All about the experience at top-rated Seasons

STEADY FLOW: Bruno Roulleux, director of food and beverage for the Ocean House, said that although winter is traditionally a slower period, Friday and Saturday dinner hours were fully reserved, sometimes weeks in advance. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
STEADY FLOW: Bruno Roulleux, director of food and beverage for the Ocean House, said that although winter is traditionally a slower period, Friday and Saturday dinner hours were fully reserved, sometimes weeks in advance. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

A restaurant can be exceptional without a national ranking. But when it reaches a Five Star rating in Forbes Travel Guide, the national attention is immediate.

One restaurant in Rhode Island reached that status in 2015. Seasons, the fine-dining restaurant at the Ocean House resort in the Watch Hill area of Westerly, learned in February that it had achieved the top-level ranking for the first time.

By mid-March, Bruno Roulleux, director of food and beverage for the Ocean House, noticed more traffic in the restaurant. Although winter is traditionally a slower period, Friday and Saturday dinner hours were fully reserved, sometimes weeks in advance.

With the Five Star award for Seasons, Ocean House joined nine other resorts in the world with top ratings for hotel, spa and fine-dining options. OH! Spa earned its Five Star designation in 2012, followed by the hotel in 2013, according to a statement from the Ocean House resort.

- Advertisement -

What aspect of the experience makes the difference? It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, because the Forbes guide does not disclose its scoring, other than to explain that more than 500 criteria are considered in evaluating restaurants, hotels and spas.

“It is everything,” said Roulleux. “It’s the service. It’s the food. It’s the presentation. It’s the quality of the ingredients.”

Two restaurants in Rhode Island achieved a Four Star rating in 2015: Muse by Jonathan Cartwright and The Spiced Pear, both located in Newport. A fourth restaurant, The Dining Room at Castle Hill Inn, also in Newport, will be rated soon.

The Forbes Travel Guide explains what defines a Five Star restaurant: “Forbes Travel Guide Five Star restaurants offer a truly unique and distinctive dining experience. A Five Star restaurant consistently provides exceptional food, superlative service and elegant decor. An emphasis is placed on originality and personalized, attentive and discreet service. A gracious, warm dining room team attends to every detail of the meal.”

Roulleux joined the Ocean House in May 2014. The restaurant had been a Four Star restaurant for several years in the past, he said, and it was a goal to reach the Five Star rating.

The Forbes Travel Guide doesn’t consider public reviews in its annual evaluations. It sends its own unidentified evaluators into establishments. The Five Star ranking is among the most prestigious designations for a restaurant. The Michelin Guide, another prestigious restaurant evaluation publication, does not rate New England restaurants.

Roulleux doesn’t know what pushed Seasons over the top this year, but it came after six different visits by the guide evaluators, he said.

“For us, it is the Oscar,” Roulleux said. “It is the highest achievement that we could receive.”

Service can be measured both analytically, in terms of how many minutes it takes for a server to greet the table, to take an initial order for cocktails, as well as interpretively. The atmosphere of the interior, the proper appearance and language used by servers all could have been factors, he said.

At Seasons, the concept of farm-to-table is taken seriously. All ingredients are sourced from farms or markets that are within 150 miles of the resort, and their name is identified on the dinner menu.

The butter and cheeses may come from dairy farms in Vermont, while some specialty items are found in New York or Connecticut. The seafood is generally brought in at Galilee in Narragansett.

The resort has a full-time food forager, who identifies sources for the ingredients. This individual will find multiple farms that can provide, say mushrooms, explained Roulleux, because the restaurant may need more than what a single farm could provide at any given time.

Because of the availability of ingredients, the menu changes frequently, Roulleux said. The chefs are creative enough to be able to prepare dishes that vary, depending on what comes in the door.

The restaurant emphasizes local sources because the ingredients are fresh, but also because the experience for diners should be of a Rhode Island restaurant.

Many of the customers, he said, come from Connecticut or New York, generally within driving distance. “They come to Rhode Island to have a Rhode Island experience,” Roulleux said. “We’re not trying to be a big-city restaurant or a New York restaurant. We want to be true to who we are.”

In terms of service, when a reservation is made, the restaurant staff begin to research the customer needs. If someone has an allergy, or wants a vegetarian menu, this is noted. So when the guests arrive, Roulleux said, the server will approach the table for the first time knowing if someone has a gluten allergy, or if it’s a special occasion for someone, such as a birthday or an anniversary.

For these moments, the evening ends with a special gift, Roulleux said, which could include a special dessert prepared by the pastry chef.

Karsten Hart, executive chef and food and beverage director for The Dining Room at Castle Hill Inn, said the restaurant is looking forward to its rating.

“It is very important, in my opinion,” Hart said. “If you walk into a Five Star restaurant, you’re going to feel those steps of service,” he said. “They hold you to a standard. We’re doing this because we want to be better and we want the guest experience to be better.” •

No posts to display