1933 Restaurant & Tavern. Photo courtesy of Hotel Hershey
Does anyone ever rave about the food in college dining halls?
Odd as it sounds, Hotel Hershey Executive Chef Bart Umidi does. He made the leap into the culinary field because of his campus job helping to create what he called “progressive and creative” fare at the University of Maryland.
Helping to run a dinner theater in one dining hall, he then helped start up a steakhouse in the student union building, which was the turning point that led him to stay on as catering staff after graduation and then to culinary school at the renowned Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
Since then, food has continually opened the door to exotic experiences. He worked in celebrated resorts such as the Greenbriar in West Virginia and the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., as well as in such touristy places as Bermuda, Hawaii and Hilton Head, S.C.
After nine years as executive chef at Hershey Lodge, Umidi moved to the Hotel Hershey in 2021 to oversee the culinary operation for three full-service restaurants, an all-day café, lounge, room service, banquet and event space, spa restaurant and seasonal poolside café for the AAA Four Diamond property. The restaurants include The Circular, Trevi 5 and the newly rebranded 1933, which had previously operated as Harvest.
He’s lived in lovely resort areas around the world but has now been in Hershey for his 13th summer.
“We measure things in summers around here,” he quipped.
So, what’s the special sauce in Hershey?
He was attracted initially to take on the executive chef responsibilities after he “met the team, met the chefs, their energy, their passion, what I saw as potential with the size and complexity of the Lodge.”
“I got real excited,” he said. “There’s nothing we can’t do in this environment.”
Getting to rebrand restaurants—Fire & Grain and Revelry Chophouse at the Lodge, and now 1933 at the Hotel—along with menu development, restaurant design, kitchen design and layout keeps the job interesting.
“With our mission for our company with Milton Hershey School and how our leadership drives that and communicates it and gives us opportunities to engage, it’s something you can’t find in a freestanding restaurant,” Umidi noted. “I’ve always enjoyed being in resort hotels.”
It doesn’t hurt that he spent his younger years in Hanover and Spring Grove before graduating from high school at Chesapeake High in Paradise, Md.
Umidi loves collaborating on new dishes and menus with the three executive chefs of the hotel restaurants—Dakota Bowers at 1933, Vincent Delagrange at the Circular and William McDonough at Trevi 5—where the team looks for seasonal triggers that inspire and support a sense of time and place for each restaurant’s identity.
Umidi’s past locales and his staff help to inform his menu.
“My experiences and my guys—they’re inspired and they’re creative,” he said. “That’s one of the things I love the most—the collaboration with them.”
In Hawaii, he was exposed to Pacific and Asian cuisines, traveling to places like Thailand and Japan. He used king salmon in Hawaii and continues that today because it is fattier and more delicious than Atlantic salmon, he said.
Umidi serves mussels with an Asian spin and created a seafood tower for 1933. The Circular menu has some Korean flavors, including a pork tenderloin with gochujang, kimchi and rice, and a miso-glazed black cod in a country ham dashi with a fresh salad and forbidden rice.
“The Circular is a place where we can push boundaries a little and explore,” he said. “I like to be able to surprise them with that creativity.”
Also at the Hotel, the Iberian Lounge is a favorite for hotel guests and locals. New items also recently dropped there, including flatbreads, hummus, prosciutto and burrata plate, and other tapas-oriented items that reflect the Iberian peninsula.
Chef’s Bites: The newly branded 1933 expands the Harvest menu with a steak and chop profile, continuing relationships with vendors (like Bowcreek Farm) and the community. It now has more of a British tavern vibe with pub dishes that resonate with throwbacks like a steak and ale pie and a meatloaf that “is not your grandma’s meatloaf.”
Favorite Dish: Among Umidi’s favorites is an interpretation of a cassoulet at The Circular that uses lamb loin as the foundation along with lamb consommé, legumes and duck bacon. “It was fun to evolve that dish. It didn’t start as that but worked through an evolution to become spring cassoulet.” At Trevi 5, he recommends the pizza that features a thin crust and the house-made filled pasta. At 1933, favorites include oysters, an aged Kansas City strip steak (aged for 32 days), and the aged pork chop.
Pro Tips: Summer is prime time at the Hotel Hershey, but savvy locals can get seated by dining earlier. Sunday brunch at 1933 is a good bet.
If You Go: Reservations are available during the summer at all three restaurants except for the Trevi 5 patio.
The Hotel Hershey is located at 100 Hotel Rd., Hershey. For more information on Chef Bart Umidi and the restaurants, visit www.thehotelhershey.com/dining.
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