Chris Butler / cbutler@idahostatesman.com
In my years of travel, I’ve bellied up to a lot of hotel meals. A few were truly exceptional: A breakfast of salmon hash at the Heathman in Portland, Easter lunch at the Dorchester in London and a not-so-ethically-defensible-but-delicious bowl of bird’s nest soup at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong.
Of course, hotel fare can be far less memorable. A kind of way station between bona fide eateries, hotel restaurants often float in a culinary netherworld created merely to serve those travelers too tired or incurious to venture into the world beyond the doorman.
In the reverse of that, I hadn’t ventured into the Grove Hotel’s Emilio’s Restaurant simply because I feel little urge to hang out in hotels when I’m home. It was, however, time for this occasionally incurious critic to find out if therein lurked a netherworld or something better.
The first pleasant surprise was a rather cozy bar in the lobby adjacent to Emilio’s, especially since it’s equipped with a sushi stand called Satori. My wife and I ducked in before dinner and ended up with two generous and refreshing grapefruit martinis ($8.10 each) and a Mixed Poki bowl ($11). In retrospect, the martinis may not have been the perfect pairing for that colorful mound of diced tuna, hamachi and avocado doused in a spicy shoyu, but they did soften my frequent doubts about hotel fare.
Doubts resurfaced, though, when I saw how few guests Emilio’s had on this September Saturday night. What is it about a tastefully appointed yet empty hotel dining room – all soft light, composed bouquets, leather chairs, white linen and unfulfilled promise – that heightens a feeling of dislocation more than a lesser room?
I felt like we were falling into a scene from “Lost in Translation” until our young waiter arrived. Equipped with what seemed a sincere enthusiasm for the menu, she brought us dense bread, an extensive wine list (with a full page devoted to Idaho labels) and several astute suggestions for dinner.
On her urging, we started with the lobster tail corn dogs ($12). I’ve had variations on this haute-cuisine-meets-hot-dog theme with mixed results, but those four lollipop-like dogs on a stick were good – and enough for two. The thick, cornmeal breading was light years ahead of the county fair and the nubbins of lobster, well, I’ll have all my corn dogs with shellfish from now on, thank you.
Still, the plating was a bit ragged: a mound of Thousand-Island-like dressing formed an inelegant lump and a side of micro greens could have been fresher. (And that got me thinking how tough it must be for a hotel kitchen with culinary aspirations and an eager staff to keep its game up while catering to a vagabond clientele that ebbs and flows with every convention or holiday weekend.)
For a main course, my wife had an Idaho trout special topped with a crust of sliced almonds on a bed of couscous ($18). The couscous was softer than I like, but, thanks to bits of pineapple and mint, it had a nice hint of tropicality. I tried the Kurobuta Pork Shank ($19) braised in a dark plum sauce. Thin slivers of deep-fried parsnip were scattered over the top and underneath sat layers of whipped potato (with a pleasant bite of wasabi) and wilted chard. The dish was nuanced, complex and flavorful.
Dessert, which our waiter said was made in house, was also a pleasure. An Amaretto and cream mousse in a white and dark chocolate shell ($7), it was an edible Easter egg on a plate, cracked at the top and full of a liqueur-scented and airy mousse.
Many countries hold hotel restaurants in high regard. America, with few exceptions, isn’t one of them. Yet, by our evening’s end, we’d had both good food and great service – and enough other eaters had trickled in to make Emilio’s livelier than your average netherworld.
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture. |
