In mid-November, Kimpton’s Hotel Palomar San Diego announced the closing of its gastro lounge Saltbox Dining & Drinks to make room for Mexican street food eatery called Curadero. What makes this particularly newsworthy is the fact that the management team has come up with a way to integrate the new restaurant with meeting space located just above the restaurant, which will give the hotel’s sales team a new angle to pitch to potential group business.
With the new restaurant, scheduled to launch in early 2017, comes a plan that turns the hotel’s 1,800-square-foot mezzanine level into a more flexible and creative meeting space that infuses Executive Chef Brad Kraten’s Mexican food into the catering menu.
As part of the re-vamp, the design team is developing private dining areas for small groups and add in games, such as shuffleboard and vintage arcade games, along with lounge furniture to create a hip game-room atmosphere.
The space, to be coined the Arriba Room, will also feature a taco window, while the catering menu will celebrate bold flavors found throughout Mexico, with items such as street tacos, ceviches, antojitos, or “little cravings,” and larger plates, accompanied by flavorful moles.
The Arriba Room will cater to small and mid-sized groups, and can be used as flexible meeting/work space, networking and team bonding opportunities, private dining and more.
“Kimpton has been positioning its restaurants as destination restaurants for years,” said Jim Hollister, GM at Hotel Palomar San Diego and director of operations for Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants in Southern California and Arizona. “Our meeting clients are always looking for unique experiences and our goal, when collaborating on the new concept and design, was fairly simple—what can we do to attract a new client to Hotel Palomar San Diego? What will differentiate us for our comp set, especially as new competitors, with several food and beverage venues, enter the market. So, we took a space that our sales team would use for large groups and cut it down to smaller, more interesting and intimate areas—ones where we can attract a smaller-sized rooms group looking to team build in our private dining rooms and play arcade games, as well as that special occasion birthday group of 20, where they can walk up to a taco window while sipping on mescal.”