Opening a restaurant in a chain hotel is a delicate, creative balancing act played out on the treacherous high wire of the corporate bottom line.
You want to create something that has character and helps you stand out in the neighborhood, but you don’t want to create something so unique that it turns off homesick business travelers who just want a no-brainer meal before retiring for an evening of channel-surfing abed.
You want personality, originality, even soul — but not too much.
So it’s no surprise that the trend among trendy hotels (like the JW Marriott in Cherry Creek North) is to center their restaurants around trendy so-called “comfort” food that will keep hotel guests interested without freaking them out.
Second Home is a textbook example of this trend; even the name suggests hominess. Sure, the open layout and contemporary brown/tan finishes (blond floors, chocolate ceiling, caramel tabletops and cappuccino chairs) don’t look like home, exactly, but the conceit is familiar and accessible; you’ve seen these stone accent walls and recessed wine displays and outdoor fire pits in restaurants and retail before.
It’s nothing like your real home, but it’s comfortable.
Likewise, the menu: It’s guardedly energetic with unsurprising, familiar twists. Like the satisfying lobster Cobb salad, a generous toss of chopped lobster, arugula, egg, bacon and avocado. You’d never actually make it at home, but there’s something familiar, accessible, even homey about it.
Same goes for the cumin-smacked pork tenderloin. If it’s slightly more interesting than the one you make at home, it’s not so creative as to offend. And the miso-glazed black cod stir-fry is a clever (but not too clever) twist on this now-ubiquitous flavor profile. Fresh, but not exactly surprising.
The best dish on the menu may be the twist-less lamb French Dip, made with lamb shaved straight from the leg on the rotisserie in the kitchen. The bread is soft and the jus thick in this robust paean to Colorado flavors. Also good: the beer- battered artichokes with lemon aioli, sharp and refreshing and crisp as long as you eat them quick.
The menu has its share of potholes. The deepest may be the tuna salad sandwich — “housemade” flatbread filled with unseasoned, unrecognizable tuna “salad,” underripe tomatoes and underripe avocado — a dirge of uninteresting ingredients prepared without much consideration. And the “housemade” bread was, well, let’s just say that maybe making bread in-house isn’t always a good idea. Some things are better left to specialists.
Another pothole: the disappointing pizzas. The crusts I’ve had here have been bland and soggy. In a town where the pizza wars get hotter every day (we welcome Marco’s Coal Fired on Larimer to the fray), sub-par crust won’t cut it.
Your remedy for a bad pizza is a drink at Second Home’s excellent bar. Most nights it is amply populated, as a hotel bar should be, with an energetic, on-the-make mash of locals and visitors sharing gem-colored ‘tinis or sampling beers from the happily Colorado-heavy microbrew list.
All told, Second Home feels like what you’d expect a corporation-financed hotel restaurant to feel like: a reflection of the findings of an experienced food-and-beverage committee with strict profit/loss requirements leaning on trend reports to create, rather the vision of a passionate restaurateur looking to connect intimately with his guests.
It leaves Second Home — if capable of delivering an acceptable, satisfying, comfortable meal — feeling somewhat soulless.
But that may be exactly the point.
Tucker Shaw: dining@denverpost.com
Second Home
American. 150 Clayton Lane, 303-253-3000 secondhome
* 1/2 RATING : Good | Very Good
Atmosphere: Contemporary design, open dining room, outdoor seating near fire pit, snazzy bar
Service: Friendly, affable, well- choreographed
Wine: Small and friendly list, plus full bar and more than handful of local microbrews
Plates: Starters, $8-$14; entrees $12-$26
Hours: Three meals every day.
Details: Reservations accepted but not usually necessary. Street parking, valet parking, hotel parking lot. Wheelchair accessible. Daily specials, including chicken pot pie on Thursdays
Five visits
Our star system:
****: Exceptional
***: Great
**: Very Good
*: Good
No Stars: Needs work
