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Fueled by a surge in tourism and by the recent success of upscale hotel eateries, New York restaurateurs are clamoring to strike up new partnerships and set up shop alongside the city's signature suites
With record-breaking numbers of visitors to New York City and more than a dozen high-profile hotel openings in the city during the past year, tourism there is on the rebound along with a surging variety for diners at lodging establishments.
Reflecting New York's tourism trends, several high-profile hotel restaurant developments are nearing completion or have been opened in the past several months by such noted players as Jeffrey Chodorow's China Grill Management, which recently debuted Ono at the hotel Gansevoort.
In addition, Nobu Matsuhisa of Nobu fame plans to open Wakiya, a modern Chinese restaurant, in the Bryant Park hotel in Manhattan early next year. Meanwhile, the New York-based Livanos Restaurant Group, perhaps best known for its midtown Greek restaurant Molyvos, is operating the newly opened Abboccato at the Blakely hotel.
Among the other new hotel restaurants are Silverleaf Tavern, which recently opened in the San Francisco-based Kimpton Group's inaugural New York property, 70 Park Avenue hotel. Scheduled to open in January at the Carlton hotel is Country, a second restaurant for chef Geoffrey Zakarian, who also owns Town at the Chambers hotel.
More than ever before, it seems, prominent chefs and restaurateurs are getting into the hotel foodservice game, a trend that likely will be a hot topic at the International hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show, which will be held in New York City from Nov. 13 to Nov. 16.
Attendees at the show and other New York visitors and locals should remember a time when diners really had to search to find a good hotel-based restaurant, according to John Fox, senior vice president of PKF Consulting, a hotel advisory firm based in New York. Now it's become much more prevalent for hotels to have a name chef or a name-brand restaurant, he adds.
"Even now, when one steps back and looks at the top Manhattan restaurants, at least two or three of the best restaurants in the city arc in hotels," Fox says. "Ten years ago there wasn't one."
Two models dominate the new era of hotel food-service. One,...