The VIEW 162 restaurant sits atop Dayton’s Crowne Plaza Hotel. Unfortunately, it lacks luster.
The appeal of roof-top restaurants in large cities derives mostly from the panoramic views that the dining rooms afford. Some restaurants physically rotate to provide diners a changing aerial perspective. The remarkable skylines and cityscapes of these major cities enhance the dining experience considerably.
What diners see from the vantage point of the View 162 restaurant is somewhat drab by comparison. Perhaps, the night-time illumination from houses, buildings and the highway offers some visually saving grace. However, in the daytime, the view leaves much to be desired. Therefore, the name of the Crowne Plaza’s rooftop restaurant is unfortunately a misleading prelude to an anticipated dining experience.
One would think that a restaurant like the View 162 faced with a less than stunning vista would seek creative ways to compensate for this deficit. Apparently not so with the View 162. The interior decor and the menu for the buffet fail to offset the lack of view and as a result detract from the dining setting.
The trend in many urban restaurants is towards cosmopolitan chic with contrived nomenclature designed to suggest gastronomic allure. Somewhere along the line, restaurants in the past decade have bought into a marketing mindset that a minimalist color palette or a mix of monochrome, browns and blacks is tres sophisticated. Not the case with the View 162.
The restaurant is devoid of vibrancy and color. Black table cloths and black napkins drape and surmount the tables. The chairs while reasonably comfortable shout liquidation sale. The table top accoutrements consisting of salt and pepper shakers, sugar and sugar substitute containers, and small nondescript vases each with a single flower jutting out are haphazardly combined. The resulting arrangement suggests kitchen cupboard remnants rather than thoughtfully combined accent pieces. In short, there is no apparent effort to realize an attractive coordination of color, furniture and table top accessories. Consequently, the end product detracts from the overall dining experience.
The overhead ceiling is a faded beige, the recessed lighting is too dim to be of any real assistance even in the daytime, and the occasional swatch of hidden purple lighting across the breadth of the ceiling is confusing perhaps intended for night-time dining. The result is really confounding because there is so much potential in this roof-top restaurant.
My visit was on a Saturday morning with the express purpose of sampling and enjoying the breakfast buffet. The visit was disappointing. The View 162 falls dramatically short on its presentation of food options and the menu itself. To the restaurant’s credit, several large professional chafing dishes effectively cradled bacon and sausage, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and waffles. There was an omelette station but it was not sampled by myself in this outing because it just didn’t seem that extraordinary.
A function table located against the opposite wall to the chafing dishes hardly groaned under its offerings with its rather mundane selection of dried cereals, oatmeal and some meager toppings. There was one small bowl of mixed fruit sections such as pineapple and melon. Almost an afterthought and not artfully presented. A couple of unattractive platters of store-bought Danish pastries completed the array. This table lacked any appeal for hungry diners. The word stingy came to mind. Hotel buffets across the country manage to provide a much greater variety of buffet toppings and side options in a visually appealing display. Even many of the chain motels with their off-lobby breakfast buffets do far more with less.
As to the buffet’s food items, the scrambled eggs, potatoes, bacon and sausage were deemed satisfactory. There was an ample quantity of these buffet staples and it was obvious that the brimming chafing dishes were either being attended to faithfully or simply being unsampled throughout the morning. The waffles, however, conspired against the main menu having the texture of cardboard. A pat of butter and syrup did little to revive or rescue any dormant flavor. Coffee, water and processed orange juice were the beverages served. To charge approximately $14 (including tax) for this breakfast buffet was something of an affront to customers.
In fairness to the hotel and to the View 162, the wait staff was pleasant and seemed very attentive to the diners. For the small amount of table traffic at mid- morning, tables could have been made up more quickly than they were. One large circular table sat for at least 15 minutes without table cloth or napery. The failure of timely table makeup by dining room staff rendered the dining room messy. On balance, being able to validate the parking garage ticket for eating at the restaurant was a generous gesture by the hotel and certainly to try eating there again at some future point.
In short, the View 162 needs a drastic makeover. Décor, view, and furniture seem at cross purposes; and that is too bad because there is such potential here for the morning buffet crowd. With some corporate commitment and funding, the View 162 could offer a decidedly more cheerful a.m. dining experience rather than the event presently provided.
The entrance into the Crowne Plaza hotel whether at street level or by way of the convention center walkway was neglected. The convention center concrete rampway to the hotel was dirty and littered during the morning of my visit. Yes, there was an event going on, but that’s little excuse for not attempting to keep the area clean and inviting. The hotel carpets were themselves in need of vacuuming and a little threadbare in places. The lobby furniture was vintage and also decidedly unattractive.
Corporate ownership of the Crowne Plaza needs to decide whether this facility could be much, much better. Perhaps to the point of investing a bundle of money in the property and the restaurant in particular because the two have the potential to really shine. What a footprint a properly advised, inspired and managed facility could do for downtown Dayton. Right now the View 162 restaurant is lackluster and hardly constitutes a Crowne jewel by any stretch of the imagination. It could certainly use some polish.