Reviving Ho-Hum Hotel Fare

Some of the new star chef-driven restaurants are popping up in unlikely places: suburban hotels. Chefs Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier have opened Summer Winter, which has its own greenhouse, at the Marriott in Burlington, Mass., a suburb 20 miles north of Boston. It is their first deal with a major hotel chain. "We are finding that 85 to 90 percent of our customers are coming from the surrounding areas, which is a really wonderful thing," Frasier said.

For the hotels, the restaurants also provide a halo effect in drawing attention to the hotel that could drive more banquet, wedding and bar mitzvah business. Guests also want to stay in a place that they perceive as being a hip outpost in a city they have perhaps never visited. "You want your hotel to have a great local vibe," said Elizabeth Mullins, an area vice president for Ritz-Carlton who used to oversee Philadelphia and now manages Washington.

The hotel companies have lured the star chefs into the corporate lodging world by offering them a way to extend their brand while having to do few of things that give them heartburn -- begging investors for money and running the daily business.

"I don't have to go out and raise money; and every night when I go to bed I don't have the stress of worrying if I am profitable that week," Ripert said. "If we lose a manager, I know the hotel is going to take care of it. I can focus on what I should be focusing on: Is the team performing properly and is the food being prepared correctly?"

When Ripert is in town on one of his regular visits, he said he "eats a lot of food," hovers around the kitchen, mingles with guests -- "I talked to Eric Ripert!" -- and scrutinizes the service. Otherwise, Leonardo Marino is in charge. He was lead sous chef at Le Bernardin when it garnered a rare four-star review from the New York Times.

In Philadelphia, Ripert's 10 Arts is overseen daily by Jennifer Carroll, a protege who was recently named best new chef by Philadelphia Magazine. 10 Arts has been open only a couple of months, but the revenue has doubled over the previous restaurant. At that rate, the hotel's overall profit margin could jump by 3 percent.

Mullins, the area vice president, said: "We are moving things in the right direction."

But the big question nobody has an answer to is: Are celebrity chefs, like all celebrity, fleeting?

"The hotels are attaching themselves to these chefs: Are they going to be hot 10 years from now?" said Costa, the Hotel Food & Beverage magazine editor. "We are just not there, yet."