t's 10:30 pm and you’re back to your hotel from the theatre/day of shopping/sightseeing/countless museums, and you’re exhausted, not to mention hungry. Yes you saw the Empire State, or Big Ben or the leaning tower of… whatever. But you’re famished. A pretzel is not food but it's all you've eaten. Now it's too late to pick up anything apart from fast food, which is not exactly vacation dining imagery. Besides, you would rather be lying in your hotel room, coming down from your culture shock high. So, to fuel up for the next day you order room service. But leave the turkey club and omelettes behind, the days of blah hotel food are over. The influx of gourmet chefs opening up shop in elite hotels has meant that hotels are beginning to be reincarnated as foodie havens, not a last resort for the hungry traveler. As Frank Bruni of the New York Times stated, "Many hotels don’t simply want a marquee chef and a destination restaurant on the ground floor. They want that chef and restaurant to be at least nominally in charge of the food going to the rooms above."
A hotel is intended to be a home away from home, without having to change your own sheets or cook for yourself. For that reason, many hotel restaurants offer comfort food classics for their guests, such as meatloaf and roast chicken. Simon LA at the Sofitel LA goes one step further, offering up nostalgia on a plate. The Junk Food Sampler ($25) is a house made selection of mini desserts including cotton candy, chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, snowballs, caramelized popcorn, peanut butter ice cream, and the restaurant's own take on a Hostess cupcake, just to mention a few. The man behind the food is celebrity chef Kerry Simon, winner of Iron Chef America (against Cat Cora), and the former executive chef at the Edwardian Room at the now debunk Plaza Hotel in New York (hand picked by Ivana Trump). Don't be fooled by his cookware line on The Home Shopping Network, Simon is no Ken Paves. Dubbed the "Rock-n-Roll Chef," by Rolling Stone, he cooks serious comfort food such as meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes ($24) with sides of mac and cheese and buttermilk onion rings ($8 each).