Surviving Without A Hamburger

Do hotel restaurants always need to have a hamburger, Caesar salad or club sandwich on their menus? This is the question I am asked one way or another at nearly every new restaurant we operate or design a menu for.

It is a good question as it speaks to the basic need for a harassed traveler to have some familiar items on the menu. It does, however, conflict with the notion today of menu integrity—a restaurant with a chef-driven vision for the menu that has clear ethnic or regional values.

How does a menu align itself with an expensive, themed restaurant with gobs of atmosphere? Does a heart next to an item on a menu really need to be there to show what you should eat? Hmmm, then should you feel guilty about the other stuff on the menu that is not so good for you? What happens when a hotel guest wants that hamburger that you knew you should have left on the menu, but you opted instead for the talented chef who won the battle for menu integrity?

My only answer to these questions is this: You really can’t please all of the people all of the time, so here are some tips.

1. Put the hamburger or club sandwich on the bar or roomservice menu--you can always serve it in a pinch in the dining room without having it on the menu. I was in a 5-star hotel's restaurant having lunch the other day and the two businessmen next to me had a sandwich and fries that were not on the menu. I asked the server how they got their lunch, and he told me that the items were on the bar menu.

2. If you want your restaurant to be competitive with street restaurants, you do need to have passionate chefs that live and breathe their craft. So you really need to understand who your target guest is, what they want and the style they want it in, and a chef that understands that too.

3. Restaurants today have become the jewelry of hotels. If your hotel is like one of the trendy, cool hotels in New York, Los Angeles or any other city in which cool hotels need restaurants that are cool too, well, go back to No. 2: Do your guests need a heart to tell them how to eat, or are you better served with a passionate chef?

4. Lastly, hotels have a big advantage over independent restaurants in that they have more venues--roomservice, bars, banqueting and a restaurant--that provide them with the opportunity for varied menus (and inventory). And if the hotel is reasonably large, it has a built-in clientele to serve to. Standalone restaurants have to go with the inventory they have.

Just yesterday I was in a pre-opening operations meeting for an Italian restaurant in a 450-room hotel with just one restaurant that currently only does about US$1 million a year,and I was asked, “What about the guest that just wants a hamburger instead of pasta?”

I gave the answers above, told them that in my experience it does not make a difference, and gave them plenty of examples of successful restaurants in hotels that had ethnic menus without hamburgers or club sandwiches. Some of the first examples that come to mind are Todd English’s Olives in Las Vegas; Spoon at the InterContinental in Hong Kong; Fifth Floor at The Hotel Palomar in San Francisco; Ducca at The Westin in San Francisco; and Gordon Ramsay at The London in New York. The hotel GM smiled, the chef smiled and the owner grimaced.

I will let you know how it goes, but I bet it will work.

By Bob Puccini