The Delamar Westport – the latest offering in the Delamar Hotel Collection — may be on the bustling Post Road East (at number 1595 to be exact), but you’d never know it.
From the moment you step into the lobby – with its intimately scaled furnishings and warm earth tones, coupled with contemporary artworks that pop with color and windows that let in nature and light – you’re away from the world. And that is by design – specifically Christian Siriano’s designs.
The fashion and interior designer – who rose to prominence on “Project Runway” and lives “seven minutes down the road” – said his whole idea for the lobby, which features a wall reproducing some of his black-and-white fashion sketches, is to make you feel as if you’re in your own home. And home you will definitely be in the three fully booked Siriano Suites, which are among the hotel’s 84 guest rooms and suites. On Wednesday, Oct. 8, Westfair’s Fairfield County Business Journal was invited to tour these suites and other spaces with Siriano and a Delamar executive team helmed by hotel collection founder, owner and CEO Charles Mallory.
The scion of a Mystic, Connecticut, shipbuilding family who charted a course into the hotel business, Mallory has created a 25-year-old portfolio that includes Delamar hotels in Greenwich Harbor, Southport, West Hartford and Mystic, along with a sister property in Westport, The Inn at Longshore, said to be the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, “The Great Gatsby.” (There’s a Delamar in Traverse City, Michigan, with plans, Mallory said, for another hotel there and establishments in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Swampscott, Massachusetts.)
Each of the Delamars has a distinctive look, drawing in many instances on Mallory’s sweeping collections of art, sculpture and some 40 vintage automobiles. Mystic, for example, captures the maritime legacy of the Mallory family with marine works. The Delamar Greenwich Harbor evokes the Mediterranean; Southport, that village’s casual coastal charm; West Hartford, an urban flavor.
Over coffee at the Delamar Westport, Mallory said he was looking to add to the place – the hotel is a renovation and expansion of the former Westport Inn – without overdoing it. In creating a sleek, modern yet accessible space, Mallory said that he was attracted to the freshness of Siriano’s approach for the lobby and the Siriano Suites, which include a roughly 2,200-square-foot presidential suite.
“He’s young, glamorous and well-known,” Mallory said. “We felt the Westport customer is skewing younger.”
Being local – Siriano had a shop as well down the road – was another factor as the Delamar Westport incorporates works by neighboring artists and artisans. In the presidential suite – whose three bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, full kitchen and walk-in closets make it a home away from home – there are furnishings by Kosta Upholstery in Norwalk and abstract paintings by Westport’s David Stephen Johnson and Lisa Bagely, another Connecticut artist, to go along with rugs by Manhattan-based Marc Phillips, fabrics milled in Italy and France and white oak floors.
Siriano has also contributed some of his own abstract paintings to the suites. In the presidential suite, there’s also a wall of framed original sketches by the charmingly down-to-earth designer — just back from Fashion Weeks in New York, London and Paris — who joked: “They’ll be worth something when I die.”
We took our leave of Siriano to sit down with Frederic Kieffer, the Delamar Hotel Collection’s corporate chef and partner; Hicham Amaaou, corporate director and partner; and Alex McClenaghan, corporate pastry chef, and sample some of their scrumptious sweet and savory creations in the hotel’s Dandelion Restaurant.
The French-born Kieffer has always been about sustainable foods that evoke the various flavors of the Mediterranean. In Dandelion, he brings that philosophy to bear in a cuisine that uses single origin, extra virgin Spanish olive oil, yogurt-based dishes that conjure the Levantine and fire-burning and grilling techniques, not to mention one of the most misunderstood botanicals in the United States.
“The dandelion is one of the most consumed plants in the world, used in soups and salads,” he said. ““You can’t kill a dandelion. It always comes back. I think that’s a good omen.”
We sampled it in the light, delicious Dandelion Spanikopita turnovers, served with a sheep milk feta and roasted tomato dipping sauce; along with Moroccan Cigars of surprisingly sweet local goat meat, preserved lemon, labneh (yogurt strained to the consistency of soft cheese) and homemade harissa (a hot chili pepper paste); and a zesty Roasted Sheftalia of lamb and pork sausage, date agrodolce, tahini and crispy shallots.
McClenaghan paired these appetizers with a moist carrot cake petit four that melted in your mouth, an irresistible apricot cream puff and a cookie that we shouldn’t have resisted.
The cuisine is offset by a green and black modern design that suggests a greenhouse. Soon it will have two 12-foot olive trees – not real ones, Amaaou said, as they would shed their leaves in winter — and in spring, seating, a fire pit and a bocce court on the patio, which also boasts a fountain. The restaurant, which has two private rooms, seats 120. (There’s also a 1,300-square-foot 70-seat event space, the Sundance Room.) At present, Dandelion is open only for dinner but will add lunch and brunch in November.
Just outside the restaurant, across from the imposing bar, is a holographic image of a dandelion by Connecticut photographer Stacy Bass. It’s called “Make a Wish,” for the tradition of making a wish as you blow on the dandy’s fluffy head in hope that its seeds will carry your dream out to the universe or a loved one.
Ours would be a stay at the Delamar Westport.
