“Stepping up to GM-in-training has opened a whole new perspective on my professional life,” declares Mali Carow, who was promoted in mid-2015 from F&B manager to hotel manager of Four Seasons Hotel Amman, Jordan.
F&B remains a major initiative. When she arrived in 2014, the 192-room hotel had three adjacent facilities on its second floor: a bar, an Asian restaurant and an Italian restaurant. The three areas had an average 50 covers a day, mostly in the bar.
“The hotel’s two owning families had already decided on New York-based AvroKO as designer of what was originally planned as a big Mediterranean restaurant but, with my GM Vincent Hoogewijs, I thought we needed something more specific. We wanted locals to come at least twice a week, and their presence would attract hotel guests. We also, of course, needed to make money. After nine months we opened what is now La Capitale Brasserie, a free-flow area, from lounge at one end via casual eatery to a semi-formal space.” Along one side is a terrace that can be opened or closed depending on the weather.
The long show kitchen, with two rotisserie ovens and wood-burning grill, is supervised by a flamboyant 29-year-old chef, Bordeaux-born Arthur Vonderheyden, who had never worked in a hotel before. “It took me a year to find him. Now, hotel elevators have posters of him seemingly flying though the air and this, plus his superb culinary skills, certainly help attract business,” Carow said.
Already, La Capitale Brasserie, which is open from 1 p.m. to near midnight, does an average 300 covers a day. Roughly 85% of that is locals, who like to eat in groups, with 12 or more a norm. Some locals consider the restaurant’s manager, Sharif Hayek, their personal concierge.
In all, the hotel employs 400, of whom only seven are expats. “We are allowed 9% of foreigners, but we truly believe in employing, training and motivating Jordanians,” Carow said firmly. Since her boss is also regional vice president for Four Seasons’ hotels around the Mediterranean, from Provence to Italy, Turkey and Tunis, Carow usually chairs the traditional 8:45 a.m. meeting. She also has separate departmental meetings covering F&B, engineering, housekeeping and rooms (finance, HR and marketing report directly to the general manager).
“I wear many hats but, strategically, I can divide my job into two. I need to plan 30 days ahead and think simultaneously 48 hours out,” she explained. Right now her attention is also fixed on the October 15 opening of SIRR (“secrets”), a speakeasy with no signage outside its closed door. “It’s a conversion of washrooms next to La Capitale Brasserie,” she laughed.
Born in Chicago, Carow wanted to be a doctor but, while studying at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she took temporary jobs in hotels and was hooked. “Now I am back studying again. Four Seasons’ revamped managerial sessions are hard work; last time, 25 of us, including five women, stayed in a college dorm in Toronto while being tutored by academics and Four Seasons’ leaders on legal, marketing and residential issues. It sharpened the critical thinking that a GM needs.”