HOW TO GO
What: 21c museum/hotel and Metropole restaurant
Where: 609 Walnut St., Cincinnati
Hotel cost: 21c rates typically fall between $199 to $259 per night.
Metropole: The restaurant features 90-seat dining room, 14-seat bar, intimate lounge and 12-person private dining room. It is open daily for dinner.
The menu: Menus can be found at www.metropoleonwalnut.com/menu. Most menu items are $30 or less. Vegetables are $8-$9, salads $9-$11 and appetizers range from $10-$16.
About the company: The flagship 21c hotel was founded in Louisville, Ky., in 2006 by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, contemporary art collectors, who had a vision for bringing art into people's daily lives and supporting the revitalization of their hometown. The company will open its third hotel in Bentonville, Ark., in the first quarter of 2013. Future properties have been announced in Lexington, Ky., and Durham, N.C.
Coming soon: 21c Spa will feature three treatment rooms with heated floors and steam showers with skylights. The third room, a couple's room, has a whirlpool tub for bath treatments. A rooftop bar is scheduled to open in spring of 2013.
Be sure to look for: A large, fun display of camel collectibles when you come in. It is the collection of the Metropole's former building managers Melvin and Johanna Lute.
More info: www.21cmuseumhotels.com or (513) 578-6660
Cincinnati just got hipper and tastier.
The 21c boutique hotel chain that began in Louisville, Ky., in 2006 has set its sights on the Queen City, opening a second $58 million, 156-room location late last year.
The company plans to try and replicate the award-winning visual art, service and food that is a cornerstone of the Louisville location, voted one of the top 10 hotels in the world by Condé Nast Traveler magazine readers in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
The hotel, which has opened in the former Metropole Hotel building at Sixth and Walnut streets downtown across the street from the Aronoff Center for the Arts, features 8,000 feet of gallery space devoted to contemporary art. It also features an elegant bar and restaurant that focuses on local, sustainable products.
The light, sleek modern restaurant — Metropole — is helmed by Executive Chef Michael Paley, 35, formerly the head chef of Proof on Main at the flagship 21c Louisville location. He remains the chef/partner of Garage Bar in Louisville’s NuLu neighborhood.
The menu items, featuring string-roasted meats, ash-cooked vegetables and house-made charcuterie, are cooked over wood-fired heat on a custom-built hearth.
Paley cooking and work in restaurants has been recognized by Esquire, Food & Wine and Restaurant Hospitality Magazine. He has been cooking professionally since 1998. His focus at Metropole is on bold flavors that are prepared simply.
“We want to focus on the first ingredient,” said Paley. “Nothing is going to take away from the point of the story. If that ingredient is braised pork, we want that to be the highlight of the dish. … The cooking method and ingredients should not take away from the main focus of the dish. It’s a matter of looking at how you enhance it.”
“The fact that we cook out of a large fireplace enhances the food and allows me to take my cuisine in a different direction than I was doing at Proof.”
Paley grills, sears and roasts his food on an 8-foot-wide brick hearth. The restaurant’s old-fashioned preparations of vegetables roasted in hot embers and string roasted chickens that spend hours hanging and spinning next to the fire represent a challenge to the Metropole kitchen team.
“What we are trying to do is a throwback, and it’s simple, but it’s a challenge, because diners are so used to things that are over-flavored and fat and heavy that when someone comes and serves something simple they’re not used to it,” Paley said. “It takes the right guest to come in and understand what we are doing. … I don’t know of anybody else that has a fireplace like ours that is exclusively used to cook on the line.”
Cooking tips from chef Michael Paley
• Texture and flavor are key to any dish. Paley said he is mindful of five key components when cooking: sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, acidity and crunch.
• Paley says he frequently relies on acids in cooking (red wine vinegar, lemon, lime, blood orange) and suggests considering using acids when cooking to enhance the natural flavors of the ingredients you are cooking with.
• Invest in high quality ingredients, especially good oils and vinegars.
• Don’t forget about underrated ingredients. Paley says root vegetables, squashes, shelling beans are often not used in cooking, but they can help create some of the lightest, most flavorful dishes.
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