The Modern Hotelier #209: Leading the Food & Beverage at Hotel Polaris | with Chef Ken Butler
===
Chef Ken Butler: I think more nowadays people are very health conscious, so with cutting out the seed oils. Understanding what's in their non-hormonal things in the food, and that's really a big trend right now, I think going forward and will continue to be a big trend.
Steve: We are now joined by the executive chef here at Hotel Polaris. Chef Ken Butler, thanks for sitting down with us. Ken, how you doing today? 
Chef Ken Butler: Of course. Welcome in. It's great to have you guys here. 
Steve: Good. So Ken. I'm excited to talk with you. We have such a good time talking with chefs. And one thing about hotel Polaris is it's such a unique property with the ties with Air Force and just the location in general. Can you tell us a little bit about the food and beverage options that you have here at Hotel Polaris and how they enhance the guest experience? 
Chef Ken Butler: Yeah, so, we have total about six food and beverage operations here, or outlets, currently we're sitting in Aviator. This is our rooftop bar. It's on the ninth floor, and it is spectacular. The views are amazing, as you guys know, it's gorgeous. And then we have a three meal restaurant that's gonna be Pamela's downstairs. We also have Dooley's, which is you've kind seen some of that earlier today that's more of our kind of soda shop, our kind of, you know, fun kid friendly location on property. And then we also do in room dining. And then we have a market, it's called Levy's. So we have that. And, um, to round it out, we have a pool bar downstairs, so we do outlets all over the place. Something for everyone. 
Steve: Nice. How do you think those food and beverage options just enhance the guest experience?
Chef Ken Butler: Well, you know, on this property, since we have something for everyone, that's how, you know, you can kind of target anyone, right? We have families, we have a bar, rooftop bar up here, here that we can have a lot of corporate groups that come up here afterwards. We have a lot in-house guests that come up here afterwards, um, once they're done in the other outlets or at the pool all day. So each outlet is unique and um, it offers something for everyone. 
Steve: One thing I gotta give a shout out to is living in Colorado, it's very hard to find good sushi since we're so landlocked. Yeah. Excellent. Sushi here. Thank you. So kudos and thank you. 
David: You're very welcome. So guests are always looking for that authentic experience. Yeah. So how do you bring that local Colorado flavor ingredients to your menus? 
Chef Ken Butler: Yeah. So, we work with a lot of local farms on certain things and then, you know, it's really with our branding, right? And it's what we're doing here. So we're Pamela's is an Americana restaurant and we do a lot of Colorado cuisine in there, but we also do things from around the whole entire nation, right around all of us. And then up here in Aviator, for example, we have a role that we do a little bit of, um, we do sushi on it, like the sushi roll, but we also do steak and we do fish in it. So it's like the surf and turf version of that. Yeah, which is excellent delicious.
Steve: So, the food and beverage options have changed quite a bit over the past few years. Are there any trends that you're seeing that you think will shape food and beverage in hospitality specifically that you're excited about? 
Chef Ken Butler: Yeah, I mean, even today, right? I mean, the biggest thing is people are getting away from having a bunch of seed oil. Right, and they're going into tallow and using those kind of, you know, ingredients.
So, you know, today we had a whole tasting in Pamela's where we're utilizing, like tallow, we're using really good cuts where they're actually, you know, finished not really at a feedlot. The food's getting finished all the way up before slaughter at their own farm, right? Or their own ranch for it. So that's a big trend right now, local, making sure people understand where things are coming from. I think more. Nowadays people are very health conscious. So with cutting out the seed oils, understanding what's in their non-hormonal things in the food and that's really a big trend right now, I think going forward and will continue to be a big trend.
Steve: Well said. 
David: And so running a restaurant, a kitchen is no easy task. Yeah. So what are some things. Behind the scenes that guests would know about that really kind of drive the guest experience? 
Chef Ken Butler: Yeah, I mean, we have a ton going on behind the scenes, right? You anywhere from teams taking all the dishes and cleaning them to teams, you know, organizing, you know, private events, right?
So in a hotel there's tons of operation going on in the back and it's really to make sure the guest experience in the front is really. They're on stage, right? So when everyone comes out from behind the doors, they're taking the guest experience and really putting it forward. So there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes from even how we get products into the building and um, for how we take care of things.
Steve: You bet. I know when we leave here, some of our best memories are gonna be from the team here at Aviator and on the food and beverage side. I imagine. Do you actually, do you have a favorite memory or story? I know you've only been open less than a year. Yeah, but so far that. You know, really sticks with you.
Chef Ken Butler: Yeah. We've had a lot of great experiences. Right. So, you know, obviously we're kind of, you know, rooted here. We have a lot of the Air Force Academy with us. So, I mean, examples would be, you know, we started creating the menu for Pamela. We started talking to Pamela herself. We created multiple different custom menus for her, great experiences for her, which she really loved.
Right. And that is a really memorable experience to kind of actually have the person that we're having the restaurant named after come in, enjoy it and really, you know, give us feedback and tell us what she wants on the menu and what she likes or what she's interested in. So that's been good. We've done a lot of other, you know, just large events.
I mean, opening here, when we opened November 14th, we ended up having, you know, over 600 people coming in the doors and it was. You know, it was a surprise to us, right? We opened really quickly, we had a lot of people here and it was amazing to kind of take care of the community and really see, you know, the impact that had. And it led us to have a really successful food and beverage operation, which has been great. 
Steve: That's great. Yeah. And one thing, the last question before we get you outta here, we're gonna be showcasing Polaris pos. Okay. Can you tell us a little bit more about that program and I guess those events? 
Chef Ken Butler: Yeah. So Polaris is really, it was kind of came up our GM, right? That you've met Curtis Bova. He had a whole idea where he wanted to do a bourbon event, right? And that was kind of the genesis of this idea. And then we decided to pull it all the way through where we're doing Polaris pour, which we'll do events throughout the whole entire year. We're gonna do an event with tequila.
We're gonna do an event with. More bourbon coming hopefully in November. That's gonna be really amazing. We're gonna have hopefully a, um, distiller series at that point, which is gonna be power Polaris pork, but then we're gonna do wine, right? We're gonna do that and we'll end up doing gin. We'll do a bunch of different series and it's something that, you know, we as a team have created that creates.
You know, community engagement, something that people can come here year over year and they'll experiencing something different. And, um, we have great partners with it. So starting off the bat, we've really worked with a lot of great companies and they wanna support us, so it's gonna be a really great event.
David: We've eaten at every restaurant. Everything's been fantastic. And just as important, the staff and the hospitality that we've been shown has been amazing. So we just wanna give everybody a shout out here who's waited on us taking care of us. Yeah. And thank you very much for sitting down with us. We appreciate it. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I love it. And you guys have been fantastic. Staff loves you. Okay, 
Chef Ken Butler: great. They've had a lot of good things to say. So great to have you all in here. Thank you.
David: Thank you.
Steve:  Thank you very much.