While the way to meeting planners’ hearts may be through
their stomachs, Swissôtel Chicago banquet and catering
management knows the way to book them is by impressing
with contemporary facilities and chef-to-client interaction beyond
simple menu customization.
Executive Chef Dan McGee and Director of Catering Budi Tanzil
believe their full-blown presentations and attention to detail are what
set the Swissôtel Chicago tasting room apart. The introductory meeting
for planners begins with a tour that leads them through the hotel kitchen
and into the tasting room. The room, accommodating eight people,
looks onto the working kitchen through a glass wall. The operations of
the kitchen are entirely visible to the potential clients, who can watch
the team prepare their sample meals.
Next, McGee works with the planners to craft a menu to satisfy
their desires and budgets. During planning, he walks the clients
through center-of-plate, starch, and vegetable choices that have them
creating their own menus.
McGee says planners are willing to listen to and take his suggestions
more readily than those of sales people because he is the chef,
and a high-profile one at that. “I’m really part of the sales team,” he
says. “If they want to do a certain meal for 1,000 people that won’t
work, I can get involved and steer them toward something that will
work better for them and for us.”
For example, when a group recently asked for a beef entrée, it was
evident that the desired filet mignon was not in the budget, so McGee
created a Zinfandel-braised short rib with parsnip hash browns and
creamed leek as a substitute. The client embraced the alternative, and
variations of the dish eventually made their way onto other hotel
menus, McGee says.
Budgets, of course, are of great concern these days, but McGee observes
event clients are willing to cut corners but not sacrifice quality. “We
don’t want to be just banquet food; we provide restaurant-quality dishes,”
he states. The menus loosely fall into the New American Cuisine category,
and as a Swiss hospitality brand, McGee says they try to bring out
the “Swiss-ness of the dish,” although he has prepared menus for special
events in traditions as varied as Scottish and Moroccan.
Planners experience the selected meals exactly as their conferees
will and take home the impression of quality while witnessing the chef
in action. As planners in the tasting room see their food plated in the
kitchen, servers then present it as it will be served in banquet service.
Tanzil arrays the tasting room with the furniture, tabletop, and glassware
that will furnish the event.
Swissôtel’s tasting room has taken on a bit of a second life as the
center of action for packages marketed by the hotel to the point of even
getting food-centric meeting clients involved in cooking with the chef.
McGee has had planners get their hands messy helping to cook their
prospective dishes and then eating the food they prepared, an interactive
sales approach that is really working for the hotel.
Denny Lewis is a six-year HOTEL F&B veteran
and professional freelance writer.
