It doesn’t exactly come as a shock that Ivan Suardi chose hotel food and beverage as his dream job. Maybe other kids were busy dreaming about growing up to be cowboys or firefighters, but Suardi was getting an enticing first glimpse of a world most of his friends probably didn’t know existed.
“My dad was an executive chef for some of the grand hotels in Rome and at a high-end catering company in France,” he says. “He was chef for the Italian Olympics team in 1976. I was always following after him. The glamour of the hotel world got in my blood and stayed there.”
But even Suardi couldn’t avoid some soul-searching before signing on. Not many hotel F&B directors list “flight attendant” as a line item on their resume. Suardi did. He spent 19 months in the air in response to an identity crisis, questioning whether following a childhood dream was the right path or maybe just trying to process his dad’s injunction not to do so. “He always told me F&B professionals would be working while everyone else partied,” Suardi says.
The grounding realization that helped him overcome those doubts? Suardi’s response, typically, is equal parts pragmatist and dreamer. “I discovered how much I wanted the passion of cooking, of working together with different types of people and different nationalities — and of better career prospects than being a waiter in the air.”
Even with both feet firmly planted on ground — first during a 16-year stint with Hyatt International, rising through the ranks to become director of F&B projects for Asia Pacific, and now as Rosewood’s F&B leader — Suardi is still a big believer in blue-sky thinking and high-flying creativity. “Often I wake up at night because I’m looking for some inspiration on something,” he says. “Actually most of the time it arrives when I’m asleep.”
It helps that he counts among his mentors maverick restaurateurs who have mastered the art of taking a lightbulb moment and translating it into profitable reality. “When I was working with Andreas Stalder (long-time Hyatt F&B executive), we were looking for a name for a restaurant that would be unique,” Suardi recalls. “One day he was apparently putting on his shirt to go to work and he saw the label, ‘Made in China.’ It just fit, and became the name of an immensely popular restaurant in Beijing.”
Editing that big-picture vision down into the structure of hotel restaurants still sometimes makes Suardi chafe. “I feel that, because of the hotel environment and because of the locations we may be in, we need to be more practical and less creative. It’s a shame,” he says. “We still try to be creative but maybe with just a bit less craziness. You need to be smart and figure out different ways to express your creativity. But the perfect scenario would be to be crazy all the time.”
While Suardi won’t share his next big idea, he does pinpoint a few trends he sees as doable, like Mexican cuisine, Peruvian cooking, product-driven concepts and small, sexy bars. And, even if something doesn’t seem accessible, he’s the first one to speak up for what he believes in. “In our business it’s like we are in a courtroom — ometimes you have to be on the defensive and sometimes on the attack.” he says.
Editor’s note: This profile is part of HOTELS’ first People Issue, which highlights a dozen up-and-coming hoteliers.