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| Orlando Dining experience at Mandolins Restaurant
Driven by an industrious spirit and a refusal to let outside forces control their destiny, employees of Radisson Resort Parkway took up the challenge, investing personal time, skill, talent, sweat and company pride to transform the hotel’s full-service, 232-seat restaurant into a more sophisticated, modern dining experience. The metamorphosis complements the hotel’s recent $15 million renovation of its lobby and 718 guest rooms. That work was completed before an economic downturn hit the industry hard and caused the hotel management to decide on only a “sprucing up” of the restaurant rather than a completely new look, as had been planned.
The idea began to take shape after Patricia Kindl, wife of Radisson Resort Parkway general manager Siegbert Kindl, took a class in faux painting and texturizing. In discussions with staff, she offered to pass on her newly acquired skills to employees and help them dress up the 4,000-square-foot restaurant with a fresh coat of paint. Not satisfied with a simple makeover, the group eventually undertook a much larger project than anyone had anticipated. “The entire team is proud of working here and they had the feeling at the end of the hotel renovations that they missed the boat,” says Daniel Meys, food and beverage director for Radisson Resort Parkway. “They were disappointed,” he adds. “They wanted to make it happen, so they did it themselves. It was the best teamwork exercise we possibly could have had.” The work was a collaborative effort among the hotel’s food and beverage, engineering and housekeeping departments, through summer 2003. Working in the afternoons or late at night when the restaurant was closed, employees provided all of the labor to paint, install a new tile floor and even build a 64-foot-long tiled buffet line from the ground up. Window treatments, wall accessories with a Latin flavor and new furniture pieces completed the transformation. “I was amazed at the enthusiasm of the employees, the cooperation and the talent that was shown during the remodeling of this restaurant,” says Siegbert Kindl. “It was fantastic! Now, we all look with such pride at our beautiful restaurant, Mandolins.” With its new atmosphere, the refurbished restaurant is still accessible for families but is much more appealing to business travelers, who are increasingly arriving in Kissimmee-St. Cloud. The new look, lower lighting and table linens also give Mandolins a dinner ambiance that had been missing at the old restaurant, which was better suited to a more casual breakfast and lunch crowd with its late-1980s Floridian motif in pink and turquoise. The design is a good blend of the traditional and modern dining atmosphere, and it introduces families to upscale dining without the at-times intimidating feeling of some fine dining establishments. Inspired by the Mediterranean influence in the design, the restaurant’s chefs also have diversified some parts of the dinner menu, using the culinary skills they gathered from a number of experiences – including, for some, studying at the prestigious Cordon Bleu Culinary Academy and studying and working in Europe. Mandolins still offers classic favorites that appeal to everyone, but the specials menu has a more eclectic fare that encourages visitors to try a kind of cuisine they might not get at home. “We’ll respect one half of the menu and we’ll play with the other half,” Chef Alberto Benlolo says. For more information about Orlando's best dining experience contact the Radisson Resort Parkway, or the hotel’s director of sales and marketing, at (407) 390-3907. *Book now for only $79.00 per night!
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Mandolins - 
Not good enough, said the employees, who took matters into their own hands and tapped into talents many didn’t realize they possessed. The result is that the former tropical-themed “Café in the Court” restaurant is now the more trendy, Mediterranean-style “Mandolins” eatery.
