With the growing focus on eating locally-sourced foods, hotel restaurants are turning to area farmers for their produce, dairy and meats needs. It should come as no surprise that these same restaurants, while they have strong relationships with local purveyors, have a fiscal interest in growing their own food.
Just a few short years ago, who really considered farming a possibility within major city limits? Check out these popular hotel rooftop gardens across the USA.
Crystal Springs Resort, Hardyston, New Jersey
The Chef’s Garden at Crystal Springs Resort’s Grand Cascades Lodge brings fresh and local dining to a whole new dimension. This breathtaking al fresco restaurant allows guests a truly exceptional “garden-to-table” culinary experience set adjacent to a beautiful organic vegetables, flowers and herbs garden. The garden was designed to be beautiful, educational and to supply seasonal products to hotel guests, area residents and day visitors. When dining at the Chef’s Garden, guests can see resort chefs pick garden-fresh ingredients and use them to prepare their meal in front of them.
Essensia Restaurant + Lounge in the Palms Hotel & Spa, Miami, Florida
Located at The Palms Hotel & Spa in Miami, Essensia Restaurant + Lounge takes its farm-to-table philosophy to the next level by not only sourcing many of its products locally, it uses products from its 750 square feet Chef’s Organic Garden to create a menu focused on purity and taste.
Montage Laguna Beach Laguna Beach, California
This luxury hotel boasts, Studio Garden, an organic garden adjacent to its signature restaurant, Studio.
The garden is comprised of raised garden beds filled with herbs, vegetables and even fruits. Executive Chef Craig Strong, Studio Garden’s main gardener, incorporates the fresh ingredients in his inventive dishes at Studio and works with the mixology team to add the garden’s harvest to the cocktails at the various outlets. The resort’s Montage Laguna Spa even incorporates the garden’s herbs and produce in its spa treatment.
Rooftop Garden at the Waldorf Astoria, New York, New York
The Waldorf Astoria past, present and future has a rich tradition of roof top gardens. The rooftop garden originally opened in 1903 and was accessible by ticket only and featured two orchestras providing musical entertainment. Since its reopening in 2011, Executive Chef David Garcelon and his team have recreated the rooftop garden and added bee hives that have helped pollinate the many vegetables, fruits and herbs that are used in the hotel’s food and cocktails. The honey made from the rooftop bee hives is even used in the Guerlain Spa
Terranea Resort, Los Angeles, California
At mar’sel, the resort’s upscale restaurant, Executive Chef Bernard Ibarra’s seasonal culinary approach inspired the extensive herb garden adjacent to the kitchen. Chef Ibarra ever-evolving menu is peppered with ingredients grown in the hotel’s garden and the hand-crafted cocktail often feature herbs and produced grown in-house also. The beaming sun and crisp breezes of Rancho Palos Verdes are the perfect conditions for a garden. The garden was designed and is managed by Home Grown Edible Landscapes and the company hosts hands-on gardening workshops throughout the year for guests.
The Iroquois Hotel, New York, New York
At Manhattan’s Iroquois Hotel, Swiss-born Executive Chef Florian Wehrli has personally designed the rooftop garden at the boutique hotel. The ingredients grown are used to prepare the dishes at the refined yet comfortable French restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Chef Wehrli has hand-built planters at his western New Jersey home and carried them to the hotel’s restaurant on the commuter bus. The full sun on the rooftop allows for proper light to grow anything from nasturtiums to the fennel to potatoes.
The Pyramid Restaurant, Fairmont Hotel, Dallas, Texas
The Pyramid Restaurant & Bar is the longest-running AAA / Four Diamond establishment in Dallas. The contemporary dining room features organic wood sculptures and crosscut tree welcomes guests as they enter the foyer. The popular restaurant offers a cuisine inspired by locally-sourced ingredients. To further its sustainability stance, The Pyramid Restaurant & Bar plants and tends to a 3,000 square-foot vegetable and herb garden on its rooftop. The ingredients harvested from the hotel’s garden complement the locally-sourced products in the dishes offered on the menus.
The Sprouting Project at Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort, Amelia Island, Florida
The Sprouting Project consists of an advanced aquaponic greenhouse, an expansive organic garden, a large collection of beehives and a soon-to-be completed smokehouse. Guests can join one of the resort’s chefs every Saturday for a tour of the Sprouting Project, including seeing the aquaponic greenhouse, garden and apiary in action
If you’ve visited any of these amazing places, please post a comment to let me know what you thought!
Safe travels,
Veronique