Hotel Monteleone Announces Plans for New 'Louisiana Fusion' Restaurant Called Criollo

In addition to last November's renovations to the hotel's famed Carousel Bar, the Hotel Monteleone is also getting its very own, brand-spanking-new restaurant, details of which were announced this morning. The new restaurant will be inside the hotel right next to the Carousel Bar.

So here's the deets: The new restaurant will be called Criollo, which is the Spanish word for Creole. (Or is Creole the French word for Criollo?) In either case, they're keeping with the creole theme and promising a blend of European and African flavors in a style that they call ... Louisiana Fusion. At this point they're promising a farm-to-table approach with "all food items"?yeah, they said all food items?coming from the Gulf Coast.

Working with the hotel's executive chef Randolph Buck is Criollo's chef de cuisine Joe Maynard, a Miami native who was at the Windsor Court before Katrina and was most recently executive chef at Asia de Cuba inside Miami's Mondrian Hotel. The restaurant's general manager is José Montalvo, who was on the pre-opening team at the new Hyatt Regency and who spent time as the sommelier at John Georges in New York City.

Criollo is due to open in March of this year. [EaterWire]