Delamar Hotels Opens American-Mediterranean Restaurant, Dandelion, in Westport

Just a mere mile and change from the Delamar Southport and Artisan, founder Charles Mallory’s Greenwich Hospitality Group has opened a new luxury hotel with a restaurant, Dandelion, that’s been booked solid for weeks right out of the gate.

“We took ownership of it 2-3 years ago,” says Delamar’s corporate director of restaurants, Hicham Amaaou. “I’ve been working with Frederic Keifer (Delamar’s corporate chef/partner) since Artisan Southport in 2012, then West Hartford, and we created La Plage together from scratch. But this is two separate entities and the food is very opposite.”

While the hotel side was designed by Christian Siriano, Amaaou and Keifer took the reigns on the design and the food at Dandelion. “I’m Moroccan American,” Amaaou says. “I took influence from my culture for the textures and colors. We thought hard about the visuals, the hallway, the high ceilings, and the wine display when you walk in.”

Unlike the cuisine at the Artisan locations, and their other restaurants, La Plage in Westport and Mystic, and L’Escale in Greenwich, Dandelion is different and described by Amaaou as “an American restaurant with influences and tastes of the Mediterranean.”

Alexander McClenaghan, the group’s executive pastry chef, said the idea was derived from various restaurant week-like menus, each focusing on a different country or style, that they occasionally offer at the Artisan locations.

Wood fired prawns with green chermoula—a zesty blend of fresh herbs and earthy spices.

Eggplant dukkah - labneh, harissa glaze, pomegranate, walnuts, pistachios, almonds, and sesame seeds

Hummus w/hot chickpeas, Aleppo pepper, and zhoug, a spicy cilantro sauce

“Mediterranean spans quite a bit depending on what you want to include and what you want to exclude,” he explains. “We’re focused here on Greece, Lebanon, and Morocco, not so much Italy, like we can get maybe a touch of that influence in there, but we want to focus on other aspects of that cuisine.”

While they’re not full-on traditional Mediterranean, Dandelion’s menu makes sure to include that; Moroccan cigars, sardine stuffed grape leaves, spanakopita, and of course, wood fired pita and homemade bread.

Pita, waiting to be ordered, then fired on the fly.

“All the bread is made in-house,” McClenaghan says. “Alex’s Seeded Bread (a mini pull apart loaf) is an enriched dough made with yogurt that’s portioned to 25-gram balls that go into a ring mold to further proof, then egg wash, sesame and nigella seeds, and Maldon salt, baked, then served with grated tomato in extra virgin olive oil and mountain oregano from Greece. And the pita is served with hummus—pitas are fired to order—we call it a whole wheat pita since it has some whole wheat flour in there. Each is brushed with za’atar oil first, then we put more of that on top with Maldon salt. The za’atar blend is also made in-house.”

An approachable menu, though, is still what they’re going for, according to Amaaou, and although an early on popular dish is a butterflied, then wood roasted sea bream (with seeded chermoula, zhoug, and lemon sumac potatoes), Dandelion makes sure to include a strip steak, a pork chop, a burger, salads, and more that have minor Mediterranean touches.

“It’s not traditional and we aren’t pretending to be; we wanted it to be approachable to the average person,” Amaaou says. “It’s adventurous with a seatbelt, like having insurance. The menu shouldn’t alienate anyone. It’s why we have a culinary index on the menu (so people can learn what some ingredients are). We’re not trying to call them safe dishes—there are some traditional preps like the grouper—but if you have questions, our staff will help you navigate. Everything is made to tickle the senses. It’s all homemade, that’s what we do as a group as a whole, and we have a reputation for sourcing as good of ingredients as any prestigious restaurant out there.”

As for Dandelion’s desserts, talk to McClenaghan for a few seconds and you’ll sense his excitement as he gushes over homemade frozen desserts using ingredients like fig leaf and mastiha ice creams and labneh frozen yogurt that’s served with Meyer lemon granita, local dandelion honey and bee pollen from Weston’s Red Bee Apiary, and “white bloops that are an olive oil emulsion.”

Fig & almond cake

McClenaghan, who has worked under Thomas Keller, Fabio Trabocchi, Tom Colicchio, and Stephen Starr, says this new venture for Greenwich Hospitality Group is fresh and different from the others and is having fun creating pastry and desserts with interesting ingredients.

Pictured - Moroccan fruit salad w/citrus fruits, figs, cashews, almonds, pomegranate, orange blossom syrup, mint, EVOO, and confit orange peel

He says, “The only sugar component here is the orange blossom syrup. If you have a nut allergy (or dairy allergy), we will do our best to substitute or omit an ingredient.”

Much of what McClenaghan is doing with the dessert menu isn’t only stunning to look at (you’ll probably pause to admire them before digging in), but complex in flavors of savory and sweet.

“I get to use lots of fun ingredients here,” he says. “We’re able to source fig leaf, and you might not find that in many places, so we make an ice cream with that, that we serve with our fig & almond cake. I like to let things like the figs shine, their natural sweetness. The salinity of the feta, the almonds. It’s nice if you can get the olive oil, figs, feta, and almonds all in one bite.”

Now that Dandelion has been open since early September, you should be able to score a reservation or try walking in on the early or later side. We’re also told that on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings around 8:30, that they feature a DJ—expect a crowd for that, but don’t fret, it’s not a club scene.

1595 Post Road E, Westport
203.266.3111, dandelionwestport.com