Hotels Are Going Right to Their Roots for Food : Restaurants: Some hotels have eating establishments that are so good they grow their own vegetables and operate their own ranches.

Hotel food.

Until recently, the term was more or less an oxymoron, humorously synonymous with “postal service,” “military intelligence” and other contradictory word pairings.

Hotel restaurants were places where guests were simply fed, more as an afterthought than anything else. Hotel chefs were just a notch up from hospital food administrators.

Not any more.

Today, hoteliers around the world have recognized that food-- good food--plays an integral role in guest satisfaction.

They have hired world-class chefs, created innovative menus and attracted a clientele that expects only the very best gastronomic experience.

As a result, it’s not unusual today for a hotel to be known by the restaurant it keeps. In fact, some are so good that a claim could easily be made that they are not merely hotel restaurants, but rather excellent restaurants that just happen to offer their patrons the option of a nearby bed.

In the game of hotel food one-upmanship, many hotels today no longer leave the quality of their food up to someone else. A number of these hotels now own their own farms or ranches, or in some cases even grow their own food right on the premises.

For example, at Las Brisas in Acapulco, the resort employs 70 gardeners. Much of the time, the gardeners work hard at maintaining the expansive grounds. But now, the hotel also grows its own fruit--papayas, mangoes, lemons, limes, pineapples and grapefruit. It’s enough to supply 50% of the hotel’s daily needs.

“We’re working hard to expand our fruit production,” said Eduardo D’Lima, Las Brisas’ general manager. “Our hope is to become 100% self-sufficient.”

In France, at Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, the hotel grows more than two dozen varieties of fruits and vegetables in acres of greenhouses.

At Airds Hotel, in Argyll, Scotland, the staff grows broccoli, green beans, herbs and six different lettuces. On Necker Island (in the British Virgin Islands), the luxury resort/retreat owned by British millionaire Richard Branson, the staff grows mangoes, avocados, bananas, oranges, grapefruit, limes, pineapples and cabbage.

At other hotels, where space is a problem, officials have headed for the top floor.

On the roof of the Stouffer Madison Hotel in Seattle, you’ll find a 300-square-foot herb garden. The first crop provided an abundance of rosemary, French sorrel, silver thyme, sage, parsley and garlic chives.

The chef at the Mark Hopkins InterContinental in San Francisco likes to joke that he has the most expensive herb garden in the world: a $4,000-per-square-foot plot of land owned by the hotel, which claims to grow 19 different herbs in its rooftop garden, ranging from sweet basil and sage to European bay leaf and dill, chives, cilantro and rosemary.

Guests who peek behind the legendary Bungalow 1 at the Beverly Hills Hotel will find the secret herb garden of the hotel’s executive chef, Michel Saragueta.

A few miles away, at the Tower at the Century Plaza Hotel, is a 10-by-70-foot herb garden, divided into 20 mini-sections and separated by railroad ties. The private herb garden services La Chaumiere, the hotel’s award-winning dining room.

Then there are those hotels that simply have no space on the premises for growing their own food, but do so anyway.

In Bangkok, you’ll find the herb garden for the Oriental Hotel located in the back yard of Norbert Kostner’s house. Kostner is the Oriental’s executive chef.

In Hawaii, some hotel chefs insist on working with local farmers to grow food to their own specifications of size and quality.

“Out here,” said Darin Schulz, executive sous chef at the Stouffer Waiohai Beach Resort hotel on Kauai, “so many hotels deal with volume. The numbers of guests are so great they are simply working hard just to feed them. That’s not our philosophy.

“We want to maintain quality control as well as freshness, and that means trying to first buy everything local, then working to make sure it’s grown properly.”

For example, the Waiohai buys herbs grown on Kauai, corn from Kilauea, onions and watermelon from Maui, and venison from the island of Molokai.

“We go right to the source,” Schulz said, “and it makes a big difference.”

If you’re wondering why the Maui InterContinental Wailea is known for serving the best hamburgers around, it may be because the hotel buys all of its beef from a local rancher in nearby Haiku.

“It’s all grass-fed beef,” said executive chef Richard Reynolds. “No hormones or additives. It’s a better quality meat, and it’s leaner. The rancher knows just what we want.”

On the Big Island of Hawaii, the Mauna Lani Bay hotel works in much the same way.

“We feature Pacific Rim cuisine,” said Alan Wong, chef of the hotel’s new Canoe House. “Our rule is that we want to serve whatever the Pacific Ocean touches, from California to the Far East.”

But to do that, Wong and his staff have to work that much harder to buy things locally, ranging from the fish they use (caught locally that day) to the small, tart ohelo berries that grow near the volcano.

“Great food at a hotel has always been a challenge,” said Michael Cavilla, general manager of the exclusive 45-room Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, England. “But now we want to meet that challenge. Eating well at a hotel is now a prerequisite for the total great hotel experience, and we work hard to make sure that what we serve is as fresh as it can be.”

Indeed, the Royal Crescent fits the description as a great restaurant surrounded by 45 bedrooms. But as opposed to other hotels who buy locally from many different suppliers on different occasions, the Royal Crescent contracts with individual farmers and ranchers to buy their entire output.

“That way,” said Cavilla, “we can really control quality. The farmers know exactly what we want, and they’re also right here. If we suddenly need extra carrots or baby lettuce, it’s not a problem.”

But the home-grown movement doesn’t stop with produce. The Savoy Hotel in London features its own coffee. The hotel purchases its own raw green beans on the coffee market and then roasts them.

The Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong boasts nothing less than its own chicken farm. “Almost all the chickens and hens in Hong Kong are fed on a diet of fish meal,” said one official. “Our guests actually started complaining that their eggs had a sort of fishy taste. We agreed.”

As a result, the Mandarin now feeds its birds nothing but regular grain.

Then there are the hotels that don’t exactly grow their own food . . . they catch it.

Once a week, Dave Callahan, a bellman at the Waiohai, goes wild pig hunting. Using his own hunting dogs and nothing more than a 10-inch hunting knife, Callahan hikes into the dense hills of Kauai near Waialeale. He tracks and kills wild pigs (ranging from 100 to 300 pounds), then smokes the meat. He often takes guests on his hunting expeditions.

But not every hotel experiment in catching or growing its own food is successful.

Some hotels in Detroit and Chicago have tried herb gardens. They soon became victims to weather. In Kenya, one hotelier thought it would be a great idea to start his own fenced vegetable garden in the Masai Mara. He tried lettuce, herbs and tomatoes. But it was a total disaster.

“The elephants broke down the electric fence we had built around it, then another fence, and ate everything. So we haven’t tried again.”