Bloomberg Businessweek

The Era of Chef-Run Hotels

66

In 2009, Michael Stipe and his R.E.M. bandmates went to eat

at Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana after a concert in

Bologna. They liked the town of Modena so much, they wanted

to stay. But Bottura couldn’t find a place for his friends to sleep.

“I said, ‘How is there not a place here for people to stay? I

need a hotel.’” A decade later, in May, Bottura will open Casa

Maria Luigia, a centuries-old estate 10 minutes outside town.

The 12-room inn will have a professional kitchen in the old car-

riage house and showcase part of its owner’s museum-worthy

modern art collection.

Bottura is part of an ever-growing gaggle of chefs for whom

running a hotel restaurant isn’t enough—they want to own

the entire operation. After all, the profit margins on beds

are higher than the slim ones earned at tables. This isn’t a

brand-new concept: In the 1990s, Alain Ducasse opened the

Provence retreat La Bastide de Moustiers. But the current

king of the chef-run hotel is Nobu Matsuhisa, who created

his own brand beginning with his first location in Las Vegas

in 2013; it’s become a small empire on track to have 20 prop-

erties by 2020.

There’s no one master model: In Mexico City, Enrique

Olvera has built a tiny B&B. Acclaimed chef Bertrand Grébaut

took over a country house in Normandy, France. And in São

Paulo, Alex Atala is going whole hog, packing a $50 million sky-

scraper full of marquee restaurants and fancy rooms. Here are

seven you should know about right now.—With Nikki Ekstein

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM TOP: STEVEN FREEMAN, CASA MARIA LUIGIA, LAURA PANNACK FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

LYMPSTONE

MANOR

Devon, U.K.

The chef:Michael Caines, who earned two

Michelin stars for the resort Gidleigh Park

The place:A restored mansion in Devon

Don’t miss:Meaty turbot, poached with

leeks and finished with grated black truffles

Caines has spent most of his professional

life working in restaurants attached to luxury

hotels. He cooked at Oxford’s famed retreat

Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Raymond

Blanc (as did Marco Pierre White and

other notable chefs), then spent more than

20 years cooking at the imposing Gidleigh

Park in southwestern England. But when

Caines asked about becoming a partner in

the property, he was turned down. “I said to

Gidleigh Park, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and they

said, ‘Nothing.’ It was like a love affair when

I asked her to get married and she said no.”

(Gidleigh Park declined to comment.)

The chef, who did have a partnership

interest in the U.K.-based Abode Hotels,

decided it was time for his own place. There

was no question it would be a country inn and

not just a restaurant. “You’re making a good

30 percent profit margin on a bedroom, while

food and beverage is anywhere between 10

and 15 percent,” he explains. “When you have

them working together, that’s even better.”

In 2015 he bought a rundown Georgian

property in his home region of Devon. In

the spring of 2017 he opened Lympstone

Manor, which overlooks the River Exe, in

Exmouth. It has 21 rooms and suites filled

with glimmering golden sofas and silvery

carpets. Caines’s modern British menu

includes lobster salad with cardamom and

filet mignon from a local farm, with braised

beef cheek and creamy shallot confit. After

opening, Caines planted 17,500 vines on

11 acres; by 2024 he expects to produce his

first vintage of Lympstone sparkling wine.

From £340 ($449); lympstonemanor.co.uk

NOBU HOTELS

Eight locations worldwide

The chef:Sashimi purveyor to the stars

Nobu Matsuhisa

The place:The company’s newest project is

a 23-story tower set to open in late summer

near Barcelona’s Sants train station, the

Catalan capital’s arterial transit hub

Don’t miss:The panoramic views from the

signature restaurant on the top floor

He may have made his name fusing

Japanese and Peruvian flavors, but

Matsuhisa lately has fallen hard for Spain:

The sushi master is about to open his third

hotel in the country after successful recent

debuts in Ibiza and Marbella. The project is

a top-to-bottom rethink of one of the city’s

staid four-star properties, the former Gran

Hotel Torre Catalunya. After a transformation

by his longtime designer David Rockwell,

the hotel will have 255 rooms and a bevy

of meeting and event spaces. It’ll be one of

the largest undertakings yet for Matsuhisa

and his partners—who include the actor

Robert De Niro.

“We entered the hospitality business

with an upside-down business model,”

says Nobu Hospitality LLC Chief Executive

Officer Trevor Horwell. “While most

hotels focus on selling rooms first, Nobu

Hotels has always been about creating

memorable food experiences.” Now that

others are using the same calling card,

Nobu is setting itself apart not just with its

cuisine—the chef’s famed black cod with

miso is on every hotel’s menu—but also

with a matching Japanese fusion design

philosophy. In Barcelona, for instance,

there’s the recurring motif of broken,

kintsugi-style pottery, which evokes Gaudí’s

iconic mosaics.

At a hotel that will open in Los Cabos,

Mexico, shoji screens on the closets will

mimic the sliding glass doors that open

up onto the Sea of Cortez. In Riyadh, the

headboards in each room will feature cherry

blossom embroidery on local fabrics, while

a ground-floor teahouse merges Japanese

and Arabian traditions. Up next for Nobu

Hospitality? Branded residences. “Our first

Nobu Hotel and Residences, in Toronto,

sold out in just three months,” Horwell says.

More are on the way: Nobu condos are in the

works for São Paulo and Los Cabos. From

€350 ($397) for Barcelona; nobuhotels.com

D’UNE ILE

Normandy, France

The chef: Bertrand Grébaut, of hot Paris

neo-bistros Septime and Clamato

The place: A rustic country house two hours

from the City of Light

Don’t miss: Al fresco breakfasts with warm-

from-the-oven brioche, butter from the farm

next door, and fresh honeycomb

Rather than go for more big-city buzz, the

chef who blazed the trail for lightened-up,

With the margins on hotels so much higher than tables, it was only a matter of time