High-profile chef Caswell ousted from Le Meridien’s Oxbow 7
Surprise exit clears way for couple to concentrate on the reopening of their iconic Reef
Le Meridien Houston has parted ways with chef Bryan Caswell and his wife, Jennifer. The high-profile couple’s Bryan Caswell Concepts was signed with much fanfare to create and manage the downtown hotel’s marquee restaurant, Oxbow 7, along with its glossy rooftop lounge, Hoggbirds. The Caswells’ team also ran the Meridien’s banquet services and 24-hour room service for its 255 rooms.
The Caswells say that they were released from their contract via email on Jan. 11, not quite four months after Oxbow 7 opened. It came as a surprise.
“We didn’t want to be released,” Jennifer Caswell said. “It’s really an unfortunate situation.”
Both she and her husband say they are disappointed and embarrassed about the turn of events and that their reputations are damaged as a result of their contract termination.
The Caswells say they are in discussions with an attorney about how best to respond to the situation.
While declining to discuss specifics of the hotel’s communication with them last week, the Caswells said they had noted worrisome “red flags” along the way but believed they were operating in good faith and providing the services the hotel needed.
Ambitious project
Asked why they think they were released from their duties, Jennifer Caswell said, “It’s our belief they didn’t provide us with the ability to do our job the way we were hired to do.”
“It’s our belief they didn’t act in good faith,” Bryan Caswell said.
“That’s our life story in there,” lamented the chef, alluding to the highly personal, biographic nature of what the restaurant’s promotional materials termed “elevated bayou cuisine.”
It was Caswell’s most ambitious project since he leapt to local and national prominence with Reef, his market-oriented Gulf seafood restaurant that opened in Midtown in 2007. Reef has been closed since it took on 4 inches of water though the roof during Hurricane Harvey; the restaurant currently is in the process of a complete renovation.
The Oxbow menu incorporated ingredients and memories from the couple’s childhoods on the bayous and waterways of the Gulf Coast, offering such dishes as an unusual cheese-free blue crab gratin and a Vietnamese-influenced fisherman’s stew swiped with a deep, resonant tamarind/ chile paste along the rim of the bowl.
Neither the Meridien hotel management nor the hotel’s Memphis-based ownership group, DHG, was willing to comment Friday on the factors that led to the end of the Caswells’ contract.
“You’re not going to get me to say anything that’s not nice,” said Gary Prosterman, a DHG managing partner. “I don’t want to make more of this than is there. With the unfortunate — terrible — impact that Hurricane Harvey had on Houston, with Reef shutting down, it made sense for them to focus on Reef. We appreciate what they did to help us get going, and we wish them the best.”
Tweaking service
Meridien general manager Alan Carret said there have already been a few changes made to Oxbow 7 over the past week, based on feedback from guests and customers. Prosterman says those tweaks involve things like “getting food out faster at breakfast and lunch.”
“We don’t have any wholesale changes planned,” Prosterman said. Chef de cuisine Michael Hoffman remains in charge of the kitchen, and general manager Lauren Hernandez, a Reef alumna, remains on the job. Although wine director Nate Rose, who was working on a consulting basis, is no longer part of the package, Prosterman says it is possible he will be brought on in a consulting role in the future.
Meanwhile, the Caswells are toiling on the rehab of Reef.
Plans to reopen in late November stretched into the new year, and now they are aiming for a mid-February reopening. They are describing the redo as “Reef 2.0.” Bryan Caswell said it will have a new, more contemporary menu but will pay homage to the original by keeping some of the iconic dishes, such as redfish on the half shell and the outsize pork chop.
The physical redesign will entail a new color palette, new furnishings and — most intriguingly — include a long, curving “chef ’s table” where guests will be served by the line cooks in front of them. Jennifer Caswell noted that this setup will allow the line cooks to receive tips, a benefit they traditionally do not enjoy. The chef ’s table, according to Bryan Caswell, will be “like an omakase situation.”
It has been a challenging couple of years for the Caswells and Bryan Caswell Concepts. They have had to balance the management of Reef, El Real, Little Bigs and Jackson Street Barbecue during the year-and-a-half-long process of negotiating over and creating Oxbow 7.
Hurricane Harvey was a blow in late August, hammering Reef, adding volunteer relief work meals to their agenda and kicking the scheduled opening of Oxbow 7 forward to late September.
In September, the couple shuttered the slider concept Little Bigs due to rising rents at its Chelsea Market location in Montrose.
November 2016 also saw the end of Bryan Caswell’s 13-year working relationship with Bill Floyd, who opted to join Jim Crane’s team at Potente when Crane and Caswell split over plans for the Astros owner’s twin restaurants near the ballpark. While Floyd said he remains a financial partner in Reef, he has nothing to do with its management or operations these days.