Lockwood in the Palmer House Hilton

Lockwood must have hired a passionate writer to come up with the rhapsodic prose on its website. Sadly, the writer's grandiose ideas about the restaurant must come from something other than having eaten there.

Lockwood website wrote:Inspiration, passion, and the drive to innovate: these are the seeds of great artistic collaborations. Technical mastery and attention to detail translate the ideas to reality. But what brings a collaborative performance to life are the keen and sensitive individuals who appreciate and-most of all-enjoy it.

Reality: If attention to detail were really paramount, someone would have tasted the mashed potatoes before sending them out of the kitchen, and might have discovered before I did that they there was something unpleasantly sour about them. They might also have taken note of the gummy, sticky texture. Someone with a bit of detail-orientation might also have considered proofreading the menu, which is laden with a myriad of amusing typos and misspellings.

Lockwood website wrote:With Lockwood, we've brought together world-class chefs, inventive designers and exceptional servers whose bold visions and dedication to their crafts collectively create a concert for the senses. Our cuisine-fresh, innovative and unforgettable-is the centerpiece. Our elegant yet intimate ambience invites people-watching and cozy conversation, in equal measure. Our warm and professional staff curate their service for a truly outstanding dining experience.

Reality: if you are taller than 6'0", your head will feel uncomfortably close the basement-like ceiling. Much taller than that, and you may have to duck to move around the restaurant. Watch out for the cheesy track lighting when you do. In terms of people watching, make sure you don't go at 8PM on a Saturday night. At that "off hour" when I visited, there were but 2 patrons in the restaurant. The rest of the world knew better.

Lockwood website wrote:Gesture, line, phrasing, melody-in any artistic pursuit, the details are what provide human dimension, human scale. They can be simple-but take years of training to master.

Reality: It also took what felt like years for them to locate my wine bottle. When our appetizers were cooked and ready to be served, the staff was kind enough to ask me if I'd like the food kept warm in the kitchen until they could find the wine. Huh?

Lockwood website wrote:Lockwood's chefs have made a very deliberate choice to focus on details-and to cook in a way that is both perpetually innovative and supremely skilled. The time-honored traditions of French and Italian cooking underpin the contemporary scope of our chefs' imaginations.

Reality: The French and Italians don't have traditions that include underseasoning food, frying it into a gloppy mess, and reheating it to order. With a couple of notable exceptions, Lockwood's food was lackluster at best. Lobster beignets were chewy, greasy, and devoid of substantive lobster flavor. "Surf and turf and turf," which included a poached lobster, a piece of beef tenderloin, a braised short rib, béarnaise sauce, bordelaise sauce, and some spinach was fine, but I've had fresher tasting lobster at Shaw's, and the whole dish was marred by the above-mentioned mashed potato travesty upon which it all rested. Roast chicken was juicy, crispy, and very flavorful, but shared the plate with a tired potato gratin that had seemingly been made quite some time (days?) earlier and reheated.

Lockwood website wrote:In Pastry Chef Fabrice Francois Bouet, Lockwood has another finely trained innovator... Together with the service team, Chefs Foss and Bouet provide a seamless, unique dining experience with the transformative power of the best art.

Reality: They may indeed have a winner in the pastry chef. The lemon tart was delightfully tangy and had a perfect, buttery pastry crust. "Italian-style donuts," however, were dense and chewy, which should have been expected after the similarly-textured beignet appetizer.

Lockwood website wrote:The best art not only delights us but also changes us: It makes the everyday seem newly remarkable. Artists free enough-or confident enough-in their technical abilities are those who take the most interesting risks, giving the viewer, listener, reader or audience the benefit of their extended vision.

Reality: This diner was not "changed", but he certainly felt short-changed.

(edited to correct the ironic and moderately embarrassing typo nsxtasy quoted below)

Lockwood Restaurant
Palmer House Hilton, lobby level
17 E. Monroe St.
Chicago, IL 60603
312-917-3404

Kennyz wrote:Someone with a bit of detail-orientation might also have considered proofreading the menu, which is laden with a myriad of amusing typos and misspellings.
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The rest of the world new better.

(Sorry, couldn't resist...)

nsxtasy wrote:

Kennyz wrote:Someone with a bit of detail-orientation might also have considered proofreading the menu, which is laden with a myriad of amusing typos and misspellings.
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.
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The rest of the world new better.

(Sorry, couldn't resist...)

No problem, I wouldn't have been able to either - Though I would note that only one of your two highlighted words is actually a typo or misspelling.

Kennyz wrote:No problem, I wouldn't have been able to either - Though I would note that only one of your two highlighted words is actually a typo or misspelling.

I wasn't trying to imply that misspelling was misspelled, and I don't normally point out typos/misspellings. I was merely pointing out the amusing irony of a post which points out misspellings and has one of its own. No offense intended, of course!

Lockwood has had its fits and starts, IIRC; they opened briefly around Thanksgiving, then closed for a while, and there were conflicting reports about when they would re-open. Thanks for the useful report. I hope they get their act together and make improvements.

nsxtasy wrote:I hope they get their act together and make improvements.

Keep in mind that this is a corporate Hilton restaurant in a convention hotel. Don't get your hopes up.

I hear you Kennyz. I had a $12 glass of Malbec, (the least pedestrian offering of the reds) served to me in DIRTY - cloudy with dishwasher liquid - glass. Ew.

Does anyone else think Lockwood is a peculiar name for an upscale restaurant?

aschie30 wrote:Does anyone else think Lockwood is a peculiar name for an upscale restaurant?

Every time I hear or read the name, I can't help but think of Lockwood Castle, the long gone ice cream parlor in Edgebrook.

naperwino wrote:I hear you Kennyz. I had a $12 glass of Malbec, (the least pedestrian offering of the reds) served to me in DIRTY - cloudy with dishwasher liquid - glass. Ew.

The wine list is utterly ridiculous for the type of place Lockwood portends to be. A few dozen bottles taken from the middle shelf at Jewel and then marked up 600%, and handful from the Jewel top shelf marked up at 800%. A glass of Gloria Ferrer sparkling wine for $16!?

An explanation of the seemingly odd name can be found on the comically long-winded website:

Lockwood website wrote:Our Story
Our restaurant takes its name from Lockwood Honoré, the youngest brother of Bertha Palmer. Along with the keen eye Lockwood shared with his sister for discovering masterpieces of art long before others, he is remembered today for his many contributions to the Palmer House and Chicago. A circuit court judge, Lockwood's forward-looking ideas helped create the city's lasting legacy of public parks and streets. Bertha, Lockwood and their four other siblings were close-knit and had a tradition of honoring their family names: Lockwood and his wife named their daughter "Bertha," and Bertha later named a street on her Sarasota, Florida property "Lockwood." ...At Lockwood, we strive to honor this commitment to progress and aesthetic refinement by always advancing new and higher standards in the elegance of our space, the quality and inventiveness of our cuisine and the warmth and welcome of our service. ...Just as Bertha and Lockwood put their marks of keen taste and uncommon foresight on the city of Chicago, so at Lockwood, the artist crafts the dining experience, marking it with elegance, inventiveness, conviviality and ease.

Kennyz wrote:

naperwino wrote:I hear you Kennyz. I had a $12 glass of Malbec, (the least pedestrian offering of the reds) served to me in DIRTY - cloudy with dishwasher liquid - glass. Ew.

The wine list is utterly ridiculous for the type of place Lockwood portends to be. A few dozen bottles taken from the middle shelf at Jewel and then marked up 600%, and handful from the Jewel top shelf marked up at 800%. A glass of Gloria Ferrer sparkling wine for $16!?

An explanation of the seemingly odd name can be found on the comically long-winded website:

Lockwood website wrote:Our Story
Our restaurant takes its name from Lockwood Honoré, the youngest brother of Bertha Palmer. Along with the keen eye Lockwood shared with his sister for discovering masterpieces of art long before others, he is remembered today for his many contributions to the Palmer House and Chicago. A circuit court judge, Lockwood's forward-looking ideas helped create the city's lasting legacy of public parks and streets. Bertha, Lockwood and their four other siblings were close-knit and had a tradition of honoring their family names: Lockwood and his wife named their daughter "Bertha," and Bertha later named a street on her Sarasota, Florida property "Lockwood." ...At Lockwood, we strive to honor this commitment to progress and aesthetic refinement by always advancing new and higher standards in the elegance of our space, the quality and inventiveness of our cuisine and the warmth and welcome of our service. ...Just as Bertha and Lockwood put their marks of keen taste and uncommon foresight on the city of Chicago, so at Lockwood, the artist crafts the dining experience, marking it with elegance, inventiveness, conviviality and ease.

The story of "close-knit" Lockwood and Bertha is sending chills down my spine . . . and making me lose my appetite . . .

stevez wrote:

aschie30 wrote:Does anyone else think Lockwood is a peculiar name for an upscale restaurant?

Every time I hear or read the name, I can't help but think of Lockwood Castle, the long gone ice cream parlor in Edgebrook.

Me too and I miss it

=R=

Keep in mind that this is a corporate Hilton restaurant in a convention hotel. Don't get your hopes up.

Perhaps they could find someone in-house. These Hiltons have a fairly decent cook, whose grub I can vouch for. He's a little crabby sometimes, but he's probably just jet-lagged.

stevez wrote:Keep in mind that this is a corporate Hilton restaurant in a convention hotel. Don't get your hopes up.

Nowadays, that's no longer a valid excuse. Many hotels, including those serving the convention trade, have perfectly decent restaurants, and a few have great ones (Avenues, NoMI, Seasons). People no longer expect mediocrity in hotel dining, and hotels have realized that they can achieve greater volume by being good enough to attract non-guests to dine.

I hear the new Trump hotel will soon be opening its fine dining restaurant, Sixteen Candidates, its casual restaurant, the Combover Cafe, and its bar, Coldfired. They are expecting a very high rate of turnover among employees.

nsxtasy wrote:Nowadays, that's no longer a valid excuse. Many hotels, including those serving the convention trade, have perfectly decent restaurants, and a few have great ones (Avenues, NoMI, Seasons).

I want what you're smoking! Sure there are a few exceptions here in Chicago which you have noted in your post, but by and large hotel dining is something to be avoided like the palgue. Try going on the road sometime and depending on hotels for your meals. You'll be singing a different tune real quick.

stevez wrote:

nsxtasy wrote:Nowadays, that's no longer a valid excuse. Many hotels, including those serving the convention trade, have perfectly decent restaurants, and a few have great ones (Avenues, NoMI, Seasons).

I want what you're smoking! Sure there are a few exceptions here in Chicago which you have noted in your post, but by and large hotel dining is something to be avoided like the palgue. Try going on the road sometime and depending on hotels for your meals. You'll be singing a different tune real quick.

Could not agree more with you Steve. 99% of the hotel restaurants I've encountered while traveling for work could be generously described as mediocre. Avenues, NoMi and Seasons are exceptions rather than the rule.

jesteinf wrote: Avenues, NoMi and Seasons are exceptions rather than the rule.

And, I might add, located in luxury hotels that don't particularly cater to the convention crowd like the Palmer House does.

I think what nsxtasy is getting at is that hotel dining is improving. Yes, 99% of hotel restaurants are still crap (and probably 95% of non-hotel restaurants). But you are more likely to find a decent restaurant in a hotel than you were, say, 10 years ago. Perhaps this harks back to the days long ago when most upscale hotels had correspondingly upscale restaurants.

There are other examples: Custom House is in the Blake and Primehouse is in the James, to name two. Even if the hotel doesn't own the restaurant, the hotel made a strategic choice to have a good restaurant on premises.*

As stevez forcefully wrote "Try going on the road sometime and depending on hotels for your meals. You'll be singing a different tune real quick." This is undoubtedly true, but it is a little besides the point that nsxtasy trying to make: Just because Saloon is in a hotel doesn't preclude it from delivering on its promise of decent food.

*Custom House provides room service to the hotel; I am not sure about Primehouse.

Yeah, but I think you need to look outside of the luxury (Peninsula/Four Seasons) and boutique brands (James/Blake). Go to a Hilton, Marriott, etc. and you will find some pretty crappy hotel restaurants (with not many signs of improvement).

Darren72 wrote:I think what nsxtasy is getting at is that hotel dining is improving. Yes, 99% of hotel restaurants are still crap (and probably 95% of non-hotel restaurants). But you are more likely to find a decent restaurant in a hotel than you were, say, 10 years ago. Perhaps this harks back to the days long ago when most upscale hotels had correspondingly upscale restaurants.

There are other examples: Custom House is in the Blake and Primehouse is in the James, to name two. Even if the hotel doesn't own the restaurant, the hotel made a strategic choice to have a good restaurant on premises.*

As stevez forcefully wrote "Try going on the road sometime and depending on hotels for your meals. You'll be singing a different tune real quick." This is undoubtedly true, but it is a little besides the point that nsxtasy trying to make: Just because Saloon is in a hotel doesn't preclude it from delivering on its promise of decent food.

*Custom House provides room service to the hotel; I am not sure about Primehouse.

Stevez's statements mirror my business travel experience as well. If you're staying at a midscale chain hotel like the Hilton, you can bet that the food will be mediocre. There are some boutique hotels, though, as Darren72 points out that are attached to excellent restaurants which are destinations in and of themselves. There are a few cities where I will stay at those boutiques for the sole reason that if I order room service, it will be from a restaurant like Custom House. Hopefully, this trend spills over into the larger midscale chains, but it hasn't yet, from what I can see.

aschie30 wrote:Does anyone else think Lockwood is a peculiar name for an upscale restaurant?

Yes, especially if one lives on Lockwood Avenue.

(I would like my chances in a Mashed Potato Throwdown -- my Lockwood kitchen vs. theirs.)

jesteinf wrote:Yeah, but I think you need to look outside of the luxury (Peninsula/Four Seasons) and boutique brands (James/Blake). Go to a Hilton, Marriott, etc. and you will find some pretty crappy hotel restaurants (with not many signs of improvement).

Yes, it's true that if you exclude the good ones, you're left with bad ones.

More seriously, I think that's true for a reason. There are complementarities between good food and higher-end/edgy hotels. For the same reason the cafe at Target serves terrible food, the restaurant in a big box hotel serves terrible food.

(Having said that, the Palmer House was once a luxury hotel and I think they'd like to recapture that image.)

Others to add to the list: The Jose Garces' new restaurant in the Blackstone.
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16594

There's also Tramonto and Gand's enterprises in the Wheeling Westin.

jesteinf wrote:Go to a Hilton, Marriott, etc. and you will find some pretty crappy hotel restaurants (with not many signs of improvement).

I disagree.

I'll give you an example that illustrates my point. Last year I needed to get together (twice) with someone who had a long connection at O'Hare. We had lunch at the restaurant in the O'Hare Hilton. It was quite good, with an interesting menu and very good execution. No, it's not going to win a GNR award, but it was certainly not "crap" by any means. And the O'Hare Hilton is not exactly a luxury hotel; it specializes in fly-in business meetings and flight crew layovers.

I'll give you another example: Allgauer's, in the Northbrook Hilton. They do a nice business, with very good food, a great Sunday brunch, etc. There too, it's not earth-shattering in its creativity, but it's quite good.

Yet another example is the Daily Grill in the Doubletree in Skokie. Good food, worth going for lunch or dinner even if you're not staying there. And Don's Fishmarket, down the street in the Comfort Inn. Another place with good food. And the Globe in the Orrington in Evanston, another place with good food. And Ruth's Chris in the Renaissance North Shore, a Marriott chain. And Aria, in the Fairmont downtown, and Atwood Cafe, in the Hotel Burnham. These are the typical hotel restaurants today - sometimes affiliated with upscale national restaurant chains, sometimes independent, often good enough to attract non-guests in the vicinity. Maybe you like other places better, but I doubt that many people familiar with these places would call any of them crap.

The hotel business has changed a lot over the years. It used to be that every place was a Holiday Inn and they all had a bad restaurant in it. Now, you have lots of all-suite hotels (often catering to longer stays) and budget hotels, neither of which usually has restaurants. Many hotels with restaurants often offer banquet services, which need to be competitive with nearby restaurants (restaurants do a bigger share of the banquet and private party business than in the past). Many others partner with a local chef or an upscale chain as a mutually beneficial arrangement, with a built-in market for a restaurant entrepreneur who is looking for a space to open a restaurant. As darren72 notes, hotel food has gotten better than it was, and those claims of 99 percent crap are just not true nowadays. Sure, there's still bad food in some hotel restaurants, but there are also a lot of hotel restaurants serving good food.

I do a lot of traveling, and I often stay and eat in such mid-level hotels. The food I find is occasionally mediocre, usually decent to very good, and occasionally excellent. Claiming that something is crap because it's a hotel restaurant just isn't necessarily, or even usually, true, based on my experience.

There's no excuse ever for dirty glasses, poor service etc.

nsxtasy wrote:I do a lot of traveling, and I often stay and eat in such mid-level hotels. The food I find is occasionally crap, usually decent to very good, and occasionally excellent. Claiming that something is crap because it's a hotel restaurant just isn't necessarily true, or even usually true, based on my experience.

I guess you're easier to please than I am. Enjoy your Marriott burger (the same the world over...just like McDonald's).

nsxtasy wrote:

jesteinf wrote:Go to a Hilton, Marriott, etc. and you will find some pretty crappy hotel restaurants (with not many signs of improvement).

I disagree.

I'll give you an example that illustrates my point. Last year I needed to get together (twice) with someone who had a long connection at O'Hare. We had lunch at the restaurant in the O'Hare Hilton. It was quite good, with an interesting menu and very good execution. No, it's not going to win a GNR award, but it was certainly not "crap" by any means. And the O'Hare Hilton is not exactly a luxury hotel; it specializes in fly-in business meetings and flight crew layovers.

I'll give you another example: Allgauer's, in the Northbrook Hilton. They do a nice business, with very good food, a great Sunday brunch, etc. There too, it's not earth-shattering in its creativity, but it's quite good.

Yet another example is the Daily Grill in the Doubletree in Skokie. Good food, worth going for lunch or dinner even if you're not staying there. And Don's Fishmarket, down the street in the Comfort Inn. Another place with good food. And the Globe in the Orrington in Evanston, another place with good food. And Ruth's Chris in the Renaissance North Shore, a Marriott chain. And Aria, in the Fairmont. These are the typical hotel restaurants today - sometimes affiliated with national chains, sometimes independent, often good enough to attract non-guests in the vicinity. Maybe you like other places better, but I doubt that many people familiar with these places would call any of them crap.

The hotel business has changed a lot over the years. It used to be that every place was a Holiday Inn and they all had a bad restaurant in it. Now, you have lots of all-suite hotels (often catering to longer stays) and budget hotels, neither of which usually has restaurants. Many hotels with restaurants often offer banquet services, which need to be competitive with nearby restaurants (restaurants do a bigger share of the banquet and private party business than in the past). Many others partner with a local chef or an upscale chain as a mutually beneficial arrangement, with a built-in market for a restaurant entrepreneur who is looking for a space to open a restaurant. As darren72 notes, hotel food has gotten better than it was, and those claims of 99 percent crap are just not true nowadays. Sure, there's still bad food in some hotel restaurants, but there are also a lot of hotel restaurants serving good food.

I do a lot of traveling, and I often stay and eat in such mid-level hotels. The food I find is occasionally undistinguished, usually decent to very good, and occasionally excellent. Claiming that something is crap because it's a hotel restaurant just isn't necessarily, or even usually, true, based on my experience.

Having dined at all of the O'hare Hilton restaurants while there for continuing education I have to ask. You did not find them all to be egregiously over priced?

KSeecs wrote:Having dined at all of the O'hare Hilton restaurants while there for continuing education I have to ask. You did not find them all to be egregiously over priced?

That's an entirely separate issue. I was there for lunch, not dinner, and I thought the items were maybe a couple dollars more than some other places, but no different from what you'd find in most decent hotel restaurants. Hotel restaurants tend to be somewhat more expensive than many places not located in hotels; you're paying for the location and the convenience. Egregiously overpriced? No, IMHO. Again, though, I was just there for lunch.

stevez wrote:

nsxtasy wrote:I do a lot of traveling, and I often stay and eat in such mid-level hotels. The food I find is occasionally crap, usually decent to very good, and occasionally excellent. Claiming that something is crap because it's a hotel restaurant just isn't necessarily true, or even usually true, based on my experience.

I guess you're easier to please than I am. Enjoy your Marriott burger (the same the world over...just like McDonald's).

While I fall somewhere in the middle of the "hotel restaurants suck" debate, I will say that this statement could not be further from the truth. Morton's steakhouse in Brooklyn and Viand here in Chicago both make excellent burgers. Both are within Marriott hotels (Viand is actually in the Courtyard by Marriott). I've also eaten at a Champions Sports Bar and a Houlihans, both inside Marriotts (Indianapolis and Columbus, respectively). While I don't much care for the food at either, the burgers at those two restaurants differ from each other. Maze restaurant in the London Marriott is wonderful, and boasts a Michelin starred chef from the deservedly famous El Bulli in Spain.

(full disclosure: I went on one date with a Marriott employee a couple of years ago)

I just got back from a weekend trip to New Orleans, which I will post about at some point. Appropriate to this thread, though, was the dinner we had one night in our hotel at the Todd English helmed Riche, which is billed as a French brasserie.

I used to tell people that you can't find a bad meal in New Orleans. I now have to amend this advice to exclude this hotel restaurant. It was beyond terrible. I ordered steak frites which came covered in a brown gravy(?) thick enough to top a hot beef sandwich at a local Greek diner (if there was such a thing in New Orleans). The gravy was made with so much garlic that I smelled it coming to the table from 35 feet away with my back turned to the server. No care whatsoever was taken with the preparation of my food. I didn't eat more than a bite and walked out of the restaurant because it was so bad.

This is yet another data point that bolsters the advice to avoid hotel restaurants if at all possible. Yes, the argumentative among us will point to Avenues, et al. but those are the rare exceptions that prove the rule.

stevez wrote:This is yet another data point that bolsters the advice to avoid hotel restaurants if at all possible. Yes, the argumentative among us will point to Avenues, et al. but those are the rare exceptions that prove the rule.

The less argumentative might ask that we keep the conversation civil and avoid the argumentum ad hominem. You know, avoid name calling. It really takes the fun out of it.

As an aside, in the past the word "prove" could also mean "test". So the phrase "exception that proves the rule" originally was understood to mean "exception that tests the rule".

For example, the Oxford English Dictionary lists the following as a definition of "prove":

To make trial of; to try, test. ... To put (a person or thing) to the test; to test the genuineness or qualities of; (Sc.) to test by tasting, to sample. Now rare in general use..."

and gives the following examples:

1881, Mark Twain, Prince & Pauper xxv. 198 'He..began to devour him from head to foot with his eyes..stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him from all points of view.'

1906 Englewood (Illinois) Times, 'He would prove the oxen by testing their strength, capacity for work, and tractableness.'

Today, the word "prove" is seldom used to mean "test". Given the way we use the word "prove" today, the phrase "exception that proves the rule" would imply something like "exception that means the rule is correct," which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think you just mean something like "Hotel food is generally poor. Avenues is an exception." I presume you don't mean that the rule is correct because there is an exception to it.

Darren72 wrote:The less argumentative might ask that we keep the conversation civil and avoid the argumentum ad hominem. You know, avoid name calling. It really takes the fun out of it.

As an aside, in the past the word "prove" could also mean "test". So the phrase "exception that proves the rule" originally was understood to mean "exception that tests the rule".

Today, the words "prove" and "test" mean very different things. Given the way we use the word "prove" today, the phrase "exception that proves the rule" would imply something like "exception that means the rule is correct," which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think you just mean something like "Hotel food is generally poor. Avenues is an exception."

Darren,

I really didn't understand very much of what you said. To be clear, my point is that experience has shown (time and time again) that eating in a hotel reasturant is a losing proposition 99% of the time. You can choose to avoid my advice if you wish.