Can a great chef make a hotel restaurant a local favorite?

Dear Pros,

Erika here. This week, Washington, D.C.-based Food & Wine contributor Alice Levitt reported on a big get for our nation's capital. Award-winning chef Mashama Bailey and Johno Morisano, the dream team behind Southern destination The Grey in Savannah, Georgia, are expanding northward and planting a flag at the original JW Marriott, located within shouting distance of the White House.

The pair is launching two concepts inside the hotel: The Diner Bar by Grey, an all-day restaurant with big Southern breakfasts, sandwiches, and crab cakes that will open by year's end, and a more upscale spot called The Grey on Penn that is targeting a Spring 2027 debut. That menu is still coming together, according to the team.

"There's so much good food in hotels in Europe, and I think I'm starting to genuinely see a change in America," Morisano told Levitt. "We're not building it for the transactional traveler. We're building it for people who live in the neighborhood who want to have a drink, eat some oysters, and get a good bit of food."

That quote sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole while I was passing time on the train on Thursday night. I know hotels are increasingly tapping big-name chefs to put some oomph back into their dining programs, but is it actually working?

I scrolled back through my photo reel until I came across the last hotel restaurant that I went to for pleasure, not work. It was ten months ago, at La Padrona, a glamorous restaurant inside the first stateside Raffles property, which opened in Boston in 2023. The plush Italian spot is overseen by 1993 F&W Best New Chef Jody Adams, alongside executive chef Amarilys Colón. The menu is a regional tour through Italy — Piedmontese beef tenderloin; Emilia-Romagna tagliatelle — and it, frankly, slaps. I was not surprised to see the news that the same team had been tapped to spread some of that magic to the Four Seasons.

Pros, I'd like to know: What's the most recent hotel restaurant that you've been to and loved? Let me know at the email address below, and we may feature your response in a future Pro mailbag.

Take care,
Erika