Meeting News - February 2, 2009 - (Page 5)

Chef Talk New Fontainebleau Serves Up a Host of Dining Options nightclub exclusively for a daytime event or for When Paris Hilton, Martha Stuart, Sean “Diddy” cocktails. It creates more options for groups. Combs, and other celebrities across the spectrum show up at a hotel’s reopening, it’s clearly much To what extent can planners incorporate more than a run-of-the-mill, post-renovation the food from some of your restaurants ribbon-cutting. into their events? The debut in question, made last year, was that of the revamped Fontainebleau Miami Beach, a It’s totally doable. Say they $1 billion project that essenwant the food of Alfred Portially created a new hotel with tale (chef of Gotham Steak at 1,504 rooms, 107,000 sf of the resort, and chef/owner of meeting space, a 40,000-sf Gotham Bar and Grill in New spa, and 11 restaurants. York), we would do that. But All of the eateries are being the price point would be comoverseen by one man, execuparable to the restaurant. tive chef Sean O’Connell. He And we’ve had dine-arounds is no stranger to running that took place over a few days, multiple restaurants, and he across all of the venues. has worked around the globe. Prior to the Fontainebleau, What programs can you O’Connell ran 12 restaurants do for groups that aren’t at the Mandarin Oriental, tied to the restaurants? Sean O’Connell Hong Kong. He’s worked in Executive Chef Singapore and Thailand and We have a diverse banquet Fontainebleau Miami Beach created menus for Air New kit, with well over 180 By Rayna Katz Q A From a culinary standpoint, how is the hotel different from its previous incarnation, and from its area competition? Q A Q A We’re the only hotel to have partnerships on this scale with restaurateurs. We have all these signature restaurants— meaning we have partnership agreements with them—where there’s a certain cuisine served, and the Fontainebleau is invested, so we are partowners. And we’re building a quality operation from the back door in. Where other hotels are outsourcing cut meat, I have my own butcher whom I hired from France, and I have a fishmonger with 12 aquariums. We’ve also gone out and invested in a proper bakery. We produce our own gelato and chocolate. We have a chocolate artist. In terms of how we changed with the renovation, the banquet kit is about double the size. So its double the possibilities. The menus are contemporary, whereas the old menus were stodgy. They had a 1980s feel to them. Zealand. But O’Connell has cooked in the U.S.; he’s worked with 21 restaurants at the Bellagio Las Vegas. He stopped hiring employees and firing up food to speak with MeetingNews. Q A Q A How is it possible for one man to oversee 11 restaurants? pages, including theme menus such as French, Caribbean, Florida feel, and European feel. And we have a huge focus on action stations, as well as interchangeable buffets. Also, we have guest programs that we can do for groups, too, like Chocolate Indulgence. Q A What’s your favorite food? Thai and Japanese food, for their crisp ﬂavors. I love curries; I love Indian cuisine because of the intensity of ﬂavor, the balance, and the freshness. And I love barbeques, too. H Contact Rayna Katz at rayna.katz@nielsen.com A colorful nicoise salad is just one of O’Connell’s creations at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. It’s an enormous task, but I love doing it. It makes me work harder until the product gets to be amazing. I also do it by surrounding myself with great people and delegating to them. How can groups take advantage of the myriad cuisine offerings at the hotel? Q A You held a number of positions in Asia. How has that impacted your cooking and food knowledge? We have dine-arounds; each venue is large and has its own cuisine, so guests can experience food from around the world. We have different types of atmospheres: For example, there’s Blade, where we serve sushi but where it’s a nightclub feel. Planners can book the www.meetingnews.com It’s expanded my knowledge considerably. For example, designing the restaurants like La Cote (French Mediterranean) and Vida (Pan American)—and having them done correctly versus creating Americanized versions—comes from my international experience. It’s also led me to search out a team for the Fontainebleau from around the world. Our baker is from Colombia (and he’s the ﬁrst baker to receive an award from the James Beard Foundation); our sushi guy is from Tokyo, etc. It’s allowed me to raise the bar on quality. February 2, 2009 MeetingNews 5 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - February 2, 2009

Meeting News - February 2, 2009 Contents What’s Up @ MeetingNews.com Inside the Industry People Making News Transportation Green Beat Ad Index Live from the Forum

Meeting News - February 2, 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.