The renovated main dining room at Salt & Char. Salt & Char, the Adelphi Hotel's high-end steakhouse, is now open again with a new look and a new menu after...
Salt & Char reopens after extensive renovations

Salt & Char, the Adelphi Hotel's high-end steakhouse, is now open again with a new look and a new menu after a three-week closure.
The restaurant underwent a remodel earlier this year to accommodate the hotel's growing hospitality operation, which included the build-out of a brand-new, two-level kitchen, general manager Helen Watson said.
Salt & Char is one of two on-site restaurants at the hotel, the other being Morrissey's Lounge & Bistro.
In the last few years, the hotel has doubled its number of rooms from 32 to 65. It's also added 79 condos, which began to sell last summer. They're part of a $90 million-plus expansion and renovation of the Adelphi into a 200,000-square-foot resort.
"The change has been exponential," Watson said. "With the hotel expanding, the restaurants organically — there's an uptick in business there."
The kitchen(s)
The $1 million kitchen project brought the hotel's three kitchens under one roof. Prior to the project, each restaurant had its own kitchen and there was also a commissary space a half block away.
Salt & Char and Morrisey's now share a kitchen space but still have separate lines and culinary teams.
"In terms of food running and logistics, it wasn't the most ideal for the staff going upstairs, down hallways, things like that," Watson said. "So when we were expanding into the [adjacent] Rip Van Dam building with expanding the rooms and Salt & Char, we decided to build a kitchen that can encompass everything all in one space."
Having all of the kitchens in the same building will increase efficiency and food consistency, Watson said. The hotel is still working out how to cross-utilize cooks, bussers and runners.
"Labor costs, food costs, being all in one kitchen should help us with all of them. That's somewhat of the goal," she said.
The former Salt & Char kitchen will become an extension of the lobby. That is still under construction.
With the combination of the two restaurant kitchens, the downstairs banquet kitchen can go back to being just that, Watson said. Future plans include adding direct kitchen access to the hotel's atrium event space to smooth operations.
The restaurants
Salt & Char closed for three weeks in January for its own gut renovation. The restaurant's black-and-white decor has been replaced with deep greens, more brass and exposed beams.
The restaurant added space that allows an additiona 30-40 additional covers during service in the newly added south dining room and the wine room in the Rip Van Dam building. Both double as private areas to host business meetings and other events.
"We do pharmaceutical lunches, dinners, meetings. It can do meeting space as well as dining," Watson said.
The menu has also been updated. It includes caviar, the restaurant's signature cuts of steak as well as other main courses, like venison tenderloin and chicken roulade.
Salt & Char is currently between executive chefs, Watson said.

More accommodations at The Adelphi and a longer track season with the temporary move of the Belmont Stakes to Saratoga are driving growth at the hotel's other restaurant, Morrissey's, which is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
"Track season I definitely noticed more breakfast. People were having breakfast here because we were 100% sold out. You've got 65 rooms, so you're 120 people, give or take, whereas before that, we were having maybe six covers for breakfast," Watson said.
Outside of hotel traffic, Morrissey's is becoming a popular location for business lunches, she said. The renovation of a second dining room for the lounge and bistro, called the tack room, is meant to accommodate that too.
"I think it's because Morrissey's is conducive to that — the ambience, the decor, the interior design. And we're open seven days a week for lunch, so we've been able to kind of build that lunch crowd," she said.
By Sam Raudins