One of the most neglected areas of the Fly&Dine universe is hotel restaurants. For decades, people knew that eating in the hotel restaurant meant uninspired meals in a stuffy dining room (or low-rent diner) with a super-high bill at the end. Those days are luckily behind us. In just the past month, I’ve had incredible meals at Michelin-starred hotel restaurants in Hong Kong and great breakfasts and dinners at hotels right next to the ocean in Hawaii. Anybody who wants to tell me that they’ve never had a good meal at a hotel, clearly has never tried this salmon from the InterContinental Hong Kong:

Big name chefs have operated luxury hotel restaurants around the world for years, but not so much in the United States. That’s all changing. While great chef-driven restaurants already exist in American hotels, more are on the way and the names involved are HUGE. We’re talking Tom Colicchio (Craft, Colicchio & Sons) host of Top Chef, Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto), and Seamus Mullen (Tertulia) — guys who have won major awards and earned their place in the pantheon of Great New York Chefs.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that new “100% Natural” hotel brand 1 Hotels is bringing Colicchio, Waxman, and Mullen into the fold for their new properties in New York and Miami. Waxman is overseeing the restaurant at Central Park, Mullen helms the Brooklyn Bridge Park location, and Colicchio is heading down to South Beach. No more details on the restaurants are available, but they plan to open this fall.