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Buffet of Luxury at Manhattan Hotels
When it comes to luxe
accommodations, Manhattan has few rivals. Uptown, downtown and, especially, in
midtown, the city is awash in hotels offering suites in the
four-figure-a-night range, and even higher.
With all these choices, and with the holiday season nearly
upon us, the time seemed right to put a simple and extremely appealing plan
into operation: book a suite for my wife, Nancy, and myself at three of New
York's top hotels and compare the experiences. Our allowance was $1,500 a
night, more or less.
I picked the Four Seasons and the St. Regis, two flagships
in the heart of the city, and a downtown boutique, the Mercer. The decision
was based on curiosity and whimsy as much as anything else, but there was a
certain symmetry to it -- cool modern elegance, romantic Old World opulence,
hip stylishness. And each has a highly-touted restaurant.
The Mercer
Since it opened on the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets in 1997, the Mercer
has come to symbolize SoHo, the much-changed neighborhood it inhabits.
Discriminating film celebrities are frequent guests, as are younger
well-heeled Europeans. True, one of the last holdouts of the old SoHo,
Fanelli's Cafe, sits resolutely across the street, but the stores, galleries
and restaurants that fill the surrounding cast-iron spaces are as chic as
anything on Madison Avenue.
The operative mode within the six-story, 75-room hotel is
tasteful understatement. It's evident in the plain but comfortable modern
furnishings, the indirect lighting and muted color schemes, and in the soft,
spare lines that dominate the rooms and hallways.
Our $1,100 top-floor loft suite had a number of pleasing
textural touches in its 670 square feet, among them an exposed-brick wall, a
floor-to-ceiling arched window looking out on Prince Street, and a large
leather screen on runners that served as a moveable wall between the living
room and bedroom. There was also a fireplace, two plasma-screen televisions, a
sound system with wall-mounted speakers, and a bathtub with its very own
opaque-glass skylight.
The Mercer offers a veritable catalogue of thoughtful
amenities, including a lending library of CD's and movies, minibar snacks from
Dean & DeLuca, and the arrival in the morning of two newspapers (one, The
International Herald Tribune, comes in what looks like a baguette sleeve).
Even the inevitable terry-cloth robes have something extra -- a smooth cotton
outer shell that feels like silk. If God is in the details, someone at the
Mercer is a true believer.
One of the hotel's major attractions is its restaurant, the
Mercer Kitchen, where a menu prepared by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a reigning
monarch of French-New American cuisine, is served in an undeniably cool
basement space defined by a bright open kitchen at one end, a dark bar near
the other and a series of low brick arches that create appealing spaces in
between.
On the recent busy Thursday night we were there, however,
the din from a roisterous crowd and pulsating music played at high volume gave
this ambience a pounding. To make matters worse, we were put at a table
directly under the stairway and right next to the coat-check room.
The food was excellent -- celery root and chestnut soup,
pumpkin ravioli and grilled swordfish and lobster tail -- but we ate it as
quickly as we could, skipped dessert and fled.
If our four-figure suite price didn't get us a prime spot in
the Mercer Kitchen, it did provide entree to the hotel's private club, the
subMercer, which we couldn't resist checking out. Part of the fun is getting
there, through an exit door off the restaurant, down a flight of steps and
along a narrow walkway leading to a smaller, casbah-version of the restaurant
space, with red lights instead of yellow ones, and even more intimate nooks.
Adam Sandler was sitting at the bar, but it was only 10:30
and nothing much was stirring yet. The music was even louder than upstairs, so
we didn't stay, which turned out to be a serious lapse of judgement. Shortly
after 11, I learned much later, a party across the street with Victoria's
Secret models spilled over into the subMercer.
In the morning, room-service breakfast took exactly 10
minutes to arrive -- I timed it on the tiny, minimal-looking black clock on
the table beside the incredibly comfortable king-size bed. The fruit on the
fruit plate tasted right off the vine and the croissants were perfect. The
skylit bathtub beckoned. Maybe we should never have left the suite.
The Four Seasons
At the Four Seasons on East 57th Street, we were promised a suite with a view
of Central Park. And for $995 -- discounted from $1,325 on something called
the Romance and Style Package -- that's what we got: a two-room, L-shaped
720-square-foot suite looking north and west from the 41st floor. The
afternoon we arrived was clear and the park at the height of its fall color,
so the effect was breathtaking.
The hotel, designed by I.M. Pei and Frank Williams, is cool
and sleek, with large, high-ceilinged public spaces that make you think of a
modern version of an Egyptian temple. Our suite was beige and honey-colored,
with light-wood paneling, ultramodern furnishings and lots of electronics,
including three televisions (one in the spacious marble bathroom), a Bose
clock-CD player (with a small selection of CD's, one of which was called
''Deep Sleep''), and buttons to push -- for the floor-to-ceiling curtains, for
instance, and for turning on a privacy light that saves you from the bother of
putting out a Do Not Disturb sign.
A folder in the room spelled out a list of intriguing
possibilities, among them a midnight-to-6 a.m. menu for night owls; a special
Japanese breakfast with onsen egg, pickled vegetables and toasted seaweed; and
a spa and fitness center, offering treatments with names like the Shopper's
Revival, the Jet-Lag Remedy and the Perfect Wedding Gift. The 30-minute New
York Neck and Shoulder Massage sounded good to me, but it turned out that,
except for the manicurist, the spa staff was booked until early the next
afternoon, after our checkout time. So while Nancy went to have her nails
done, I consoled myself by calling the valet service for a shoeshine. The
shoes were picked up within 10 minutes and returned within 30.
Later, we abandoned our aerie for a drink downstairs. The
Fifty Seven Fifty Seven Bar, just across from the restaurant of the same name,
was packed, so we opted for the main lounge, a pleasant, slightly elevated
space that looks onto the lobby. There, we spent most of the next hour sitting
in oversized chairs, sipping our drinks and casually observing the passing
parade, which included more than a few guests in town for the New York City
Marathon two days later.
The Fifty Seven Fifty Seven restaurant, also designed by Mr.
Pei, is usually described as a ''soaring'' space notable for the power crowd
it attracts at breakfast and lunch. The diners that evening could have been
power brokers, but if so they were disguised as families or youngish couples
on a big night out. This was red meat night, lamb for Nancy, sirloin steak for
me, plus a nice bottle of Pommard. The food was fine and the service friendly
and attentive.
The view was still there when we got back to our suite, and
it was all sparkly now, with the Carlyle Hotel and the George Washington
Bridge glowing in the north and the park a vast dark space interrupted by the
lights strung along its winding roadways. We stared out at this for a while,
then checked to see what movies were available on the hotel's pay-per-view
channel. We settled on ''Unfaithful,'' with Diane Lane and Richard Gere,
punched the privacy light, climbed into our king-size bed and did something
truly extraordinary for us -- stayed awake through the whole movie.
A new morning dawned, and with it the room-service breakfast
ritual. We were told the food would take at least 40 minutes, which was
slightly annoying but gave Nancy plenty of time to try out the tub. It was
big, though not quite as big as the Mercer's, and the bellman had told us with
pride that it would fill up in only one minute (he was right); it also had a
headrest.
Breakfast arrived and was laid out in the living room. There
we were, perched high above Gotham, bathed in light and swathed in terry
cloth, she consuming French toast, I corned beef hash. What words to capture
this moment?
''You know what?'' Nancy said, peering off into the
distance. ''I can see the Tappan Zee Bridge.''
The St. Regis
The distance between the Four Seasons and the St. Regis, which is on 55th
Street and Fifth Avenue, is only a couple of blocks, but in terms of ambience
it's a couple of centuries. (You'd need to check planetary charts to figure
how far apart the Mercer and St. Regis are.)
The lobby of this Beaux-Arts hotel, built by John Jacob
Astor in 1904, is a compact marble space that bustles with top-hatted doormen
escorting guests to and from their cabs, porters loading luggage on handcarts,
the concierge staff working the phones. It struck me that for people of a
certain age, and I am one, it is an exquisite representation of grand hotels
imagined as a child.
Best of all was being told by the receptionist that our
$1,160-a-night suite was being upgraded (we were staying anonymously) not just
one level, but four. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but I didn't
argue, especially when the same receptionist took us up to the ninth floor and
opened the big French doors to our home for the night, 1,500 square feet of
gilt-edged extravagance that would make Louis XVI beam, if only he were around
to see it.
There was a large bedroom and a much larger living room,
both dotted with what look to be genuine antiques and large, wonderfully
florid pieces of furniture, separated by a hallway long enough that you'd have
to shout to be heard from one room to another. Not that you would, of course.
It shouldn't have surprised us then that immediately after
our bags were dropped off, a butler -- our butler -- arrived at the door to
show us the ropes: where the light switches for the wall sconces were; where
the light switches for the chandeliers were; how to operate the ingenious
phone machine with a lighted touch-screen that automatically dials any of the
hotel's services.
His name was Anthony, and he said we were to call him if we
needed anything. As it turned out, we didn't call him, but he kept showing up
anyway, first to bring fresh fruit, then champagne and strawberries, then a
vase of long-stemmed roses, then to wheel away the cart after we finished
afternoon tea. Having a butler, we were discovering, is not a bad thing.
That evening, we dined on foie gras and lobster bisque,
monkfish with lentils, banana tart and a chocolate concoction that resembled a
Calder mobile at Lespinasse, the elegant and pricey restaurant where Christian
Delouvrier is the genius-in-residence. Afterward, we somehow negotiated the
few feet to the hotel's atmospheric King Cole Bar, where several lively groups
of revelers created a pleasant buzz, and had a nightcap.
That night I slept the sleep of the overindulged, and woke
very late the next morning. We padded around in our terry-cloth robes and
matching terry-cloth slippers, alternately reading the Sunday paper and
commenting on our good fortune. I made two calls. The first, naturally, was to
room service for breakfast. The second was to the receptionist to see if we
could extend our checkout time. The answer was yes.
The food a Belgian waffle and fresh fruit, coffee with warm
milk and fresh orange juice, took a full hour to arrive, placing the St. Regis
dead last in the breakfast derby. So maybe it was Anthony's day off. Who
cared? We were in no hurry to go anywhere.
How swell it is
The Mercer, 147 Mercer Street at Prince Street, New York,
N.Y. 10012; (212) 966-6060, fax (212) 965-3838; www.mercerhotel.com, offers 75
rooms. Our loft suite cost $1,100, plus 13.25 percent state and city tax and a
$2 occupancy charge ($147.75). Two glasses of wine in the lobby were $25.65;
dinner at the Mercer Kitchen $113.76, and room service breakfast $64.48. The
total: $1,451.64.
The Four Seasons Hotel, 57 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y.
10022; (212) 758-5700, fax (212) 758-5711; www.fourseasons.com/newyorkfs, has
364 rooms. Our $1,350-a-night suite was discounted to $995 on the Romance and
Style Package, which includes a bottle of champagne (an amenity that came in
all three hotels) and strawberries. The taxes were $135.84, a manicure in the
spa $39.20, two drinks in the lounge $30.48, dinner at Fifty Seven Fifty Seven
$258, including an $80 Pommard; the in-room movie $12.98, breakfast in the
suite $79.77, and one local call $1.25. The total: $1,552.52.
The St. Regis New York, 2 East 55th Street, New York, N.Y.
10022; (212) 753-4500, fax (212) 787-3447; www.stregis.com, has 315 rooms. The
suite we had was $1,160, plus $157.70 in taxes. Room-service tea, including
finger sandwiches, scones and a fruit plate, cost $102.17; two half-hour
massages $150; dinner at Lespinasse $322.12, including a white Alsatian for
about $65; two drinks in the King Cole Bar $41.72; room-service breakfast
$24.49, and three local calls $5.50. The total: $1,963.70
- Alex Ward New
York Times 1 Dec 2002
