Hotel Daphne, the boutique hotel that opened late last year in the Heights, has earned a Michelin Key.
The Key award “celebrates the best of the best” of the Michelin Guide’s hotel selections, according to its website. Michelin added 65 new hotels to its U.S. list on Friday, including six others in Texas. Hotel Daphne was the only new Houston awardee.
“This 49-room escape in Houston Heights embraces the artistic, bohemian side of Houston, an angle that sets it apart from the majority of the city’s lodgings,” inspectors wrote. “Hypsi, the hotel’s Italian restaurant, is helmed by a celebrated local chef, and the lobby library doubles as a shop displaying a curated selection of locally produced goods.”
Run by Austin-based group Bunkhouse Hotels, Hotel Daphne aims to mimic the style of 1940s bungalows common to the Heights. Besides its guest rooms, decorated with colorful furniture, it also features a library with game tables and book nooks. Art by Texan creatives hangs on display.
Bunkhouse brought on chef Terrence Gallivan, of the now-closed but much loved restaurant The Pass & Provisions, to run Hypsi. He said he tries to make the restaurant feel like a living room, and in his menu, he presents Italian food with a few Gulf Coast touches: housemade pastas like squid ink radiatori, lamb meatballs, roasted snapper with salsa verde. A mozzarella cart roams the room.
Bar Daphne, an Art Deco-inspired cocktail bar, debuted at Hotel Daphne in May. Its signature drinks reference art on display around the hotel, as with the Life on a Merry-Go-Round cocktail of apertivo, lychee, tart cherry, lime and boba — a nod to a John Alexander painting behind the bar.
In Houston, four other hotels maintain a Key distinction: the Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston, Hotel ZaZa in both Memorial City and the Museum District, and Hotel Saint Augustine.