service. Chef Tourant Garrett Pittler came to the Omni from his own restaurant, Chelsea Bistro, so he understands the difference in scale between the ventures.
"Our culture glamorizes independent chefs, and they are a very important part of the dining scene," Pittler says. "But a busy night in one of those restaurants might be 100-150 covers. Barlines can do 1,500 per night plus 3,000 banquet covers."
When Loews Vanderbilt decided to remodel its lobby as part of a corporate rebranding, it also undertook a complete overhaul of its lobby bar and restaurant, which had been creatively named "Drink" and "Eat." The hotel closed down the entire operations for 90 days for the reboot and emerged with Mason's and Mason Bar. "Looking back, it was pretty risky," admits Loews GM Tony Phillips. "But we wanted to be more cutting edge than typical hotel restaurants, and we wanted to be relevant in the local restaurant scene."
As part of a large corporate chain, Phillips says he had to convince his superiors to let him hire a new young chef, Brandon Frohne, to run the kitchen at Mason's and to make changes to the restaurant that were quite different from other Loews properties. "I had to fly to New York to ask the chairman of the company if our servers could wear jeans," Phillips recalls. "It was a brief conversation, and he completely bought into what we were doing." (It probably didn't hurt that Mason's is actually named after the chairman's stepdaughter, not the now-ubiquitous jar.)
Although Frohne and Loews parted company earlier this year, he feels the experience was very valuable to him. "It didn't matter what we did, even making a basic grilled-cheese sandwich," he says. "We wanted to do it well and make people happy. I gained valuable experience there working with different teams and business cultures that will make me more capable to run a restaurant and lead a team."
Despite the collective success of these hotel restaurants, there are plenty of challenges associated with their type of business compared to an independent eatery. Take staffing, for example. Omni director of operations Dawn Southworth acknowledges that this issue isn't unique to hotel properties. "It's a problem in general for Nashville, but it's the price we're paying for the tremendous growth," she says. "Our staffing needs are so large compared to an independent that we have to rely on our skills as managers to hire well and train them." Pittler concurs: "We're all teachers. We're here to teach the next group of young students to be the culinary rock stars of 2020."
Frohne felt some frustration with the hiring process. "Young cooks don't necessarily want to work in hotel kitchens," he says. "We hired some new culinary grads that felt they were too good to work the line, but they had no culinary chops." Many restaurants depend on J1 programs to staff their kitchens with workers on one-year visas. "We had Bulgarians who had worked at Michelin-starred restaurants," Frohne recalls. "You really hate to see them go after a year."
And then there's the issue of drug testing. Many corporate hotels require that all applicants undergo background and drug screening as part of company human resources policy. "Yeah, you lose a lot of applicants to testing," says Frohne. This is generally not the policy at independent restaurants. Another difference is that most hotel HR rules will not allow prospective cooks to stage in the kitchen, a common process where applicants work unpaid shifts to show off their culinary talents and demonstrate how they would work as a part of a team. The potential liability issues involved prevent most hotel kitchens from trying out chefs in this traditional way. Therefore, Strang explains, "I might have to interview 20 or 30 people to hire one."
Procurement is another sticky wicket for some hotel kitchens as they seek to balance local purveyors with national contract agreements. Phillips has come up with an intelligent approach to working around some of these guidelines. "We do have purchasing protocols that require us to buy a percentage of our ingredients off of the national contract, but we can fulfill these through our banquet operations," he says. "That means that Mason's can use Kenny's Farmhouse cheese. The public is calling for more local purveyors."
Southworth shares that philosophy. "We strive to stay true to the mission of the hotel to embrace the local community and share local culture with our visitors." Gopiao adds, "Sure, we purchase off of national contracts for some of our ingredients and participate in brand-wide programs. But we can also offer biscuits as our bread service at Kitchen Notes."
A complicating factor for both the purchasing requirements and labor needs at a hotel restaurant is the sheer volume of food that comes out of the kitchen. Frohne recalls, "You might get 30 minutes notice that a group meeting in the hotel has decided to come to your restaurant, and then 300 to 400 people all show up at once. It's pure madness. You just try to weather the storm." Strang points out that hotel kitchens are pretty much constantly in operation.
Frohne was occasionally frustrated by the pace and volume. "There's no time to close down a restaurant to train your staff. The servers can't taste and learn about new dishes. It's a constant battle against the clock to set up your station between meal changes, and you find yourself working out of your breakfast and lunch mise en place at the same time."
This is not even to mention room service, which is a complicating factor for hotel restaurants, from menu planning to service requirements. "The burger is still one of our most popular items," Kurtz says. "And that's never going to change." Southworth adds, "Any hotel's No. 1 bestseller is the room-service cheeseburger, so it has to be on point. It's suicide to think otherwise. No. 2 is the turkey club. The most successful room service has a great burger and a super Cobb salad."
After a night out honky-tonking on Lower Broad, groups staying at the Omni can all arrive home and hungry at the same time, so 250 late-night room service orders called in within an hour is not a rarity. All these have to come out of the same kitchen and be transported to guests' rooms by a steward staff, which is separate from the restaurant servers. Southworth boasts, "Our stewarding team is the heart of the whole operation." Strang points out, "We always think about room service when we plan the menu. It may be a great dish, but how well is it going to travel in a hotbox?"
These sorts of concerns, not to mention the special requests of lodgers, are a constant factor in hotel kitchens. "Hotel guests will ask for some crazy shit," says Frohne. "And we were taught to never say no." Strang adds, "If we can do it, we do it. It's the key to making any guest happy."
Special diets and allergy concerns have become critical issues in the kitchen. Gopiao observes, "Vegetarian requests used to be something special, maybe three to five percent of our orders. Now it's the norm, more like 15 percent." Joe DeGuria, the executive chef at Kitchen Notes recalls, "We had a guest contact us in advance of a visit with four pages of special dietary needs. She was allergic to everything you can think of. We had to close off part of the kitchen to accommodate her and cook every meal plus snacks from scratch for her five-day stay, but we made it happen. It was rewarding to see the look of gratitude on her face because she just can't go a lot of places, but we made her vacation to Nashville possible."
In addition to catering to guests' needs, the successful hotel restaurants in town also want to attract the local clientele as well. Pittler notes that "hospitality business is cyclical and seasonal, so we always try to keep the locals in mind." It seems that locals are looking for something a little more laid-back than traditional hotel dining. Kurtz says, "Locals need to be catered to. We strive for a relaxed feel that still offers upscale cuisine. The Oak Bar is perfect for that."
Strang describes the Hutton's vibe as "elegance at ease" and posits, "Stuffy white-tablecloth hotel dining is on the way out. A more casual atmosphere is gaining acceptance, and we try to plan special experiences aimed at locals." Phillips describes the process at Mason's as ongoing. "We've learned to be more approachable, not too cutting-edge for the corporate traveler but interesting enough to encourage locals to come visit. We excel because we take the risk to present food that's beyond the typical traveler's palate. We need to satisfy them all."
Despite the success of Nashville's notable hotel kitchens, they still sometimes struggle to compete with the rest of the city's burgeoning restaurant scene. Phillips notes that despite all the hard work and commitment Loews has made to offer a unique dining experience at Mason's, "the first thing guests ask is where to eat outside the hotel."
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