Hotel Restaurants Get Recognized

Esquire magazine’s Best New Restaurants of 2009 list appears in the November issue, and the "restaurant of the year" is none other than a hotel restaurant: The Bazaar by Jose Andres at SLS at Beverly Hills, a Luxury Collection Hotel. 

Also on the list are five other hotel restaurants:

- Area 31 at Kimpton’s EPIC hotel in Miami
- Pacci Ristorante adjacent to Hotel Palomar Atlanta-Midtown (ask Bob Puccini about the design)
- Paces 88 in the St. Regis Hotel in Atlanta
- SHO Shaun Hergatt in The Setai New York
- Society Cafe Encore at Steve Wynn’s Encore in Las Vegas

I agree with Esquire’s John Mariani that many of these restaurants have something to talk about, as I’ve written about three of them in the past year.

(In case you missed the links above, see "Selling the Experience" and "Approachable Elegance") 

What do you think? Is six hotel restaurants out of 20 total restaurants (30% are hotel restaurants) significant?

Does it speak to the evolution of hotel restaurants? And will we see even more next time around?