Hotel Emma, the 146-room boutique luxury hotel at the Historic Pearl, announced hospitality veteran Andres Rizo has joined the hotel’s team as the new culinary concierge.
Rizo comes to Hotel Emma with ample experience in the food and beverage industry. He has held several leadership roles, including beverage director, entertainment director, and general manager, at some of the most prestigious hospitality hot spots, nightclubs, and restaurants in New York City, including the Boom Boom Room, The Darby, and The Double Seven. Rizo recently moved to San Antonio to pursue his own venture (he and his wife moonlight as the founders of SoundCream Airstream, a pop-up club and outdoor experience packaged out of a 1970s renovated airstream) and partnered with Hotel Emma in early 2017.
“I am thrilled to join the Hotel Emma team,” says Andres. “San Antonio is an amazing and must-see destination, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to enhance our guests’ culinary experience not only in the hotel and the Pearl neighborhood, but across the entire city.”
As the culinary concierge of Hotel Emma, Rizo is focused on setting the highest bar for San Antonio’s food scene and will be providing guests with intimate access to South Texas’s unique gastronomic offerings, organizing bespoke experiences such as a guest chef-led dinner in a private suite, and escorting guests to local pop-up dinners and demonstrations, among other events.
Since joining the Hotel Emma team, Rizo has been expanding the property’s in-house culinary program and has organized several gastronomic demos and pop-ups, such as “National Daiquiri Day,” where guests learned the secrets of making the perfect daiquiri, and a kraut-making demonstration. Upcoming pop-ups include “Pie-Making class with Nanette Watson” and “Becker Vineyards Wine Dinner,” among others. Additional new cultural events and series on property include a special library series with local personality Sherry Kafka Wagner and a weekly lively music performance, “Latin Jazz Wednesdays.” Through these events and his expert recommendations, Rizo hopes to enrich guests’ experience with creative diversions centered on all things culinary in San Antonio.
“We are very excited to welcome Andres to Hotel Emma,” says Hotel Emma’s Chef John Brand. “He will be a great asset as a font of information for our guests in expanding their food knowledge and culinary discoveries of San Antonio, and will enhance the overall traveler experience.”
A culinary destination in its own right, Hotel Emma is housed in a former 19th century brewery and is the flagship for Pearl’s culinary and cultural community on the northern edge of downtown San Antonio. The hotel boasts an array of culinary offerings: Supper, Sternewirth Bar and Club Room, and Larder, a locally sourced gourmet market.
