San Diego's hospitality behemoth Consortium Holdings/CH Projects is ready to unveil its long-awaited Coronado hotel this week, and The Baby Grand may already be one of the most ambitious hospitality projects San Diego has ever seen. From hidden champagne bars and iridescent clamshell beds to jungle-like courtyards and a lobby that feels pulled from a European fever dream, Arsalun Tafazoli’s newest creation transforms the former La Avenida Inn in Coronado into something entirely transportive. Following the Michelin Key success of the Lafayette Hotel, Baby Grand signals that CH Projects is no longer just shaping San Diego nightlife, it’s redefining boutique hospitality on an international level.
There is a moment when you walk through the entrance of The Baby Grand when your brain quietly stops trying to orient itself. The ceiling is draped in floral fabric gathered like a tent. Behind the marble front desk, shelves rise floor to ceiling with books, classical busts, and coral branches arranged the way someone actually collects things over a lifetime rather than the way a prop stylist spends an afternoon. A purple La Marzocco espresso machine sits on the counter like it belongs there, which it does, because in this hotel everything that seems like it shouldn't fit somehow does.You are somewhere between a European private library, a tropical fever dream, and a place that a very well-traveled eccentric built slowly and deliberately for reasons that have nothing to do with market research. This is CH Projects' second hotel, and it opens this Thursday, May 14, at 1315 Orange Avenue in Coronado. Rooms and restaurant reservations are live now.
It has been a long time coming. Arsalun Tafazoli, co-founder of Consortium Holdings, signed the lease on the property in 2022. The building had been the La Avenida Inn since 1957, a classic American roadside motel arranged around a pool with a sprawling parking lot occupying what turned out to be some of the most transformable real estate on the island. Four years, $18 million, and one steep learning curve in Coronado's municipal permitting system later, what stands in its place is unlike anything the island has seen, and arguably unlike anything San Diego has seen either.
To understand how the Baby Grand got here, you have to understand what CH Projects built first and what that work ultimately proved.
The Road From Neighborhood to Coronado
Tafazoli started Consortium Holdings in 2007 with a single bar in the East Village called Neighborhood. What followed over the next fifteen years was one of the most sustained creative expansions in San Diego hospitality history. Craft & Commerce in Little Italy. Polite Provisions in North Park. False Idol, the tiki speakeasy hidden behind Craft & Commerce. Ironside Fish & Oyster. Born & Raised, the soaring bi-level steakhouse that became one of the city's most celebrated restaurants almost immediately. Raised by Wolves, the opulent bottle shop installed inside a Westfield UTC mall that seemed like a strange idea until you walked in and understood it completely. Morning Glory, Seneca on the 19th floor of the InterContinental, Part Time Lover, and more than a dozen others, each one a fully realized world with its own visual logic and atmosphere.
By the time Tafazoli turned his attention to hotels, CH Projects had become the closest thing San Diego has to a defining hospitality voice.
In 2021, he purchased the historic Lafayette Hotel in North Park for $25.8 million. The property had been built in 1946 by developer Larry Imig as a glamorous retreat for the Golden Age of Hollywood, frequented in its heyday by Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Bob Hope, and Lana Turner. It had been coasting on that history for decades without anyone doing much about it. Tafazoli poured a further $31 million into its transformation, working again with Brooklyn-based Post Company on a redesign that honored the Lafayette's storied past while reimagining it entirely for a new era.
The result was an artful collision of vintage opulence and contemporary eccentricity: a grand lobby bar lined with emerald marble, boudoir-inspired guest rooms, a pool deck that feels lifted from a 1960s Riviera postcard, a restored bowling alley, eight restaurants and bars, and the kind of immersive layered atmosphere that makes guests feel they have stepped into a world rather than checked into a room.
The accolades came quickly and from unexpected places. Esquire named it Hotel of the Year for 2024. The San Diego Architectural Foundation gave it multiple Orchid Awards. It was inducted into Historic Hotels of America for its preservation efforts. The Restaurant and Bar Design Awards recognized it internationally.
Then, in October 2025, came the recognition that put it on an entirely different level.
Tafazoli started Consortium Holdings in 2007 with a single bar in the East Village called Neighborhood. What followed over the next fifteen years was one of the most sustained creative expansions in San Diego hospitality history. Craft & Commerce in Little Italy. Polite Provisions in North Park. False Idol, the tiki speakeasy hidden behind Craft & Commerce. Ironside Fish & Oyster. Born & Raised, the soaring bi-level steakhouse that became one of the city's most celebrated restaurants almost immediately. Raised by Wolves, the opulent bottle shop installed inside a Westfield UTC mall that seemed like a strange idea until you walked in and understood it completely. Morning Glory, Seneca on the 19th floor of the InterContinental, Part Time Lover, and more than a dozen others, each one a fully realized world with its own visual logic and atmosphere.
By the time Tafazoli turned his attention to hotels, CH Projects had become the closest thing San Diego has to a defining hospitality voice.
In 2021, he purchased the historic Lafayette Hotel in North Park for $25.8 million. The property had been built in 1946 by developer Larry Imig as a glamorous retreat for the Golden Age of Hollywood, frequented in its heyday by Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Bob Hope, and Lana Turner. It had been coasting on that history for decades without anyone doing much about it. Tafazoli poured a further $31 million into its transformation, working again with Brooklyn-based Post Company on a redesign that honored the Lafayette's storied past while reimagining it entirely for a new era.
The result was an artful collision of vintage opulence and contemporary eccentricity: a grand lobby bar lined with emerald marble, boudoir-inspired guest rooms, a pool deck that feels lifted from a 1960s Riviera postcard, a restored bowling alley, eight restaurants and bars, and the kind of immersive layered atmosphere that makes guests feel they have stepped into a world rather than checked into a room.
The accolades came quickly and from unexpected places. Esquire named it Hotel of the Year for 2024. The San Diego Architectural Foundation gave it multiple Orchid Awards. It was inducted into Historic Hotels of America for its preservation efforts. The Restaurant and Bar Design Awards recognized it internationally.
Then, in October 2025, came the recognition that put it on an entirely different level.
The Michelin Key: San Diego's Only
At a global Michelin Guide ceremony in Paris on October 8, 2025, the Lafayette Hotel was awarded a Michelin Key, the hotel world's equivalent of a Michelin Star. The Key program, launched in 2023, identifies hotels that offer exceptional design, service, and overall guest experience — properties that, in Michelin's own words, "make travel truly memorable."
Out of the entire United States, only 37 hotels received the designation that year. The Lafayette was one of them, and the only one in San Diego. The list included luxury icons like New York's Warren Street Hotel and California's Regent Santa Monica Beach. In San Diego, the distinction belonged to a North Park hotel that had been a parking-adjacent motel just a few years prior.
Michelin inspectors described the Lafayette as "an iconic San Diego institution decked in retro glamour — think velvet, tassels, curated cocktail kits, and a dazzling history with Golden Age Hollywood legends." They singled out the hotel's unique blend of heritage, design, and atmosphere as what set it apart from hundreds of submissions globally.
Beyond its 139 guest rooms, inspectors noted the hotel's appeal lies in its immersive environment: eight restaurants and bars, the restored Olympic-size pool, the bowling alley, and the soon-to-open European-inspired spa and fine dining concept Le Horse Continental Room, which will further deepen the property's identity. Each space tells a different story, which has always been the hallmark of CH Projects' approach.
That Michelin Key is the essential context for what the Baby Grand represents. It is not CH Projects trying something new in hospitality. It is CH Projects arriving on the international stage, validated, and now bringing that same philosophy across the bay to Coronado.
At a global Michelin Guide ceremony in Paris on October 8, 2025, the Lafayette Hotel was awarded a Michelin Key, the hotel world's equivalent of a Michelin Star. The Key program, launched in 2023, identifies hotels that offer exceptional design, service, and overall guest experience — properties that, in Michelin's own words, "make travel truly memorable."
Out of the entire United States, only 37 hotels received the designation that year. The Lafayette was one of them, and the only one in San Diego. The list included luxury icons like New York's Warren Street Hotel and California's Regent Santa Monica Beach. In San Diego, the distinction belonged to a North Park hotel that had been a parking-adjacent motel just a few years prior.
Michelin inspectors described the Lafayette as "an iconic San Diego institution decked in retro glamour — think velvet, tassels, curated cocktail kits, and a dazzling history with Golden Age Hollywood legends." They singled out the hotel's unique blend of heritage, design, and atmosphere as what set it apart from hundreds of submissions globally.
Beyond its 139 guest rooms, inspectors noted the hotel's appeal lies in its immersive environment: eight restaurants and bars, the restored Olympic-size pool, the bowling alley, and the soon-to-open European-inspired spa and fine dining concept Le Horse Continental Room, which will further deepen the property's identity. Each space tells a different story, which has always been the hallmark of CH Projects' approach.
That Michelin Key is the essential context for what the Baby Grand represents. It is not CH Projects trying something new in hospitality. It is CH Projects arriving on the international stage, validated, and now bringing that same philosophy across the bay to Coronado.
What $18 Million Looks Like
The Baby Grand occupies the footprint of the old La Avenida Inn, expanded from 29 to 31 rooms, on a two-story building whose exterior has been reimagined without being rebuilt from scratch. From Orange Avenue, what you see first is lush plantings, the glow of globe pendants through the trees, and antique statues standing at the edges of a stone-paved courtyard. One of them, a massive weathered figure of a reclining form, is half consumed by climbing vines and sits beside smaller pots of greenery as though it has been there for centuries. Classical female figures bearing torchlight lamps line the flagstone path leading toward the dining courtyard, where the tented canopy of Night Hawk glows orange against the darkening sky.
The whole property reads like something discovered rather than constructed, which required an enormous amount of construction to achieve.
Post Company, the Brooklyn design firm that transformed the Lafayette, led the Baby Grand's design with a singular governing intention: depart entirely from the casual, sun-bleached aesthetic that defines most Southern California coastal hospitality and build something that refuses easy categorization. "We approached the Baby Grand as a deliberate departure from the casual, beachy aesthetic typical of Southern California hospitality," said Leigh Salem, partner at Post Company. "From mosaic floors and mirrored walls to iridescent clamshell beds, each element contributes to a rich, cohesive world that feels assembled over time. The design is theatrical, but never overly choreographed."
Tafazoli has described the design philosophy as the fever dream of an eccentric collector — someone who hoards relics of a golden age while imagining a distorted, utopian future, where chaos and harmony coexist without resolving into either. He describes himself as a science fiction enthusiast, and parts of the Baby Grand do carry a quality that feels less like historical recreation and more like an imagined future seen from the past.
"When you look at the built environments that have endured, I feel like our contemporary, modern structures are dictated by the market economy," he has said. "The reason why Rome is the most traversed metropolis in the world is because there are structures and built environments that were designed to commemorate a higher purpose. And there's character, and there's craftsmanship. Beauty is important to me, and without sounding pretentious, this is our art, and I think good art sort of immerses you and helps you forget and makes you feel less alone."
The Baby Grand occupies the footprint of the old La Avenida Inn, expanded from 29 to 31 rooms, on a two-story building whose exterior has been reimagined without being rebuilt from scratch. From Orange Avenue, what you see first is lush plantings, the glow of globe pendants through the trees, and antique statues standing at the edges of a stone-paved courtyard. One of them, a massive weathered figure of a reclining form, is half consumed by climbing vines and sits beside smaller pots of greenery as though it has been there for centuries. Classical female figures bearing torchlight lamps line the flagstone path leading toward the dining courtyard, where the tented canopy of Night Hawk glows orange against the darkening sky.
The whole property reads like something discovered rather than constructed, which required an enormous amount of construction to achieve.
Post Company, the Brooklyn design firm that transformed the Lafayette, led the Baby Grand's design with a singular governing intention: depart entirely from the casual, sun-bleached aesthetic that defines most Southern California coastal hospitality and build something that refuses easy categorization. "We approached the Baby Grand as a deliberate departure from the casual, beachy aesthetic typical of Southern California hospitality," said Leigh Salem, partner at Post Company. "From mosaic floors and mirrored walls to iridescent clamshell beds, each element contributes to a rich, cohesive world that feels assembled over time. The design is theatrical, but never overly choreographed."
Tafazoli has described the design philosophy as the fever dream of an eccentric collector — someone who hoards relics of a golden age while imagining a distorted, utopian future, where chaos and harmony coexist without resolving into either. He describes himself as a science fiction enthusiast, and parts of the Baby Grand do carry a quality that feels less like historical recreation and more like an imagined future seen from the past.
"When you look at the built environments that have endured, I feel like our contemporary, modern structures are dictated by the market economy," he has said. "The reason why Rome is the most traversed metropolis in the world is because there are structures and built environments that were designed to commemorate a higher purpose. And there's character, and there's craftsmanship. Beauty is important to me, and without sounding pretentious, this is our art, and I think good art sort of immerses you and helps you forget and makes you feel less alone."
The Lobby: Where You Begin to Lose Track of Time
The lobby is where the Baby Grand's logic first reveals itself. The reception desk is a slab of richly veined marble, topped at one end by a purple La Marzocco espresso machine and at the other by an extravagant arrangement of fresh flowers in white and blush. Behind the desk, floor-to-ceiling dark wood shelves hold an accumulated library of art books, novels, travel writing, and design monographs alongside classical busts, golden coral branches, ceramic figures, and tasseled bookmarks left at odd angles. A floral fabric is gathered and draped across the ceiling like a tent, held by an ornate medallion at the center from which a multi-armed chandelier with globe bulbs descends.
Tucked to one side, visible through a clean archway framed by globe pendants and art deco sconces, the café bar runs a striped terracotta tile front with a chrome rail, set up for coffee during the day and cocktails from early evening. Palms visible through the archway beyond it remind you that the outdoors is right there, and that the building has been designed to feel continuous with its gardens.
On the marble desk counter, Baby Grand Crown City branded tote bags and robes are folded for guests alongside a curated selection of reading material. The lobby functions the way the best hotel lobbies always have and almost never do anymore: as a room worth inhabiting whether or not you are going anywhere.
The lobby is where the Baby Grand's logic first reveals itself. The reception desk is a slab of richly veined marble, topped at one end by a purple La Marzocco espresso machine and at the other by an extravagant arrangement of fresh flowers in white and blush. Behind the desk, floor-to-ceiling dark wood shelves hold an accumulated library of art books, novels, travel writing, and design monographs alongside classical busts, golden coral branches, ceramic figures, and tasseled bookmarks left at odd angles. A floral fabric is gathered and draped across the ceiling like a tent, held by an ornate medallion at the center from which a multi-armed chandelier with globe bulbs descends.
Tucked to one side, visible through a clean archway framed by globe pendants and art deco sconces, the café bar runs a striped terracotta tile front with a chrome rail, set up for coffee during the day and cocktails from early evening. Palms visible through the archway beyond it remind you that the outdoors is right there, and that the building has been designed to feel continuous with its gardens.
On the marble desk counter, Baby Grand Crown City branded tote bags and robes are folded for guests alongside a curated selection of reading material. The lobby functions the way the best hotel lobbies always have and almost never do anymore: as a room worth inhabiting whether or not you are going anywhere.
The Rooms: Built to Be Remembered
The Baby Grand offers three room categories, each sharing the same design sensibility while differing in scale and position.
The Petite Baby Grand is the hotel's most intimate configuration, described in its own words as offering "the quiet pleasure of refined comfort." This is an accurate description of a room that is compact in footprint but so thoroughly considered in every detail that it never feels small. Everything has been chosen, not assembled.
The standard Baby Grand room is the hotel's signature offering, described as drawing you in "slowly and completely, with the quiet joy of excess done right." This is where the full vocabulary of the hotel's design language plays out at its most expressive.
The Baby Grand offers three room categories, each sharing the same design sensibility while differing in scale and position.
The Petite Baby Grand is the hotel's most intimate configuration, described in its own words as offering "the quiet pleasure of refined comfort." This is an accurate description of a room that is compact in footprint but so thoroughly considered in every detail that it never feels small. Everything has been chosen, not assembled.
The standard Baby Grand room is the hotel's signature offering, described as drawing you in "slowly and completely, with the quiet joy of excess done right." This is where the full vocabulary of the hotel's design language plays out at its most expressive.
The Terrace Suite adds what neither of the other rooms has: elevation and a private perch above Orange Avenue, where Coronado's main thoroughfare stretches below and the Pacific horizon eventually shows itself at the far end of the view. The hotel describes it as a place where "views of Orange Avenue stretch out toward something wide and quietly beautiful." On a late June Saturday, that room runs $895 per night. On a weekday in May, the Petite Baby Grand starts at $389 and the standard room at $428, climbing through the summer as Coronado's peak season arrives.
The beds carry the hotel's most immediately recognizable signature: an oversized iridescent clamshell headboard, lacquered and curved, that manages to be maximalist and somehow exactly right against the mural-covered walls behind it. Zebra-print throws are folded at the foot. Leopard-print stools anchor the end of a black lacquered brass bed frame. The walls are painted with imagined tropical civilizations under golden light, palm-fringed and slightly unplaceable. Vintage artwork and sculpture are placed throughout the room with the confidence of things that were never going to be moved once set down. The in-room bar cabinet opens to reveal mirrored shelves glowing amber and red, stocked with bottles and glassware that invite actual use in a way hotel minibars almost never do.
It is the bathrooms that reveal the full depth of the investment. They occupy nearly half of each room's square footage, a commitment to the bath as experience rather than utility that is rare at any price point. A marble arch veined in gray and white frames the entrance to the glass-enclosed shower, which is tiled floor to ceiling in bold brown and cream vertical stripes. The shower door handle is a cast silver nautilus shell. The clawfoot soaking tub stands on gold claw feet against a wall of deep hunter green tile, above which tropical wallpaper depicting colonnaded ruins overtaken by banana palms and birds runs all the way to ornate plaster crown molding. The vanity is a fluted marble console on brass legs. The towels folded upon it are embroidered with the Baby Grand name in red gothic script.
These are bathrooms designed to make the bath feel like the point of the stay rather than an obligation before dinner.
The beds carry the hotel's most immediately recognizable signature: an oversized iridescent clamshell headboard, lacquered and curved, that manages to be maximalist and somehow exactly right against the mural-covered walls behind it. Zebra-print throws are folded at the foot. Leopard-print stools anchor the end of a black lacquered brass bed frame. The walls are painted with imagined tropical civilizations under golden light, palm-fringed and slightly unplaceable. Vintage artwork and sculpture are placed throughout the room with the confidence of things that were never going to be moved once set down. The in-room bar cabinet opens to reveal mirrored shelves glowing amber and red, stocked with bottles and glassware that invite actual use in a way hotel minibars almost never do.
It is the bathrooms that reveal the full depth of the investment. They occupy nearly half of each room's square footage, a commitment to the bath as experience rather than utility that is rare at any price point. A marble arch veined in gray and white frames the entrance to the glass-enclosed shower, which is tiled floor to ceiling in bold brown and cream vertical stripes. The shower door handle is a cast silver nautilus shell. The clawfoot soaking tub stands on gold claw feet against a wall of deep hunter green tile, above which tropical wallpaper depicting colonnaded ruins overtaken by banana palms and birds runs all the way to ornate plaster crown molding. The vanity is a fluted marble console on brass legs. The towels folded upon it are embroidered with the Baby Grand name in red gothic script.
These are bathrooms designed to make the bath feel like the point of the stay rather than an obligation before dinner.
Night Hawk: Where the Parking Lot Used to Be
The transformation of La Avenida's sprawling parking lot into Night Hawk is the project's most literally radical gesture, the physical act of returning land optimized for cars to the service of people and pleasure.
"We're repurposing it more for humanity and less for cars," Tafazoli has said. "So you have this great portal like Orange Avenue, and over the years, it's been optimized for cars versus people. We just thought, we want to create something more aspirational, immersive, an amenity for this neighborhood."
Night Hawk was built around a two-story rock waterfall that cascades against the north wall of the property. Massive palms and tropical plantings press in from every direction. Stone-formed dining banquettes curve against the rockwork, topped with printed fabric cushions and set with round red-lacquered tables on fluted pedestals. The dining chairs have arms carved to resemble intertwined serpents.
The transformation of La Avenida's sprawling parking lot into Night Hawk is the project's most literally radical gesture, the physical act of returning land optimized for cars to the service of people and pleasure.
"We're repurposing it more for humanity and less for cars," Tafazoli has said. "So you have this great portal like Orange Avenue, and over the years, it's been optimized for cars versus people. We just thought, we want to create something more aspirational, immersive, an amenity for this neighborhood."
Night Hawk was built around a two-story rock waterfall that cascades against the north wall of the property. Massive palms and tropical plantings press in from every direction. Stone-formed dining banquettes curve against the rockwork, topped with printed fabric cushions and set with round red-lacquered tables on fluted pedestals. The dining chairs have arms carved to resemble intertwined serpents.
Above the bar, a canopied structure draped in striped fabric with leopard-print scalloped edges shelters a Murano glass chandelier shaped like overlapping palm fronds, throwing warm amber light across the dark green and burgundy marble bar top below it. Cast gold scallop shells are embedded in the bar's face at regular intervals. A giant clamshell holds citrus fruit at the corner. Open flames burn in carved stone niches in the rock wall behind the bottles.
Whether you call it the most beautiful bar in San Diego or the most theatrical, the most honest answer is that it is both simultaneously.
The restaurant takes its name from the Edward Hopper painting not as a gesture of nostalgia but as an invocation of atmosphere: people gathered around light at the edge of evening, just slightly outside ordinary time. The kitchen runs a wood-fueled open-fire grill in the Greek island tradition, channeling what the hotel describes as the philosophy of philia — the bonds formed through shared time and unhurried conversation. The menu sends out skewers, a lobster squid ink linguini, and a grand souvlaki platter, alongside whatever the season and the flames dictate.
Night Hawk is open daily from 11:30 AM to 10 PM, with weekend brunch from 10 AM to 3 PM. Reservations are open now and strongly advised.
Whether you call it the most beautiful bar in San Diego or the most theatrical, the most honest answer is that it is both simultaneously.
The restaurant takes its name from the Edward Hopper painting not as a gesture of nostalgia but as an invocation of atmosphere: people gathered around light at the edge of evening, just slightly outside ordinary time. The kitchen runs a wood-fueled open-fire grill in the Greek island tradition, channeling what the hotel describes as the philosophy of philia — the bonds formed through shared time and unhurried conversation. The menu sends out skewers, a lobster squid ink linguini, and a grand souvlaki platter, alongside whatever the season and the flames dictate.
Night Hawk is open daily from 11:30 AM to 10 PM, with weekend brunch from 10 AM to 3 PM. Reservations are open now and strongly advised.
Fallen Empire: The Room You Have to Find
Not every guest will find Fallen Empire on their first visit. That is entirely intentional.
The Baby Grand's hidden Champagne and oyster bar is accessed through the lobby via an interactive sculpture - find the right one, press it, and a concealed entrance reveals itself. What lies beyond is a room that appears to have been sealed from the outside world at a precise moment of peak elegance and simply left that way.
The walls are covered entirely in thin vertical mirror panels that multiply the red-shaded sconces and the Murano glass chandelier overhead into infinite depth, so that sitting inside feels like being suspended at the center of a golden sun. Every lamp, every glass, every face in the room recedes into amber distances that the mirrors keep creating. The effect is not dizzying. It is quietly, unexpectedly magnificent.
The banquette seating is deep crimson velvet trimmed with Greek key banding. The custom chairs in the foreground are upholstered in a wave-patterned fabric with a cast gold shell medallion at the center back, their skirts finished in heavy gold fringe. The tables are mirrored. The bar along one wall is painted with an image inspired by Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa — survival and beauty at the extreme edge of circumstance, which turns out to be an entirely appropriate reference for a room this opulent hidden behind a door this easy to miss.
Not every guest will find Fallen Empire on their first visit. That is entirely intentional.
The Baby Grand's hidden Champagne and oyster bar is accessed through the lobby via an interactive sculpture - find the right one, press it, and a concealed entrance reveals itself. What lies beyond is a room that appears to have been sealed from the outside world at a precise moment of peak elegance and simply left that way.
The walls are covered entirely in thin vertical mirror panels that multiply the red-shaded sconces and the Murano glass chandelier overhead into infinite depth, so that sitting inside feels like being suspended at the center of a golden sun. Every lamp, every glass, every face in the room recedes into amber distances that the mirrors keep creating. The effect is not dizzying. It is quietly, unexpectedly magnificent.
The banquette seating is deep crimson velvet trimmed with Greek key banding. The custom chairs in the foreground are upholstered in a wave-patterned fabric with a cast gold shell medallion at the center back, their skirts finished in heavy gold fringe. The tables are mirrored. The bar along one wall is painted with an image inspired by Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa — survival and beauty at the extreme edge of circumstance, which turns out to be an entirely appropriate reference for a room this opulent hidden behind a door this easy to miss.
Fallen Empire is, simultaneously, the most intimate and the most visually extravagant room on the property. The menu is focused and precise: Kumamoto oysters, scallop crudo, uni tartare, all displayed on heaped ice alongside grower Champagnes selected for clarity and character rather than prestige. "Focused, precise, and quietly luxurious," is how the hotel describes it. "Each element is chosen for balance and clarity rather than excess. Within Baby Grand's broader spirit of discovery, Fallen Empire becomes the inner chamber — a place defined by intimacy, detail, and quiet celebration, where nothing needs to be loud or expansive to feel complete, only found."
Fallen Empire opens nightly at 5 PM and closes at 11 PM. Reservations are required. Book before you arrive, not after.
Fallen Empire opens nightly at 5 PM and closes at 11 PM. Reservations are required. Book before you arrive, not after.
What This Means
The Baby Grand is opening in a Coronado that had not seen a new hotel in more than three decades before last year. It is arriving as the follow-up to a hotel that just became the only Michelin Key property in San Diego, one of only 37 in the entire United States. It is the work of a company that started with a single neighborhood bar and now operates at a level of creative and commercial ambition that its founder readily admits he once thought was permanently out of reach.
"Hotels incorporate all of life's rituals," Tafazoli has said. "Whether it's eating, sleeping, working, having sex, hanging out. Because hotels are usually corporate pursuits and the dollars are so big, I never thought we would be in a position to be able to do it. So you start with restaurants and bars because the dollars are less, and you can do it independently. We're now fortunate enough to have the capital to do this, but from our inception, that was always the goal. We just never thought it would be reachable."
With the Baby Grand now open and a 68-room hotel and wellness center in development for Little Italy, it is increasingly clear that CH Projects has not simply arrived in the hotel business. It has become one of the most interesting hospitality companies operating anywhere in the American West, building properties that earn international recognition while remaining unmistakably, specifically rooted in the city that produced them.
If the Lafayette taught San Diego that a boutique hotel could earn its place alongside the finest properties in the world, the Baby Grand makes the case that what happened in North Park was not a lucky first swing. It was the beginning of a method. And Coronado, whether it was ready for it or not, is the proof.
Rooms are available from Thursday. Go find the door.
The Baby Grand is located at 1315 Orange Avenue, in Coronado. Hotel and dining reservations are available at babygrandcoronado.com. Night Hawk: 11:30 AM to 10 PM daily, brunch 10 AM to 3 PM weekends. Fallen Empire: 5 PM to 11 PM nightly, reservations required.
The Baby Grand is opening in a Coronado that had not seen a new hotel in more than three decades before last year. It is arriving as the follow-up to a hotel that just became the only Michelin Key property in San Diego, one of only 37 in the entire United States. It is the work of a company that started with a single neighborhood bar and now operates at a level of creative and commercial ambition that its founder readily admits he once thought was permanently out of reach.
"Hotels incorporate all of life's rituals," Tafazoli has said. "Whether it's eating, sleeping, working, having sex, hanging out. Because hotels are usually corporate pursuits and the dollars are so big, I never thought we would be in a position to be able to do it. So you start with restaurants and bars because the dollars are less, and you can do it independently. We're now fortunate enough to have the capital to do this, but from our inception, that was always the goal. We just never thought it would be reachable."
With the Baby Grand now open and a 68-room hotel and wellness center in development for Little Italy, it is increasingly clear that CH Projects has not simply arrived in the hotel business. It has become one of the most interesting hospitality companies operating anywhere in the American West, building properties that earn international recognition while remaining unmistakably, specifically rooted in the city that produced them.
If the Lafayette taught San Diego that a boutique hotel could earn its place alongside the finest properties in the world, the Baby Grand makes the case that what happened in North Park was not a lucky first swing. It was the beginning of a method. And Coronado, whether it was ready for it or not, is the proof.
Rooms are available from Thursday. Go find the door.
The Baby Grand is located at 1315 Orange Avenue, in Coronado. Hotel and dining reservations are available at babygrandcoronado.com. Night Hawk: 11:30 AM to 10 PM daily, brunch 10 AM to 3 PM weekends. Fallen Empire: 5 PM to 11 PM nightly, reservations required.