Employees are hurrying to put the finishing touches on the airport's new hotel, set to open Friday.
By look and smell, servers-in-training memorize the lunch appetizers: peeky toe crab avocat, wild king salmon Nicoise, rock shrimps shumai ... .
"Pork pot stickers," a trainee says, correctly identifying the dish before him.
Grand Met restaurant servers -- and key staffers at the Grand Hyatt DFW -- are brushing up on the menu in preparation for the luxury hotel's Friday debut. Built into Dallas/Fort Worth Airport's new international Terminal D, this is the first Grand Hyatt in Texas and the world's only one at an airport.
"We are in great shape," general manager George Vizer says of the training, which wraps up Thursday. "We only hope we add positively to this beautiful terminal complex."
To jazz up the international flavor -- D/FW is 1,500 miles inland, after all -- interns from Asia and Europe have been added to the staff, which speaks a collective 25 different languages, Vizer said.
Hyatt's top food and beverage executives were brought in to oversee training at the Grand Met and M lounge.
For now, the sushi here will be basic compared with the edible art served at the Hyatt's Lake Las Vegas resort, Master Sushi Chef Osamu Fujita said. But with a little imagination, the Grand Hyatt DFW might become home to a new cuisine, "sushi cowboy style."
In the Know
The $60.75 million, 298-room hotel opens Friday morning with a ribbon-cutting featuring a Fourth of July theme. As part of the ceremony, the Grand Hyatt DFW will make a "grand" donation of $1,000 to the USO.
Dallas/Fort Worth Airport owns the Grand Hyatt DFW. Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp. will manage the property for D/FW.
As of May 24, the hotel construction was projected to finish at $60,586,419 -- under budget by $164,706.
As part of an advertising deal between D/FW Airport and Samsung Electronics America, each guest room will have a high-end, 32-inch television with digital video-on-demand and premium cable service.
Meeting spaces include 34,000 square feet of ballrooms, banquet and meeting rooms, and conference suites.
