The first Easter Brunch at Plaza San Antonio Hotel & Spa’s restaurant presents a challenge for assistant general manager Aaron Hjermstad.
How will he fill the Corinne dining room with a mammoth construction zone outside the hotel on South Alamo Street?
The short answer: He’s not worried.
“We expect a big crowd,” Hjermstad said two days before Easter. “We have about 200 covers (people) on the books right now. We expect to be closer to 300 on Sunday. We’re picking up about 30-40 covers a day. That’s exciting.”
Despite an invasive glut of machinery and street barriers plaguing area businesses, executive chef Richard Marcelo sees growing enthusiasm for Sunday’s brunch.
“I’d say 90 percent of our reservations are for locals,” Marcelo said. “We did 390 covers for Valentine’s Day.”
Hotel guests represented roughly half of the Valentine’s crowd. The rest were locals, who navigated the maze of construction to visit one of downtown’s newest eateries.
What compelled them to dine at Corinne?
“Our food is fresh and carefully sourced,” Marcelo said. “Everything on our menu, from our salsas to our biscuits and churro waffles, is made in house. I think our guests know that and love the quality of the food we put out.”
Corinne opened in January 2024, offering the flavors of South Texas and the Gulf Coast in a renovated hotel, formerly known as the Marriott Plaza.
The restaurant’s first Easter Brunch will feature a sprawling buffett: a carving station for smoked turkey and ham, a crepe station, an omelet station, shrimp cocktail, baked pastries, a mimosa bar and a juice bar.
To make the brunch family-friendly, an Easter Bunny will appear and take photos with children.
“Weather permitting, we’ll have an Easter egg hunt outside,” Hjermstad said. “We’ll have fun little prizes for the kids to find across the property.”
Corinne’s executive chef is no stranger to uncertainty or challenges beyond his control. A native of Los Angeles, Marcelo attended the since-closed Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena.
“My experience is a mixture of culinary school, on the job experience and being self-taught,” he said. “What I like to do is teach my cooks from my experience, from the lessons I’ve learned from other chefs.”
Marcelo moved from the West Coast to San Antonio in 2017 to work at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa. A front-of-house manager, he fell in love with the city and worked his way to the kitchen in 2020.
“I was excited and then disappointed,” Marcelo said. “COVID happened and that put a stop to it.”
With no place to work, Marcelo scrambled. He opened a food truck with hotel co-workers, selling noodles and dumplings.
“It was pretty tough to sell during the pandemic,” he said.
Parking his truck in front of apartments and by the Andretti indoor karting track off of Loop 410, Marcelo worked feverishly.
“It was tough but we managed through it,” he said.
In 2022, Marcelo returned to the hospitality industry and became banquet chef at Hotel Contessa. Two years later, Corinne hired him on as its executive chef.
The Easter Brunch, Marcelo says, will be an elevated version of Corinne’s Sunday brunch.
“It’s going to be fun for our cooks as well as our guests at the stations,” he said. “It will be interactive. Guests will pick out what they want in their crepes. They will pick and choose toppings. And they’ll get their eggs however they want them.”
The Easter Brunch runs from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. The buffet costs $65 for adults, $17 for children 10 and under. Reservations are piling up.
“The road construction has been a challenge to get guests in here,” Marcelo said. “But we’ve done specials for Valentine’s Day, New Year’s and Christmas and we’ve had a great turnout for those. I don’t think Easter will be any different.”
