Reviving Ho-Hum Hotel Fare
Chains Enlist Celebrity Chefs to Beef Up Bottom Lines

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 2, 2008

Kobalt, the restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton on 22nd Street, certainly had character. The carpet matched the upholstery on the chairs. The drapes were so heavy that nobody could see in or out. The walls: wood with silk panels. Of the food, in 2001 this newspaper's food critic wrote, "Sometimes I wonder if the chef is tasting his creations."

"I thought it was absolutely atrocious," said Eric Ripert, the famed chef and occasional TV star behind the four-star Le Bernardin in New York City. "It was sad. It was ridiculously formal. I hated it."

Ripert is dismissive about the restaurant, which later morphed into The Grill, in the same way that new homeowners often speak about the previous owners' tastes. He moved in to the old location, opening Westend Bistro late last year as part of a spate of deals that lodging chains are making with celebrity chefs to repair the damage done by upholstery and poor food and to beef up the bottom line by drawing not just more overnight guests but city residents, too.

At Westend Bistro, the floors are hardwood. The tables are tableclothless. The colors are deep shades of orange and red. The food is a cross between French and American cuisine. And reservations are hard to come by. It seems the intentions of Ritz-Carlton, a Marriott International brand, are paying dividends. Most of the diners are not hotel guests. Revenue is up 50 percent and profit is up 10 percent.

"This improves the overall profitability of the hotel," said Ken Rehmann, Ritz-Carlton's executive vice president of operations. "We are now appealing to a wider network of customers and going head-to-head with stand-alone restaurants. We see this as a smart business move."

Two decades ago, hotel restaurants served up great meals by some of the best local chefs, but the industry lost its way and many hotel eating spots turned into places where the best thing that could be said about the food was that the Caesar salad wasn't as bland as it could have been. The carpet from the lobby tended to roll straight into the restaurant. The atmosphere was so hushed you could hear a hotel bill drop. Even guests went somewhere else for dinner.

But big hotel chains have long tried to emulate developments in popular culture, and recently they have turned their attention to the celebrity chef culture that has invaded American cities, making near rock stars out of Ripert and Wolfgang Puck and Tom Colicchio, the head judge on the popular TV show "Top Chef."

"They are trying to go back to the days when hotels were destination dining," said Michael Costa, an editor at Hotel F&B magazine. "One of the hardest things to do in the restaurant business is get someone to walk through the door. Having a celebrity chef is a way to get them there."

In most of the recent hotel deals, the celebrity chefs license their names for hefty fees, design the menu and the concept, oversee operations with regular visits and install proteges as the everyday operators. Even if Ripert is not at Westend every night -- or even once a week -- it doesn't seem to matter.

"If the chef's name is on something, that gives people a sort of quality assurance that they enjoy," said Mark Sandground Jr., a District attorney who specializes in representing celebrity chefs. "People say, 'This burger was prepared by Michel Richard and if not him, someone he trained. In some ways there's a psychological benefit to me because there's a celebrity chef behind my burger.'"

The redoubled efforts to perk up hotel restaurants with star chefs come as lodging chains are looking for creative ways to squeeze out more revenue as fewer business and leisure travelers hit the road. Ripert also opened a Ritz-Carlton restaurant in Philadelphia. Local celeb chef Jose Andres is launching a restaurant concept for a Los Angeles hotel owned by entrepreneur Sam Nazarian and managed by Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Michel Richard, the owner of Citronelle, located at the Latham Hotel in Georgetown, licensed his name to a California hotel and will oversee culinary operations.

Perhaps the biggest celebrity chef deal is the one Starwood made with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the maestro behind Jean Georges, one of the top restaurants in New York. Vongerichten is opening several dozen restaurants at Starwood properties, including the boutique W. (Las Vegas is a planet unto itself with restaurants by Puck, Colicchio, Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, Thomas Keller, Alain Ducasse and so on.)

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."