The Mark hotel in New York City is opening its first-ever spa, partnering with ultra-luxe skincare brand Augustinus Bader.
Larry McGuire has spent the past year turning MML Hospitality into as much a hotel company as a restaurant group. In August 2025, he and his partners, Tom Moorman and Liz Lambert, bought Nine Orchard for $92 million. The 113-room hotel sits in the former Jarmulowsky Bank Building on the Lower East Side, and the deal included its restaurants, Corner Bar, Swan Room and Blue Room. It gave MML its first East Coast project. At home in Austin, McGuire took over all food and beverage at the Driskill Hotel, which dates back to 1886.
With April Bloomfield, who joined MML as executive chef, he reopened the Driskill Grill as a 250-seat steakhouse modeled as much on Peter Luger and Keens as on Texas tradition. They also added a new bar, The Victorian, and the 1886 Café.
MML now runs 32 restaurants, including six Clark’s Oyster Bars; two hotels, Nine Orchard and Hotel Saint Vincent in New Orleans; and retail shops in Austin, where it recently added Westside Market. In Dallas, where MML opened Neighborhood Sushi in June, June’s All Day follows in December, then two Swedish Hill locations and a Clark’s Oyster Bar in early 2027. McGuire is also opening the 59-key Mountain Chalet in Aspen next winter. In Austin, he’s building a 57-key hotel, members’ club and retail space at Sixth & Blanco, a 200,000-square-foot development that MML is co-developing. A 6,000-square-foot ByGeorge flagship will anchor it.
McGuire, a 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honoree, talked to Observer about the Driskill’s hold on Austin, what Nine Orchard needed and why new markets are harder than they look.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Growing up in Austin, Sixth Street and the hotel had kind of a mysterious and intimidating aura to kids because of the old buildings, the nightlife, Stevie Ray Vaughan. From a restaurant and culinary standpoint, chef David Bull really brought it to life and into my awareness. I was reading about restaurants and the Texas culinary scene in high school, and then I started working in restaurants while at UT. The Driskill has been pretty dormant for a while now, so it feels like we are just kind of waking it up. But people love it, and it holds so much history, so it already feels established as well.
It was really just a lot of coincidence and luck. Right place, right time and the right people involved to make it happen. Because we bring a lot of culinary and restaurant firepower, if we can get involved with a property with an existing great room product, we are able to put the pieces together quickly and create a whole experience. Nine Orchard was so close to being excellent that we have just been making small changes and learning from the team, the regulars and the neighborhood.
We have everything to learn about doing hotel business in New York, but we have a lot of experience on our team from the city and London. We also developed and operated the Saint Vincent in New Orleans, which is a super challenging market.
Honestly, we haven’t changed much in terms of the concept at Corner Bar and Swan Room. We’ve really just been focused on the food execution, service culture, building the right team and taking care of our guests and neighborhood regulars. Back to basics. We’ve also really tried to lean into great events and parties, which is the most profitable part of hotel food and beverage and was being underutilized.
April has been one of my favorite chefs for a long time. We were introduced by our mutual friend and PR rep Becca Parrish, and we just started having coffee when I would be in the city. Then she came for a visit to Austin, and it just kind of built from there. We had existing projects that were a great fit for her and new projects like the Driskill Grill that she was excited about. I think the most surprising thing about April is that, even at her level in her career, she’s just in the kitchens every night. She is cooking every day, working with the chefs, developing new things.
I haven’t