High-style hotel restaurants for holiday feasting

José Andrés brings the Levant to Collins Avenue

Because superchef and guerrilla philanthropist José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen have done so much for so many in need, any restaurant he’s got going deserves your celebration dollars. New Yorkers and DC politicos have enjoyed his take on eastern Mediterranean sharing dishes at Zaytinya since 2022.

Now Miamians have their own outpost at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach just off Collins Avenue. Andrés’s menu flies the Greek, Turkish and Lebanese flags; go for a breakfast shakshuka or menemen, or book a big dinner table and order one of everything – from shish taouk to smoked-beetroot salata, grilled octopus to lamb taharat, plus all the usual-suspect mezze. There are great wines from the Peloponnese, Macedonia and the Bekaa Valley to go with.

Elevated east-west cuisine in a former nightclub

Crispy salmon sushi. Egg toast with caviar. Burrata citrus salad with finger lime and basil. Since Jean-Georges Vongerichten swooped onto the 1990s New York scene and set it alight with his instant-hit bistros, JoJo and Vong, he’s forged a global restaurant empire innovating west-east flavour mergers. (Credit the combination of an Alsatian upbringing and an early career spent in some of Bangkok’s and Hong Kong’s finest hotel kitchens.) Most recently he’s set up shop at The Leinster, a sleek 55-key newcomer on the site of an old nightclub in the centre of Georgian Dublin.

Jean-Georges at The Leinster commands the hotel’s rooftop spaces – an airy glassed-in space made soft with a coffered wood ceiling, banquettes and generous views. The salmon for the crispy sushi here is Irish, of course; the Irish tenderloin comes with a pistachio-tarragon aioli. The burrata skews more Continental, tempered with fig and balsamic vinegar, and a heavenly parmesan-crusted chicken that’s a regular across his other menus features here too. But there are plenty of Asian inflections, from a yuzu-y tuna tartare to maitake mushrooms with black tahini and scallions. Down on the first floor the nightclub spirit lives on in the form of The Collins Club, a speakeasy-style bar-brasserie. Throughout, the hotel’s design is bold and colour-saturated, and features nearly 300 original works by Irish artists.

A south-east Asian fix in north Africa’s 24/7 capital

Cairo is many extraordinary things. “Bastion of multi-culti dining options” is, regrettably, not one of them. Thankfully, Tianma, the Singaporean restaurant inside the St Regis Cairo, which opened three years ago in a sleek Nile-side tower, sates some cravings. The sexily lit dining rooms – reached via a walkway lined with life-sized terracotta horses – give Peranakan tea house vibes: pretty baskets, painted boxes, mysterious chests of drawers. But the food’s the thing and, as a former Lion City resident, I can vouch for it. Singapore’s moreish melting-pot of Chinese, Malay and southern Indian flavours are all here.

There’s a super-rich Hainanese chicken rice, fruit rojak and an excellent roast duck, skin crackling with spices, carved tableside and served with parchment-thin pancakes. The hotel? One of the best in town – still sparkling new, with phalanxes of smiling staff, rooms with views, super-modern bathrooms and a stonking breakfast spread that starts at 6am, for those sunrise visits to the Pyramids.

Tuscany’s finest seafood… is inland

The Four Seasons Hotel Firenze is a hotel of biggests, bests and finests. Biggest private garden with a pool in the city. Finest frescoes (the restoration of the 15th-century Palazzo della Gherardesca, which holds some of the grand signature suites, reportedly cost upwards of $50mn). Most sprawling, indulgent spa. Now it has a starry new restaurant. Boldly billing itself as Florence’s top seafood destination, Onde is overseen by Paolo Lavezzini, the Italian chef who took over the hotel’s food offer, including its fine-dining temple Il Palagio, in 2021.

The rooms strike an easy-going note, with bright hues and indoor-outdoor seating, but Lavezzini means serious business in the kitchen, and the quality and presentation of his food is outstanding. Starting with the crudi: delicate slivers of scallop carpaccio peek out from a heavenly spiced yoghurt sauce dotted with finger lime and sea-salt flakes. Red tuna from the Tyrrhenian Sea is dressed with lemon, shallot mayonnaise and breadcrumbs. Sea bass tartare is served with beetroot, walnut oil and bodacious mustard seeds. Florentines – not known for overt displays of approval, nor for embracing the New – are already all abuzz. Book well in advance.