Is it me, or is the food in hotels sub par, and by sub par I mean like no better than Furr's Cafeteria. I recently was on a business trip with a wicked cold but my palette was still intact. I ordered room service from a fairly high end Hilton resort restaurant, my meal consisting of a "Prime" burger on brioche with tomato relish, and sauteed polenta with gorganzola. The burger was made with really poor quality beef (no way this was prime), overcooked, dry, and unseasoned. The brioche was nothing close to the real deal, verging more toward being an egg bun than anything. The "relish" was chopped tomatoes and a pickle, and the polenta was obviously cut from a precooked log, burnt on the edges, and covered in a very harsh mountain gorganzola, as opposed to gorganzola dolci. With a beer, the meal cost $38 + 20% mandatory gratuity + tax. I felt completely ripped off, just horrid. The only good thing to come of it was that it was so bad that I started thinking about how many bad meals I've had in hotels ... and really, almost every meal has been poor and barely making the grade as cafeteria food. Hilton has been consistently poor in quality and outrageously over priced. The only meals that were ok to good from Hilton were in Sri Lanka, where the Hilton basically is the only identifiable western hotel in Columbo, and about half of its six restaurants had decent food. Actually the food at the Lighthouse Hotel in Galle, Sri Lanka was good as well; Australian beef & lamb, french wine, etc. On my honeymoon in Aruba, we only ate one meal in the hotel and it was not good, though in general the restaurants in Aruba are exceptional for a beach vacation destination; I'll have to write about that sometime.
When I think about other restaurants in American hotels such as Westin, W, Hyatt, even The Four Seasons, there's only been a couple exceptions where I'd actually eat there again. Notably, Hotel Monaco, despite the sometimes gaudy interiors, generally has good restaurants inside of or closely affiliated with their hotels. Panzano in Denver is excellent, as is, by reputation, the restaurant run by Jan Birbaum inside the downtown Seattle Hotel Monaco. If anyone knows of any other hotel restaurant gems, let me know I'm all ears ... but until I get some good advice, I'm done with subjecting myself to crap hotel food unless I'm at a Kimpton / Hotel Monaco restaurant.
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