Five hotel restaurants to travel for

Rome goes to Sicily at the W

The W Rome opened in 2021 with a mandate to change up how people perceive a brand that had blazed a trail of stylish hospitality in the 1990s and Noughties, then remained a bit too strictly on that trail to stay truly relevant. Its Rome hotel is a step ahead, and definitely a cut above – from the rooftop lounge to the tiny boutique curated by Daria Reina of brilliant local concept store Chez Dédé. Whether or not you choose to sleep there, a lunch or dinner at Giano is unquestionably a good idea.

Foodies across the world know Sicilian chef Ciccio Sultano for Duomo, his restaurant in Ragusa, which explores adventurous expressions of local dishes over sittings involving many hours, courses and glasses. At Giano, he’s gone the home-comforts route with some nice elevations. “Cucina educata” – refined cooking – is what he calls it, and the food is truly outstanding. Order the spaghetti taratatà (lemon zest, tuna bottarga, breadcrumbs); also the pollo ruspante (crispy spatchcock chicken with a piquant romesco-style sauce I still think about); also at least one cannolo, to know what the real deal is meant to taste like. gianorestaurant.com

Tel Aviv’s new top table

Last month I stayed at R48, a new 11-suite hotel in Tel Aviv that is the latest project of R2M, the restaurant and hospitality company that local creative directors-collectors-aesthetes Mati and Ruti Broudo founded some 30 years ago. The hotel, which opened a little while after its intended debut, is 100 per cent worth the wait; its gourmet restaurant, Chef’s Table, contributes no small amount to that success. Executive chef Ohad Solomon ran the kitchens at CoffeeBar, one of the Broudos’ first businesses and a Tel Aviv institution, for almost a decade. R48 is an intimate space with an open kitchen where Ohad and his team work intensely and nimbly.

The menu changes daily; between seven and 10 courses, elegantly but not pretentiously plated, arrive in succession; and man, were mine good. Though not Israeli, necessarily – Solomon takes inspiration from Asia and Latin America as much as from the Eastern Mediterranean. An ultra-delicate tartare “taco” combined beef, a tangy aioli and half a dozen herbs in a tiny pastry shell; a rich fish and turmeric soup featured crisp noodles which miraculously softened as I broke and stirred them in. All were small, spectacular bites vying for number-one status. With only 25 covers and one sitting a night, this is one to book well before you travel. r48.co.il

Madame Darroze goes to Morocco

Basque-Landes super-chef Hélène Darroze does not mess around, and she has a full six Michelin stars to prove it. She dabbles ably at the street food end of the spectrum (Jòia Bun, her hamburger joint, opened last month in Paris), and owns a big corner of the haute cuisine one (Marsan, again in Paris; The Connaught in London; Villa La Coste in the South of France).

As of this summer, her fans will be pleased to learn, she will also have a high-profile flag planted in Marrakech, at no less illustrious an address than the Royal Mansour – the super-luxe hotel owned by King Mohammed VI. Assuming the duties held by Yannick Alléno since 2010, when the Royal Mansour opened, Darroze will oversee both La Table, its modern-French fine dining venue, and La Grande Table Marocaine, its very beautiful traditional Moroccan restaurant. Expect reinvigoration, some modern flourishes, and potentially more women in the kitchen and on the floor. royalmansour.com

An OG burger in midtown Manhattan

For decades, it was a case of “if you knew, you knew”: one of the two or three absolute best burgers in town was hidden away behind a slightly ignominious velvet curtain at the unprepossessing Le Parker Méridien hotel on 56th Street in midtown Manhattan, at a place called, unimaginatively, Burger Joint.

The address hasn’t been much of a secret for a while; the hotel has changed hands a couple of times (it’s now a Thompson), and the Joint itself has proliferated across the boroughs, with two more outlets and a delivery service. But a trip to 56th Street will still get you the hand-pressed, prime USDA Angus, the salty fries, and – if you were ever a New Yorker – a few shades of the good old days. burgerjointny.com

Singular dining in small-town Sonoma County

SingleThread, in California’s Sonoma County, has proven to be enough of a gastronomic phenomenon, with enough people travelling vast distances to experience its extraordinary menu (a sui generis California kaiseki, based in produce grown on its own farm), that owners Kyle and Katina Connaughton knew even before they opened that having five lovely rooms upstairs was a good idea.

Now that the Inn is getting as much press (and is in almost as much demand) as the restaurant, the balance has shifted. But you still go for the food: the coveted dinner reservation is guaranteed with your room booking, as is a home-cooked breakfast – dashimaki tamago or home cured salmon, black-truffle omelette or local-grain porridge – that’s halfway to being its own reason to travel. singlethreadfarms.com