Well it musta been a hit with rich tree huggers and romantics alike because the hotel is continuing the special menu and candlelight setting throughout the summer.
In honor of Earth Week, Chef de Cuisine Brian Moyers at The Blvd in the Beverly Wilshire, has prepared a three-course menu that is exclusively comprised of items from local and sustainable farmers. The special menu will debut on Friday, April 25, 2008 and continue to be offered every Friday through the end of summer.
The special menu offers five small courses at $85 and $135 with wine pairings. The BLVD restaurant is also offering wine and cheese pairings every Wednesday through the end of summer.
Of course, if you're interested in dining at CUT, the scene of so many celebrity power gatherings, make your reservation far in advance. Or else show up like we did at 6pm on a Friday and promise to be done in an hour and half. You'll surely get a table that way. Worse comes to worst, you can hit Sidebar.
Word to all you would-be Hamptonites. If you don't have a share and you don't want to brave the dark hotel secret of Andre Balazs, there's another option for you.
From the peeps who brought you the CAIN nightclub brand comes The Surf Lodge, which will open over Memorial Day weekend on the farthest point of Long Island in Montauk.
The 32-room hotel is located a half-mile from the beach on Fort Pond.
Rooms and public areas at the Surf Lodge will have a subtle surf theme running through them: white-washed walls, sun bleached pine flooring, outsized photos and artwork from surfers, surf lovers and all things beach.
All rooms with have lake views and 12 of them will have private courtyards and hot tubs, which is like ubiquitous Hamptons make-out setting. According to the press release, amenities include flat-screen TVs, iPod docks and the vague "more" which we hope is PR-speak for some booze in the mini-bar.
On Tuesday night, we checked out the Preview Party at the Beatrice Inn for The Chelsea Atlantic City which is still on schedule for a mid-July opening.
Our favorite Philadelphia Restaurateur (and soon to be Hotelier) Stephen Starr was there along with Curtis Bashaw and his sister Colleen Bashaw who designed the interior of the Chelsea, as well as a number of Curtis' other hotel projects in Cape May.
While we were a little disappointed that there were no pictures of the interior, or a presentation about the hotel, drinks were free, hors d'Oeuvres were excellent and the opportunity to actually get into the Beatrice Inn without having to pay off a bouncer made up for it.
And yes, we sat on the couch where Lindsey Lohan probably made out with 684,384 guys (in one night) last week and felt a little bit of the celeb vibe.
The other month we learned that angry chef Gordon Ramsay was going to move into the hotelier world with the York and Albany Hotel, a 10-room boutique fashioned from an old pub.
Of course, we expected a restaurant to come with it but now there might be two. From Bloomberg:
Gordon Ramsay Holdings's first U.K. hotel, in north London, will feature two restaurants run by Angela Hartnett, private dining, a cocktail bar and a delicatessen, Design Week said, citing the York & Albany's general manager.
The original plan was for the York & Albany to become part of Ramsay's pub group, Design Week said, and then the decision was taken to operate it as a hotel, with 10 suites. The Regency designs are by Russell Sage Studio, with custom-made silk fabrics, Design Week quoted manager James Partridge as saying.
Remember, last time we reported on this it was going to be Angela Hartnett's project from top to bottom. She's a friend and fellow chef of Ramsay, who will be the hotel's owner. York and Albany is expected to open sometime in later Summer.
As promised, here is the second installment of our lengthy, multi-dimensional review of the Palazzo Las Vegas.
This time it's all about the hot tables that got us so giddy as the Palazzo was in the midst of hotel opening hype. So did they live up to our expectations? For the most part yes. Although there were a few disappointing dishes here and there.
Since we were set up with fixed menus at each of the restaurants we tasted, it was really hard to get the full experience, but we have summed up all that we sampled over at Jaunted under the site's ever-popular Table Crashing series.
Here's a preview:
CUT: The Vegas interpretation of Wolfgang Puck's popular Beverly Hills steakhouse remains true to form. The decor is different as Richard Meier did not design the space. But we think Las Vegas-based design firm ABA did a good job. The place actually looks less intimidating.
The Bond Street sushi restaurant inside the Thompson Beverly Hills received zero stars and zero love from LA Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila.
Much like the hotel review from her counterpart Valli Herman, Virbila liked the Dodd Mitchell design. This place used to be a crappy Best Western and now it strikes the right notes with the trendy Hollywood people looking to be seen. Yet there's something lacking on the inside at Bond Street.
For instance, Virbila recommends staying away from the raw fish...in a sushi restaurant! The scallop carpaccio makes her want to "scrub off my tongue." And there's more. In Virbila's words:
I'd previously ordered the marinated tuna -- two cubes of raw tuna coated with Maytag blue cheese. I thought it was possibly one of the worst sushi experiments I'd ever tasted but wanted to see what my dining companions thought, so I order it without cluing anybody in. One friend pops a piece in his mouth and then spits it out in his napkin -- What? Blue cheese with raw fish? -- making a face.
But that's not the only such innovation. There's goat cheese crab cakes, a gooey mix of cheese with shredded crabmeat rolled in crushed rice crackers. This is equally awful, and without the lift of pristinely fresh crab.
Virbila has some kinder words for the entrees and vegetable dishes like chef Nakahara's signature arugula crispy potato roll. But with prices so expensive "$12 for two very small pieces of big eye tuna, or sweet shrimp sushi" and a scene where people are only there to be seen, this is a sushi joint and possibly a hotel to skip.
One of our personal favorite beachside Santa Monica hotels has got a new look inside. Eater LA has the scoop on the renovations completed at the One Pico fine dining restaurant inside Shutters on the Beach.
The room will have a breezier look, lots of ocean blues (in this case teal tufted leather chairs), dark wood accents; the lovely beachside views remain.
Michael Reardon, who's now executive chef of all the ETC Hotel properties (Casa del Mar next door and Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara included), created a seasonal, Italian-inspired menu. Think: grilled octopus with potatoes and capers, homemade pastas, steak Fiorentina, John Dory with langoustines and farmer's market vegetables.
The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner and should open officially sometime this week. For a more casual setting, hit up Coast on the bottom floor which also got a renovation fairly recently. The terrace and pool deck is still under construction and will reopen on April 25th.
Fun fact: the hotel will chauffeur you around in a Mercedes-Benz with the license plates 1PICO. That's so California!
The other weekend we popped into the Hotel Bel-Air, a legendary hotel not only known for hosting celebrity clients (cough, Britney Spears, cough) but for having exquisite grounds only accessible to hotel guests, making a stay here one of utmost privacy.
The overall feel of the hotel reminds us of The Beverly Hills Hotel but while the Pink Palace is more public and showy and prone to paparazzi hounds, the Bel-Air almost feels sleepy. Or at least it did on the Saturday morning that we stopped in for breakfast. Still, it was a good kind of sleepy and we could hardly believe we were still in Los Angeles. So already the place wins our pick as great urban hideaway but now about that restaurant decor....
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by juliana
