Thursday's Hotel Restaurants

In the old days, hotel restaurants were where the management wanted you to eat.   Before the days when kitchenettes, and even before refrigerators were standard, the hotel guest had to take his meals from the restaurant.   If you were lucky, the staff had a break room fridge to where you could keep your leftovers. 

Hotel restaurants were not places you went to, but rather places you ended up at.  These days hotel restaurants offer every kind of cuisine, and some of those are even Michelin-starred.

San Francisco's Marines Memorial Hotel caters exclusively to veterans and active military duty personnel.  You have to be a veteran or currently serving in one of the four branches of our military to stay there.  Their rooftop restaurant, Chesty's, has the best view of the city you've never seen. 

The Marine's Memorial Theater next to the lobby has offered Las Vegas and Broadway-level quality entertainment for over a century, but since 1998 Cesario's has occupied the ground floor space on the street and has been the place to go before the show.  This little gem serves traditional Italian food for a modest (by San Francisco standards) price.   At only 13 floors, the Marines Memorial Hotel has two restaurants that have a range in price and cuisine.

The Seal Rock Inn rests at the western edge of the city, overlooking Sutro Baths.  The motel has been around for 75 years, and if you are a literary nerd, you may be interested to know that gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, wrote part of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in one of their upper floor rooms. 

Their coffee shop, located adjacent to the lobby, was basically set up to get hotel guests out before check-out time.  The food was average, at best. But if you had a table by the window, the view couldn't be beat.  Then came the pandemic; the whole hotel shut down and reopened a year later with no coffee shop. 

But then something wonderful happened.

Food impresario, Alfred Schilling saw the diamond-in-the rough potential of this oft passed-over space.  Trained in France, he later taught at the Cordon Bleu USA as well as a tour of duty in Trader Vic's management. 

He appropriated the restaurant and created the New Seal Rock Inn Restaurant. This new incarnation is now open for dinner and offers an eclectic menu serving continental cuisine, so there is something for everyone.

Cordon Bleu-trained restauranteurs are nothing new to San Francisco, and neither are those which are Michelin-starred as well.   In fact, there is a whopping 26 restaurants within the city limits which have been awarded at least one Michelin star, and some of those are connected with a hotel.

The Battery Hotel in the city's Financial District is an exclusive residence, with only 16 rooms.  Their restaurant, Woolsery offers what they call a pan Euro-Asia fusion cuisine.  They are not Michelin-starred, but the chef holds a Michelin Key, so it must taste better than your average White Castle.

The Woolsery may not be Michelin-starred, but Kin Khao at the Parc 55 Hotel is.  Located just one block from the Powell Street Cable Car turnaround, Micheline bestowed a star on this restaurant because of its unique presentation of traditional Thai cuisine. 

Nari also received the same honor from Michelin for their bold approach to Thai cuisine. However it is located in the most prominent traditional Japanese-themed hotel in San Francisco, The Hotel Kabuki. And ironically in the heart of the Japantown.

Abacá at the Kimpton Alton Hotel is also ironically located in Fisherman's Wharf, an area known more for snow-globe vendors than Michelin-starred restaurants because as their website proclaims... "celebrates the vibrancy of Filipino cuisine through a modern California lens."  An anomaly for an area known primarily for seafood.

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