La Maison Blanche gets glowing review in NY Times

The New York Times called La Maison Blanche a “good base for checking out Shelter Island” in a glowing review in Saturday’s travel section.

Check out the review from travel writer Donna Paul by clicking on this link.

Below is Carol Galligan’s Island Profile on the hotel, originally published in April:

No stranger to either islands or ferries, Alistair MacLean, 39, one of the two new owners of the former Olde Country Inn, now La Maison Blanche, grew up on one of the Outer Hebrides islands, off the coast of Scotland. The ferry ride there was longer than a few minutes — it actually took six hours. “It was a very sheltered background, a thousand people on the island where I grew up,” he said during a recent chat. “But there are many similarities to this one.” The two places are “very much alike, the sense of community, I think any island has that. It’s true in the Caribbean as well. On any island there’s more of a closeness, yes, definitely.”

He went to school there and then on to catering college, studying all aspects of hotel management. He moved to London for further training, spending a year in each of the five leading London hotels, including Claridge’s, the Ritz and the Savoy. To be a hotel manager involves a wide and disparate range of skills and knowledge, he said, from the supervision of chambermaids, to the running of a restaurant, to reservations procedures, to public relations, and more.

After the London years, there was a hotel  in the south of France in St. Tropez and eventually, through a headhunter, the move to America. He worked with the owners of Sunset Beach both in a restaurant they owned in Los Angeles and then here. Presently, he’s managing a hotel in Tribeca during the week and on weekends he’s here on the Island, supervising most aspects of La Maison Blanche. “We have the chef on board already and we plan to hire a manager,” he said.

He purchased the hotel in partnership with John Sieni, 46, the owner of the Candlelight Inn, a B&B, where he has a hair salon as well. Although not close personal friends, they knew each other from evenings at Sunset Beach. Alistair had hoped to purchase the Chequit, and when that possibility fell through, he set his sights on the Olde Country Inn with another possible partner. Then that deal fell through.

John recalled, “He asked me, if he could make it happen, would I be interested. We met on a Sunday, and by Wednesday or Thursday we had contracts and within a week everything was signed. There was no wasting time. You make up your mind and then you just move forward. I knew he was extremely competent. Without him, I don’t think I would have gotten involved in it.”

Alistair added, “John and I are very different, like the yin and the yang; we both complement each other in many different ways.” John, as he put it, will be in charge of “buildings and grounds” and Alistair “will handle everything else.”

They’ve made a lot of changes in the eight bedrooms and they will be “pricey,” John said, competing with the better known, older hotels on the Island. “The rooms are bigger with better TVs,” he added. “We plan on being very full service. We want to make sure everyone feels catered to. If you’re coming for a weekend, to go to a wedding, we’ll pick you up at the ferry, we’ll drop you at the wedding and pick you up as well. There’ll be no need for a ‘designated driver,’ everyone will be safe and catered to.”

As for the restaurant, “We really want to cater to a very varied market,” Alistair said. “We want to be a place known for value for money. Our prices won’t be at the higher end. We want people to know that they can come here and get good food for a decent price. We really want to attract the local population as well as the summer people. We want the local clientele and plan to be loyal to them as well.”

The menu will be “brasserie,” he said, with a lot of local ingredients, and an emphasis on the organic. Although both the chef and the restaurant’s new name are French, the menu will not be. Asked how the French chef was recruited, Alistair laughed. “He’s the chef in the restaurant on the same street I live on, so I know the quality of the food.” They plan a bakery on premises as well, with fresh baked croissants and coffee.

When Alistair arrives here each weekend, he doesn’t come alone. Married to an American, and the father of three, the whole family arrives together — his wife, Jennifer, his two-year-old twins, Finlay and Fiona, his seven-month-old daughter, Tallulah, and his mother-in-law, without whom the entire enterprise might well sink. “She’s a huge help,” Alistair said, “and my wife has the patience of a saint.”

His mother, who still lives on the island where he grew up, visited Manhattan last year and “positively hated it.” But she loved Shelter Island, “being able to walk around freely, go wherever she wanted,” he said.

Alistair summed up his inn venture this way: “It’s a business venture but it’s not just a job, it’s in my blood, it’s what I’ve been doing for the last 25 years. I never feel like ‘Oh, my God, it’s a seven-day week!’ I’m glad to get up in the morning and be here. It’s a labor of love.”

And so the Island welcomes another newcomer, teaming up with an almost-native, bringing us something new. Opening this Friday, April 29.