{"id":244895,"date":"2012-03-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/cosmopolitan-hotel-and-restaurant-proves-old-town-is-not-just-for-tourists-anymore\/"},"modified":"2012-03-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T08:00:00","slug":"cosmopolitan-hotel-and-restaurant-proves-old-town-is-not-just-for-tourists-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/cosmopolitan-hotel-and-restaurant-proves-old-town-is-not-just-for-tourists-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant proves \u2018Old Town is not just for tourists anymore\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por David Schwab | Reportero SDUN <\/strong>

\"Cosmopolitan<\/a>
Pastry chef Caitlin Gyelo. (Photo courtesy of Delle Willett)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The Cosmopolitan Hotel & Restaurant in Old Town has taken something old and made it new, and two of its chefs, Uptown residents Andrew Lee Sasloe and Caitlin Gyelo, have figured prominently in that transformation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe brought it back to what Old Town used to be in the 1800s,\u201d said head chef Sasloe, a Normal Heights resident who\u2019s rejuvenated the menu of Cosmopolitan, formerly Casa de Bandini, overlooking Old Town Square. \u201cThere\u2019s so many Mexican restaurants in town; but you can come to Cosmopolitan and get steak, seafood, a pasta dish \u2014 or a burrito.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sasloe said Mexican food still accounts for about 30 percent of the restaurant\u2019s revamped cuisine, but added, \u201cWe\u2019re doing different Mexican food, not the average red rice and refried beans.\u201d <\/p>\n

They are also growing some of the spices used daily in the kitchen on the restaurant property.<\/p>\n

Sasloe\u2019s pastry chef and Banker\u2019s Hill resident, Gyelo, brought her dessert flair to Cosmopolitan\u2019s menu. Her churros, voted \u201cbest\u201d by San Diego Magazine, are a mainstay of the reinvented menu.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the chocolate dipping sauce that goes along with the churros,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat makes it different is the p\u00e2te \u00e0 choux dough used to make \u00e9clairs, cream puffs and doughnuts, which we fry and roll in a cinnamon sugar vanilla bean mixture and serve along with the semi-sweet chocolate sauce that includes cardamom and cayenne pepper \u2014 that\u2019s my little spin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cosmopolitan proprietor Catherine Miller, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband Tom Withers, boasts about another of Gyelo\u2019s confectionary treats, her cornmeal scones, which Miller said patrons in the hotel\u2019s 10 Old West-style, customized guest rooms rave about.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe does such a beautiful job with her scones and her fresh, homemade pomegranate jam which guests get treated to in the morning,\u201d Miller said.
\nAfter a $6.5 million dollar rehabilitation the Cosmopolitan Hotel & Restaurant, which is San Diego\u2019s oldest surviving building built by pioneer settler Juan Bandini in 1827, has once again become Old Town\u2019s community center and a regional destination.<\/p>\n

These days, it\u2019s all about getting back to the establishment\u2019s roots.<\/p>\n

\u201cCosmopolitan is actually the name of the hotel that was here in the 1860s,\u201d Miller said, adding that it was a stop along the stagecoach run. \u201cIt was [the] state park\u2019s vision to give people a sense of what it was like to be here in that period. It touches people\u2019s lives when they think about what was here; get a feel for what life was really like. That\u2019s an enjoyable unique part of this restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authenticity is what the staff and owners of the Cosmopolitan strive for; the staff dresses in Western period garb and piano players in the courtyard regale guests with a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of classic and modern tunes.<\/p>\n

The hotel-restaurant offers entertainment five days a week, not only piano players but guitarists and harmonica players as well.<\/p>\n

However, the kitchen staff, including Sasloe and Miller, would like to take Cosmopolitan\u2019s new direction one step further.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to bring theme nights here, prime rib on Monday, [shrimp] scampi on Tuesday, crab legs and lobster other nights,\u201d he said.
\nMiller said she would like to broaden the hotel-restaurant\u2019s clientele to go along with its expanded cuisine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to draw people from Uptown and other areas of San Diego,\u201d she said, adding that she thinks the Cosmopolitan is a great \u201cStaycation\u201d spot.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the only hotel in the park,\u201d she said. \u201cSo basically, the park is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOld town is not just for Mexican food or for tourists anymore,\u201d Sasloe said. \u201cYou can come down here five days a week and get something totally different every time.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dave Schwab | SDUN Reporter The Cosmopolitan Hotel & Restaurant in Old Town has taken something old and made it new, and two of its chefs, Uptown residents Andrew Lee Sasloe and Caitlin Gyelo, have figured prominently in that transformation. \u201cWe brought it back to what Old Town used to be in the 1800s,\u201d […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":840,"featured_media":244896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant proves \u2018Old Town is not just for tourists anymore\u2019","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}