Hotel News

Hotel Vin in Grapevine to open with restaurant helmed by acclaimed chef

Steak's on the menu, natch.

Hotel Vin

The day draws closer for the opening of Hotel Vin in Grapevine, and now there's news regarding the hotel's in-house restaurants and culinary team.

First, some prelude: Hotel Vin is part of Marriott's Autograph Collection, a division that specializes in one-of-a-kind properties; if you must know, its real name is Hotel Vin, Autograph Collection. Located at 215 E. Dallas Rd., it's part of Grapevine Main, a new mixed-use development that also includes a European-style food hall called Harvest Hall.

The 120-room boutique hotel will open September 3.

The hotel will feature two eateries: Bacchus Kitchen + Bar, and the Rioja Rooftop Terrace.

Bacchus Kitchen + Bar will feature contemporary cuisine in an upscale and approachable setting, with two private dining rooms as well as a sunroom with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the vintage railroad station.

Bacchus is the Roman god of wine, and the release says that the restaurant will pay tribute to the ancient Roman tradition of feasting and celebration. The menu theme is "traditional favorites with modern cooking techniques, with a North Texas touch."

It will include locally sourced fare from nearby purveyors and farms; handcrafted cocktails; craft beer; and an elevated wine program including a temperature-controlled wine wall stocked with hundreds of Old and New World classics.

Breakfast will feature innovative takes on classic favorites such as New Orleans-style beignets, eggs benedict, and salmon on rye.
Lunch includes Profound salad (a nod to Profound Farms), a fried oyster BLT, and a Bacchus burger made from Texas-sourced Angus beef and topped with bacon, caramelized onion jam, and provolone cheese.
Dinner includes grilled lamb porterhouse with marinated eggplant, Cartermere Farms roasted chicken, and large format entrees from whole fish to a 32-ounce ribeye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the appointments:

William Salisbury has been named executive chef.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he was previously with Bullion in downtown Dallas. Before relocating to North Texas, he worked at several high-profile restaurants in New Orleans. He's also made connections within the local agricultural community, enabling reliable sourcing from nearby farms and ranches.

Nicole Haarklau has been named director of food and beverage.

She comes from Marriott International’s Operations Support Resources team, where she was deployed on assignments to a dozen properties.

Prior to that, she was at the New York Marriott Marquis, the Conrad New York Hotel, and the Wyndham Hamilton Park Hotel and Conference Center in New Jersey. The release calls her a "rising star within the hospitality industry," and who are we to dispute.

Haarklau and Salisbury will deliver a high quality, yet approachable, dining experience at the two hotel outlets and will also provide operational support to the seven kitchens in Harvest Hall, whose operators will include Easy Sliders, Arepa TX, Chick & Biscuit Comfort Cuisine, Four Sisters – A Taste of Vietnam, Spuntino Bites of Italy, and Zatar, a Fort Worth food truck that does Mediterranean cuisine.

wine openings hotels

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

chefs