Yesterday my wife and I made one of our regular trips down to Toledo, OH to meet up with our inlaws for lunch. We live in the middle of Michigan and they live outside of Columbus, OH, so Toledo is a manageable two hour drive for all of us to meet up.
We have our fair share of regular places that we enjoy in Toledo, but yesterday we decided us to try something new. That led us to the Renaissance hotel in downtown Toledo. It is a Marriott hotel and I have to admit, it was quite nice. I can imagine they hold a fair number of conferences and events down there.
The downtown area was packed, so we opted to pay the $10 for valet parking. It gave us three hours in the hotel which was honestly more than enough.
Although the Jeep was officially born in Butler, PA, Toledo holds a strong connection to the Jeep legacy. In fact people flock to the city of glass (Toledo) every year for a Jeep festival. Knowing all of that, it makes sense why the lobby of the hotel had this Jeep on display.
I have little doubt 
The lobby of the hotel was pretty swanky. 
While the lobby was pretty cool, what really grabbed my attention was this wall down towards the conference rooms.
What looked like an LED display was actually a ton of tiny little toggle switches.
I took a close up picture of the lights in the "off" state.
Then I moved some of them to the "on" state
I know it is impossible to see in this photo, but before leaving I left my mark by turning on the lights to spell out HIVE. If you look really close you can just make out the "H" in the middle of the screen.
It actually helps to stand back a bit from the screen. Eventually, you might actually see it! It's there though, trust me. Or at least it was when I left!
This post is about The Heights and hanging around in the lobby wasn't going to cut it. We had a reservation at noon for our party of five, so we quickly went up the elevator to the 12th floor of the building. Upon arriving, it became apparent a reservation may have not been necessary. The space was huge and there were plenty of empty tables available.
I apologize for some of these being blurry. I was trying to snap the shots as quickly as possible without being super obvious. I don't know why, but I always get self conscious about taking photos like this. Perhaps it's because I don't like confrontation and I am afraid someone is going to ask what I am doing. I don't know.
As you can see, they have a wood fired pizza oven where they do small pizzas. They also have an outdoor balcony area with the igloos that became famous during the Covid pandemic. I think there were two or three of them out there for parties to enjoy. I have little doubt you need to reserve one. The place had a really fancy feel to it even though we saw many people dressed quite casually.
As you can see from the photos, we had a beautiful day and the views were absolutely stunning. We were questioning if this building was newer or the big one with the glass windows next to it. If this building was older, they really killed the view by putting that huge one up next to it. You can still see the river though, and I think that is what matters most.
I imagine this place is pretty busy on a warm summer night while a conference is happening in the hotel. There are probably any number of vendors and professionals schmoozing and doing business on this rooftop.
While the views were impressive, I can't say the same for the food. My sister in law and I both got the classic burger. It was good and had decent flavor, but it wasn't anything that knocked my socks off. Surely it wasn't worth the $16 price tag and the $10 valet fee to eat here. I have a bar a couple of miles from my house that has a much better burger than this for 1/4 of the price.
The fries (or chips for you folks across the pond) looked good, but they weren't as crispy on the outside as I would have liked. Soggy fries is kind of a mortal sin in my opinion. It really doesn't take much to do them right and it can mean the difference between me coming back to a place or never visiting again.
Since we were visiting at noon on Sunday, we were restricted to the brunch menu. I had looked at their full menu online and there quite a few other things I would have tried besides the burger if we had been able to order from that menu.
They had a couple of styles of eggs benedict on the menu that looked interesting, but my stomach can be funny sometimes, so rich sauces with a two hour drive ahead of me isn't always a good match.
They also had some specialty wood fired breakfast pizzas and that is what my brother in law got. He admitted after the fact that while it was good, he probably wouldn't have ordered it had be been able to see a picture of it before hand. Under the scrambled eggs was bacon ham and sausage on a pizza.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that my wife and her sister also got "The Heights" salad to share.
I'm not going to say we will never come here again, but given the number of other places in the Toledo area that we enjoy visiting, it is doubtful we ever will.
For the experience alone, it is worth checking out at least once. Even if you just come on a Friday night for drinks or something like that. If you are okay with a fairly limited menu, give brunch a shot I guess.
The funny thing is, all the way home,
Kudos to you if you remember this short-lived show from the 90's I think it was.
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
