OPERATIONS
LOCAL FINDS
MML HOSPITALITY FINDS SUCCESS ON THE EDGES.
By DAVID EISEN
Across the street from Mojo Coffee, on a stretch of Magazine Street that is pockmarked with potholes but equally distinguishable for its menagerie of gritty tattoo parlors, stylish boutiques and elevated food scene, is Hotel Saint Vincent, which could easily be mistaken for one of the sundry grand mansions that pepper the Lower Garden District of New Orleans. That might just be the idea. Hotel Saint Vincent was developed and is now operated by MML Hospitality, whose meat-and-potatoes business had always been in the food-and-beverage business, concepting and running restaurants from Aspen to Austin. MML is led by a troika of lifestyle aficionados: The founders, Larry McGuire and Tom Moorman, are chefs by trade; in 2021, tastemaker Liz Lambert, founder of Bunkhouse Hotels, was added as a partner.
Austin is MML’ s home base and where McGuire, looking relaxed in his office in a crisp white, oversized T-shirt, was born and raised. Austin is the cultural hub of Texas, known for such festivals as South by
Southwest and Austin City Limits; its iconic slogan—“ Keep Austin Weird”— serves to instruct this independent-minded capital city. That reminder is baked into what MML does, creating vibes within spaces that offer an experience that is anything but standard.
MML was a slow build at first, like a match that burns down slowly and right before it extinguishes is touched off by fresh phosphorus. The process repeats. It started in the mid-aughts, with McGuire and Moorman opening restaurants; in 2006, the duo opened a barbeque joint called Lamberts with, in an instance of foreshadowing, Liz Lambert’ s brother, Lou. It was in those early, formative days that McGuire got his education in hospitality, shadowing the Lambert siblings as Liz made her mark with her first hotel project, Hotel San José, on South Congress Avenue.( McGuire likens himself to a quasi-nephew to the Lambert duo.) Back then, South Congress was not the bustling thoroughfare it is today, and the hotel was at the vanguard that helped usher in and remold the area into a locus for creative types.“ I was in awe of that transformation,” McGuire said.
OUR OWN THING The wonder McGuire had then carries forward. Today, MML comprises 17 restaurants and bars and two hotels, with two more under development. One of MML’ s hallmarks is location choice. Consider Hotel Saint Vincent: It’ s in a major U. S. city, but the pocket it inhabits is not the French Quarter; there is no 24- hour revelry; there are no beaded tourists ambulating Bourbon Street with drink in hand. Instead, denizens laze in adjacent Coliseum Park and the tourists that do come are there to admire the southern live oaks and Greek-Revival homes.( The actor Jude Law bought a home in the neighborhood, which he calls nurturing and an oasis. Jennifer Coolidge of“ The White Lotus” also owns a home close by.)
Hotel Saint Vincent was originally conceived as an orphanage in 1861 and operated as one for more than 100 years. A century in, the building fell into disrepair
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