Robert Redford sprints past the Beacon Hotel, a stodgy budget property with a black awning, as he flees an assassin on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The Beacon looks a lot better today – as does the West Side. Read more
The news last week that the New York Hilton-Midtown plans to stop offering room service later this summer was a shocker. Envisioning a big player like the 1,980-room Hilton without food-bearing, cart-pushing servers is, at first blush, like imagining a hotel without fresh towels or porters or doors that lock.
Room service has been a basic amenity since it was popularized by the Waldorf Hotel, the 1893 forebear of the Waldorf=Astoria.
I know I’m a fan. I can recall a litany of memorable room service deliveries from a romantic breakfast for two at the Four Seasons New York, complete with a rolling white-clothed table bearing lemon ricotta pancakes nestled in a warming cupboard, to the midnight coffee – in a silver pot next to an orchid in a bud vase – my jetlagged husband and I poured happily at Honolulu’s Royal Hawaiian. Read more
When Antonio Rotolo, Executive Chef at ONE UN New York, was asked to come up with a culinary creation to salute the United Nation’s International Year of Quinoa, he heeded the advice of Jerry Seinfeld in The Dinner Party episode – he looked to the cookie. Read more
The calendar says it’s spring, even when it’s contradicted by chilly breezes and overcast skies. No matter.
Seasonal roof bars observe time, not temperature when choosing to open, and this week the Loopy Doopy Bar atop the Conrad New York, flung open its terrace above the Hudson for its second season. Read more
It seems some retro drinks, like Manhattans, Gimlets and Sidecars, have never gone away. Then there’s the Harvey Wallbanger.
As the story goes, this time-warp riff on the Screwdriver made with vodka, orange juice and the Italian liqueur Galliano was invented in 1952 by mixologist Donato “Duke” Antone and popularized during the bellbottom era by a savvy Galliano salesman. (Consider: Megan Draper serves Galliano to her New Year’s Eve guests in the Season Six opening episode of Mad Men.) Read more
Hotel minibars make me think of good times, not good for you. (M&Ms for $7, too, but that’s another story.)
But the minibars at the Standard hotels — including the Standard High Line and Standard East Village in New York – are tweaking what’s good, or at least what you’d imagine to be good in an in-room stash. Read more
Who knows? But consider the jaw-drop vital statistics of the ultimate Easter egg on view at the Peninsula Hotel: three pastry chefs, 48 hours and 45 pounds of chocolate.
The result stands three feet tall and boasts enough hand-made candy flowers and butterflies to fill a small army of Easter baskets. Read more
It’s billed as the guide that tells you where people actually go when they’re in New York. Well, up to a point. Foursquare’s new Best of New York Guide is based on where people linked to Foursquare go – and that ain’t everyone (or everywhere). Read more
Week is a misnomer, but who’s complaining? New York’s Winter Restaurant Week, an annual event for, well, decades, stretches luxuriantly from January 14 to February 8, proving a week can be longer than seven days – and that 2013 is already a lucky year, at least for diners out for a deal. Read more
Talk about eye candy. Perched atop a table near the concierge desk at the Peninsula hotel stand a big red sleigh and two bright-eyed reindeer, one with a red nose. Read more