I felt that it was only fitting -- in honor of the royal wedding tomorrow morning -- to finally get over to the downtown Marriott Hotel and taste the featured dessert at Lilly's Restaurant: a slice of cake prepared from the recipe used to create Princess Diana's wedding cake (or one of them, anyway -- there were several) in 1981.
Fat City has already written about this cake and the mock-up, full-sized royal wedding cakes that the downtown Marriott Hotel's pastry chef Gus Ruiz created as displays to complement the current exhibition at Union Station, Diana: A Celebration.
But until today, I hadn't actually tasted the cake.
It's a delicious, moist, slightly spicy cake made with bits of fruit and nuts and glazed with a cream cheese-and-fondant frosting. The pastry is a particularly good (and British) follow-up to the excellent fish and chips -- maybe the best in the city -- served at Lilly's, a restaurant that, until recently, hasn't been noted for its excellent cuisine.
The Marriott's only dining room, however, has seen its cuisine dramatically improve since veteran restaurateur Steve Cole -- formerly of Cafe Allegro -- joined the hotel as Food & Beverage Director two years ago. Another popular figure in the restaurant community, Kathi Rohlfing, the former manager at Room 39, is now on staff, too, as the manager of Lilly's Restaurant.
But Lilly's Restaurant -- a coffee shop with delusions of grandeur -- is not long for the world. The downtown Marriott is undergoing the first major renovation since this hotel opened as the Vista International Hotel in 1985. The entrance to the hotel is currently under construction, and the parking lot is closed for construction as well; hotel patrons are parking in the Municipal Auditorium lot.
After the exterior entrance is completed, the dated lobby area -- with the waterfall and the plastic plants -- will be ripped out and replaced with a stylish new gathering and eating area with its own food-service stations offering take-away or small plates. This renovation won't be completed, Steve Cole says, until the first quarter of 2012.
The final stage of the hotel's renovation will be to replace Lilly's Restaurant with a new dining venue. "It will have a new name, new look and new food," Cole says. "It will finally be a restaurant with its own identity and reputation."
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those restaurants at the marriott downtown are disgusting........they have this cook there that looks like a broke down morgan freeman that scratches his crotch incessantly then cooks your food.....ive seen him in lilly's and in pam pam restaurants......go see for your self and you wont eat there....
you wouldnt talk so highly of the food if you saw the hands of the people cooking it....
Thank God it's undergoing renovations. Before I moved here in December, I was staying at the Marriott on business trips, and the one time I ate at Lilly's, it had the feel of a place that was down on its luck (the pasta I ate didn't help, either). Having the P&L District within walking distance doesn't help, either.
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