Food Video Production for Hilton Hotels: Off the Menu
A two-time Webby Award-winning series. Meet the chefs behind three exceptional Hilton hotel locations. Their personal journeys into food, the kitchens they lead and the signature dishes they created bring each destination’s dining story to life.
Three Hilton hotels. The chefs, kitchens and dishes that tell their stories.
Winner of two Webby Awards, Hilton Hotels’ Off the Menu introduces the leading chefs behind the restaurants at three of Hilton’s most beautiful hotel locations. Through their personal stories, we discover how they found their way into food, what brought them to these hotel kitchens and how their experiences shaped the signature dishes they created there.
The chef, the kitchen, the dish and the hotel are all part of the same story. Each location gives the food its setting, while the chef brings a personal history, a culinary point of view and a way of welcoming guests to the table. Preparing a beloved restaurant classic becomes a way to share that journey, connecting the person behind the food with the place guests have come to experience.
The films featured below include whole fried sea bream and vermicelli mac and cheese at Conrad Los Angeles, and wild mushroom risotto at The Beverly Hilton. These best-known classic dishes help express the identities of their restaurants and the chefs behind them. We follow the preparation, techniques and finishing touches as part of the larger story of how each chef arrived at that kitchen and made a mark on its menu.
We helped bring those intertwined stories of people, food and place to the screen through art direction, culinary production, food styling and set styling. The branded mini-series and social media campaign earned two Webby Awards, recognition for a series built around the connection between the chefs, their food and the destinations they call home.
Food, setting and movement, working together.
From the chefs’ kitchens to the camera.
Two of the restaurants featured in the project were José Andrés restaurants. We worked closely with his right-hand culinary lead, the restaurant teams and the chefs in charge of each kitchen to bring their food and stories to the screen.
We directed the culinary side of the production so each food sequence carried the chef’s story forward. We worked with the teams to identify the techniques, preparation and finishing moments that expressed what made the dish distinctive and why it belonged to that restaurant. Our work included culinary planning, preparation, food styling and coordination of the food styling assistants, so the kitchen work and on-camera action came together throughout the shoot.
Working with the chefs and restaurant teams, we planned and created the food sequences, coordinated the culinary action and styled the dishes for the camera. We paid attention to the details that make food compelling in motion, from preparation and cooking to plating and finishing, while respecting the character of the chef’s food.
The setting needed the same attention. We selected props, tableware and surfaces to match each restaurant’s style, connecting the food with the place and the people behind it. From the plate to the finishing gesture, the culinary direction, food styling and set styling worked together to bring each restaurant’s identity into the frame.
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