What a joy it is to have an epic dinner and then hop in an elevator upstairs to bed. It’s something I’ve enjoyed in some of the best hotels in the world, but it comes at a significant cost. A great hotel restaurant goes hand in hand with a hugely expensive room rate, and the two’s marriage could be financially disastrous. Sometimes this kind of thing takes the form of “a restaurant with rooms” and dinner is the whole point, but what we’re seeing more and more, because of the way we travel and the way we spend our time and money, is “rooms without a restaurant.” “.
Most of Locke’s aparthotels and the Ruby and CitizenM chains have waived any form of evening meals – a growing trend. The Hobson, which opens this spring in an architecturally remarkable former police station in Cambridge, will not have a restaurant. The website promises better prices for a luxury product “by not having to subsidize loss zones.” The hotel will have “special arrangements with nearby bars and restaurants” for guests to take advantage of. The Hobson assumes you come to Cambridge for the city, not the hotel.
Other mid-budget hotels feel the same way. “CitizenM’s view has always been that its guests are eager to discover the most exciting and newest restaurants in the city they visit, rather than dining in a boring hotel restaurant,” said the group’s Chief Brand Officer, Robin Chadha. “Of course there will always be a place for restaurants that belong to the top luxury hotels, which are destinations in their own right.”
For some new hotels it’s a gamble. When the Fellows House opened in Cambridge in 2021, it incorporated The Folio, a fairly upscale restaurant space that doesn’t just cater to residents. It’s smart, competitively priced – the Chef’s Dinner Menu costs £25 for two courses. The dining room is constantly busy.
Lauro Chainho, Director of Food and Beverage at the hotel, thinks removing restaurants and opting for automated check-in and apps “removes the human interaction and magic” that exists in hotels, which is why they wanted The Folio. “It’s a business model that’s alive,” she says. “We know that 40 percent of guests choose us [to eat] dinner and 80 percent of them choose to add breakfast to the room rate.”
In some cases, hoteliers choose not to be restaurateurs because of exclusivity rather than negligible profit margins. The Fellows House uses its restaurant to help with word of mouth, making it a solid choice for those looking to stay in town.
Riad Mena is one of the Telegraph’s top-rated hotels in Marrakesh, and super chic owner Philomena Schurer Merckoll likes to keep the vibe of the property and its six rooms like a private residence. “We have two great chefs who source the most seasonal produce every day,” she says, “but it’s important that we continue to eat here just for our residents, rather than compromising on intimacy and service.”
I recently stayed at the new Ace Hotel in Sydney and it was clear on my first evening that the top floor restaurant, Kiln, has created a deafening buzz within just a few months of opening. There’s a flamboyant doorman with an iPad and designer diners line up in front of the elevators to go upstairs and eat dry-aged ribeye with ponzu for $160 (£91) a plate. The food, like every aspect of the hotel and restaurant design, is impressive but represents a potentially fragile business model. Kiln could be the coolest restaurant in Sydney for a decade or more. Or not.
On the other side of the world, in one of the first Ace hotels, in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood, chef Markus Glocker recently opened a chic restaurant inspired by the Vienna Secession movement in the space that has occupied most of the hotel life was taken up by British chef April Bloomfield. Her restaurant, The Breslin, was something of a landmark and defined the identity of the hotel for many people.
The new restaurant, Koloman, has received good reviews from critics, but the general consensus of the locals is that it is too serious and will not inspire joy in the long run. If you’re staying at the hotel – whose heyday seems to be over now – and don’t fancy dinner, you can still get the Viennese breakfast at Koloman – a croissant, some ham and cheese and a boiled egg. It will cost you $34 (£28).
To complete a triptych of case studies on the fate of hotel restaurants, The London Ace closed in 2020, taking with it the beloved Hoi Polloi restaurant. The hotel reopened as One Hundred Shoreditch, but the new dining room, Goddard & Gibbs, died within six months. It just didn’t belong to the area. Hoi Polloi was conceived by Pablo Flack and David Waddington, who founded the ever-hip East London bistro. Having them in your home is like letting Kim Jones design your ready-to-wear in a fashion house. You are guaranteed followers. Hoi Polloi transcends the idea of ”hotel-restaurant”. Not Goddard & Gibbs.
Robbie Bargh, responsible for developing dining areas in luxury hotels, including getting executive chef Anthony Demetre to reopen Wild Honey at the Sofitel St James, believes the hotel’s restaurant has a healthy future if it’s done right way is designed and invested in it.
“It should be a showcase for artisans and showmanship,” he says. “It should be for the locals as well as the global nomads, and there should be more tension and drama. Restorers can tell stories and provide light, camera and action.”
Sure, some hotels need a destination dining room, and it needs to have an identity that complements the hotel, but also makes it vibrant in its own right. These are the kind of restaurants where you can’t order room service (and there have been cases where celebrity chefs clashed with hoteliers over not serving food to in-room guests). Hélène Darroze at The Connaught and The Connaught Grill are both part of the hotel but exist as independent bubbles of luxury.
Currently, its sister hotel, Claridge’s, doesn’t have a definitive fine dining restaurant, but culinary director Dmitri Magi is about to announce a replacement for Daniel Humm’s Davies and Brook, which was quietly put to sleep when Humm wanted to make it vegan. Sybaritic Mayfair is not ready for tortured asparagus at £200 a head.
There is a gap between Claridge’s and a CitizenM. If you have the kind of prime real estate that many of the latter-brand hotels occupy, you’d have to charge fortunes for dinner to break even, once you’ve manned the place and stocked the pantry.
And if you’re paying £100 for the room, why go downstairs for dinner two or three times? The hotel’s restaurant is not dead, but it is no longer taken for granted. Being in an exciting city rather than stuck on a private island or small town on the edge of civilization gives you a million options. We are going to see many more rooms without a restaurant in the coming years.