Hotel restaurants have their own challenges. Workload often is double or triple that of a standalone restaurant due to the hotel’s around-the-clock service. The kitchen is responsible for breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night, bar or lounge and often room service.
Then there is the task of attracting a loyal following, which can be the most difficult part of any restaurant’s business plan. By the nature of hotel clientele, the potential restaurant diner who is staying at the hotel is there just for a brief stay and then gone with a slim chance of returning.
Hoteliers who want to maximize revenue from their lucrative restaurant space often make sizeable investments in creative chefs, kitchen equipment and menus. Some bring in celebrity chefs.
A New York City hotel restaurant which focuses on the cuisine of the Basque region of Spain – lots of fresh seafood with Mediterranean flavors – brought in guest chefs from restaurants in that region to cook alongside the hotel restaurant’s chef.
The idea is to attract two types of potential customers to dine in the hotel. There is the transient lodging guest who has numerous dining options, particularly in a city or state with a vibrant culinary culture such as Rhode Island. With so many exciting choices, the traveler staying overnight in Providence or elsewhere is unlikely to have dinner in the hotel’s dining room, especially the first night in town. And with local hotel stays averaging just two nights, the window of opportunity is very small.
Then there are local customers who may be reluctant to patronize hotel restaurants for a variety of reasons.
One local hotel faced those challenges plus a large one of its own: the floods of 2010. The NYLO Hotel Providence/Warwick in Warwick opened in August 2008 in a rehabilitated mill building that once upon a time manufactured Fruit Of The Loom underwear on the banks of the Pawtuxet River. It opened as the first NYLO property in New England for the then-Atlanta-based, loft-hotel specialist company. (The company has since relocated to Texas.)
An opening press release touted “163 guestrooms, called guest lofts, each with 10-foot-plus ceilings, exposed brick walls and floor-to-ceiling windows.” In March of 2010, the river came calling as it did in much of the area and the new hotel was inundated. It remained closed until this past summer.
The Loft restaurant at NYLO had to start over again from scratch. That theme resonates with its new chef de cuisine, Nick Dadona. “We’re basically a scratch kitchen,” he declared in his dining room overlooking what on that recent day was a placid river.
One popular menu item is the Overnight Braised Beef Short Rib Ravioli. House-made pasta envelopes mounds of boneless short rib braised for 12 hours in an ale-based brine. “I’m constantly in the back [of the kitchen] rolling out dough!” he exclaimed.
Dadona describes his menu as modern American. That covers a wide range from veal osso bucco to nim chow. Most items are made in-house.
“Our plates look good, but simple,” he said. “I want this restaurant to stand on its own,” the chef continued. “Our travelers have their own agenda. We really want to attract that walk-in guest who comes in for a pizza, appetizer, or a drink with friends.”
Prior to coming to The Loft, Dadona spent three and one-half years at 1149 restaurant as Jules Ramos’ sous chef. He enjoys creative freedom for his menu with surprisingly little input from corporate headquarters. “They told me to keep it New England,” he stated. Four cooks are on staff at The Loft with Dadona to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner. There is no “room service” per se at NYLO, in keeping with its casual approach. A select menu of kitchen-prepared wraps and salads are available for late-night service.
The Loft at NYLO is in some respectable company. Stroll through the lobby of the venerable Providence Biltmore hotel and you can see bronze plaques mounted 8-feet up from the floor commemorating the high-water levels during the hurricane of 1954 which flooded the entire city. And although it is having its troubles these days, the hotel and its restaurant have withstood the test of time and is still open for business.
When you make a reservation to dine at either of these institutions, raise a glass to good-old Yankee persistence and drink to their good luck. •
Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show is heard Saturdays and Sundays on WPRV-AM 790 and stations throughout New England. He can be reached by email at
bruce@brucenewbury.com.
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