What do Gordon Ramsay, Daniel Boulud, Nobu Matsuhisa, and Alain Ducasse have in common? Beyond their global fame and culinary accolades as celebrity chefs, they’ve all made the strategic decision to open restaurants in luxury hotels, complementing their standalone dining empires across the world.
Ramsay operates multiple hotel restaurants, with The Savoy in London standing out as his most prestigious. Boulud’s Café Boulud at the Four Seasons in Toronto has become a local institution. Matsuhisa has seamlessly integrated his restaurants into Nobu Hotels, primarily across the US. Ducasse is known for his elegant venue Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse à l’Hôtel de Paris in Monaco, among other high-end hotel properties.
Why hotels? For these chefs, the answer is simple: built-in clientele. Upscale hotels guarantee a steady stream of affluent guests and international tourists. Located in prime urban or resort areas, the hotel environment reduces some of the inherent risk in the restaurant business.
Yet, there’s more to the story. Hotels’ own executive chefs are often consumed by large-scale operations, managing dozens, or even hundreds of staff members, overseeing banquets, room service, and multiple outlets. In such a structured setting, spontaneity and culinary creativity can get lost. Manuals, standard procedures, and layers of management make it nearly impossible to replicate the organic innovation found in independent kitchens.
That’s where the celebrity chef model steps in. Hotels crave the prestige and brand association that comes with a high-profile chef. A signature restaurant can elevate the property’s status, turn in-house dining into a destination, and generate invaluable media buzz and foot traffic.
For celebrity chefs, one major challenge stands in the way in Israel: kashrut. The complexities of kosher certification and working with hotel rabbis have deterred many. In decades past, Israeli hotel executive chefs would host guest chefs from around the world for limited-time culinary festivals. Original top overseas gastronomy was made possible. The best-known example was the Round Tables project: a gastro-diplomacy initiative that paired visiting Michelin-starred chefs with local culinary talents for unique tasting menus blending international flair with Israeli ingredients.
The best hotels with a celebrity chef restaurant in Israel
Notable highlights included Ricard Camarena at the Dan Tel Aviv and Danish chefs Thorsten Schmidt and Bo Bech at Hotel Montefiore. It is believed that this festival was discontinued primarily due to sustained pressure from the international BDS movement, resulting in a sharp decline in participating celebrity chefs, making the event untenable.
From 2010 until Covid, Israeli celebrity chefs also began opening kosher restaurants in top hotels. “I believe those were the best five years of my career,” says Victor Gloger, the internationally recognized Israeli-Argentinian chef who opened the kosher Chloelys at the Hilton Tel Aviv. The restaurant was at the time a sister to his original, non-kosher fine-dining establishment in Ramat Gan.
“Running a kosher kitchen with zero experience was a challenge. You had to be part chef, part politician to work with the hotel rabbis,” he says. “Add to that the recent pandemic, the October 7 war, missile attacks from Iran and Yemen, and the collapse of incoming tourism, and it becomes a real risk. I understand why some celebrity chefs think twice.”
Gloger stepped away six years ago and the Chloelys restaurants ceased to exist. Now the chef caters private events for elite clients around the world. Still, he believes young chefs will keep chasing the dream. “Working with a hotel means reduced risk, since the hotel is a stable partner,” he explains. “But it also means hard work and smaller profits. When a celebrity chef pulls out of a hotel project, it’s usually due to lack of profitability.”
Galia Ornan, a Tel Aviv based hospitality experience designer with 25 years in this field and similar ventures, offers a broader view: “Celebrity chef restaurants require enormous investment in equipment and decoration. Hotels may be the only entities capable of providing that. But while chefs often operate like guerrilla artists, hotels run on procedures and bureaucracy – two worlds that don’t always align. At the same time pursuing profitability quickly is a major hurdle. Very few such ventures in hotels make both sides happy.”
To understand the global perspective, I asked Donald Morrison, the reputed London-based hospitality consultant with over 40 years of experience. “This trend is still alive,” he says, “but many hotels now prefer partnering with restaurant brands rather than individuals. In London’s five-star properties, you still find celebrity chefs, as hotel owners want that signature identity, even if it’s not always profitable. We do witness large hotel groups gravitating toward concepts/brands that will guarantee rent or some form of profit share. Ultimately, it’s about location and perception. What succeeds in London might not work in other cities.”
One such restaurant concept/brand is the Robuchon group, inspired by the late Joël Robuchon, a gastronomy icon. With acclaimed locations in the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, and the Grand Lisboa, Macau, the brand briefly extended to Israel. The boutique Elkonin Hotel in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek hosted L’Epoque by Robuchon, a fine-dining experience that occupied a restored 1913 landmark. Despite the prestige, the restaurant closed quietly last year. It was replaced by a locally driven venue headed by Chef Evyatar Malka from Ashdod, who also runs the trendy Winona Forever wine bar in Tel Aviv.
So, what’s the state of the outsourced chefs trend in Israel today?
In the years before COVID, Tel Aviv was buzzing with hotel-restaurant collaborations. Chefs like Meir Adoni, Yonatan Roshfeld or Hillel Tavakoli, with their stand-alone restaurants, also opened kosher venues in prominent hotels. But none of these icons – each for a different reason – is involved in those restaurants anymore.
Eyal Shani may be one of the active exceptions. The trailblazing Israeli chef, known for elevating street food, reinventing kosher dining, and launching global culinary concepts, continues to operate both independent restaurants and a traditional hotel-based venue. In addition to establishments like North Abraxas, HaSalon and Romano, Shani is the creative force behind Dvora, a kosher fine-dining restaurant located in the Debrah Brown Hotel in Tel Aviv. Although day-to-day kitchen operations are led by Chef Asaf Faiz, the collaboration represents a rare example of the hotel-chef trend surviving into the post-pandemic era.
Shani is also currently developing a new luxury hotel restaurant in Kibbutz Nir Am, near the Gaza border. Scheduled to open around 2028, the 55-room boutique property will include a high-end dining experience under Shani’s guidance.
Is there a future for celebrity chefs in Israeli hotels?
“I think it really depends on the hotel’s values and the restaurant ownership,” says Hillel Tavakoli, whose celebrated restaurant Animar recently closed. He established the still active kosher restaurant Darya at the Hilton Tel Aviv prior to the pandemic; however, he is no longer involved in its operation. “Sometimes these partnerships work. Sometimes they don’t. But I see real value in them. For celebrity chefs, the investment risk is lower, and once peace returns, there will be a surge of interest and capital. Investors still want to be part of Israel’s culinary scene.”
The writer is the Travel Flash Tips publisher.