Chefs Around the World Are Adding Guest Rooms to Their Restaurants

The historic town house on the corner of O’Keefe Avenue and Poydras Street, in downtown New Orleans, has had many lives. For 110 years, it was Maylie’s, a Creole restaurant that was one of the city’s oldest places to eat when it closed in 1986. Next, a steak house set up shop. The tenant after that? An Irish bar. Since 2018, it has been the home of Copper Vine, a gastropub known for its crawfish beignets and champagne-spiked fish amandine, plus plenty of wines on tap. In July, the building entered its next phase, with the opening of 11 guest rooms on the upper floor and in a new wing. “It was a natural evolution,” says owner Kyle Brechtel, who grew up in New Orleans. 

During a stay at what is now the Copper Vine Wine Pub & Inn, visitors will discover the lines between restaurant and hotel are intentionally blurry. “I want our entire team, whether they’re a server or a bartender or a host, to feel like they’re also a part of the innkeeping team,” Brechtel explains. Overnight guests enter through the restaurant and check in at the host stand. Studio West, which designed the dining room, extended the same color palette and emphasis on local art to the guest rooms. Great room service is a given, but Brechtel wants to encourage guests to drink or dine downstairs. “ ‘Modern-day tavern’ is really what we’re going for,” he says. “It’s kind of the oldest form of lodging.” 

Other chefs are following suit. Last year, seven guest rooms were added to Holm, Nicholas Balfe’s hyper-seasonal restaurant in Somerset, England. The early-19th-century structure was outfitted with local ceramics and lime-plaster accent walls, plus custom and vintage furniture. “The three-story building lent itself to a project that was bigger than just a restaurant,” Balfe says. “We wanted to create a space that appealed to the local community, but we also wanted to attract guests from farther afield.”

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For places like Holm that are a bit off the beaten path, the addition of guest rooms enhances the draw. People drive hours to make their coveted reservations at the Lost Kitchen, chef Erin French’s restaurant in Freedom, Maine, where bookings must be made by postcard. Since 2021, diners have been able to spend the night in one of its four tiny cabins. Mirazur, Mauro Colagreco’s Michelin three-starred restaurant on the French Riviera, is also planning to add an 11-room villa on the adjacent farm, which supplies the restaurant’s produce. 

Guest rooms can also be an appealing addition when relocating to a new or larger space. This summer, acclaimed Sydney chefs Josh and Julie Niland moved their fish restaurant Saint Peter to the historic Grand National Hotel building in Paddington; 14 rooms will open in the upper floors in October. Similar changes have taken place at Alma, in Minneapolis — where James Beard Award–winning chef Alex Roberts tacked on seven rooms — and at Casadonna Reale, in Italy’s Abruzzo region. Chef Niko Romito took his father’s restaurant from the village of Rivisondoli to a 16th-century monastery, adding 10 art-filled rooms and earning a third Michelin star soon after. 

Adding rooms can also be a way to keep spaces in the family: after Enrique Olvera moved his renowned restaurant, Pujol, into an airy bungalow in Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood, he converted the old Pujol space into Casa Teo, a chic bed-and-breakfast. Maybe the best amenity? Priority reservations.

A version of this story first appeared in the September 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Room and Board, Redefined.”