It was a dull and dreary day a few weeks back, and even Ms. Sheena Easton’s greatest hits blaring on the sound system—paired with an extra-dry martini, natch, and a side of nuts—did naught to lift my spirits. And let’s just say that a rousing rendition of Modern Girl paired with Sugar Walls can take me from bleak to brilliant in about three short chords, but such was not the case on this manqué morning.
So I turned off the winsome Scottish chanteuse as she warbled on about working girls and sugared splendors and set off for a little adventure with Jasper, the wonder dog, to the moneyed streets of Lower Manhattan. For I had been invited to check in at the brand-new Andaz Wall Street hotel, the latest from the frisky folks at Hyatt, and I was more than ready for a little weekend away paired with room service and perhaps some canapés at the bar and a little pampering.
Friends call me all the time asking me for the name of my current favorite Manhattan hotel, and I am always a tad stymied by this query. As all of my bloggerati followers know, I am not easily impressed by the New York hostelry scene.
“Overpriced!” I have been heard to bellow.
“A stunning lack of service!”
“Looks like a tarted-up tenement in Tenafly,” I once shrieked, incensed.
“Totally inept and insular!”
Ah, but such was not the case with the Andaz Wall Street. Was the hotel a diamond as big as the Ritz, and did I have visions of Bernice a-bobbing her hair? Well, no. But the hotel is chic in a modern, contempo sort of way and the service is sensational. Sensational. SENSATIONAL!
And service, folks, is something that calls to mind the dearly departed Dodo Bird or the passé Passenger Pigeon. Gone, but not forgotten. A dying art, perhaps, that can only be found in a museum where it is stuffed behind a glass case and sadly out of reach.
But the folks at the Andaz seem to really care about their clients. They cosseted me, they pampered me, they welcomed me and sensed my every need. They knew the neighborhood back and forth and didn’t give me canned answers like those luxury chain hotels that we won’t mention here because this is a family-friendly blog, n’est-ce pas?
My room was stylish and a bit groovy and offered everything I needed. And my dinner at the hotel’s Wall & Water restaurant with its farm-to-table menu was STELLAR and caring and lovely. And hotel restaurants are usually sorely lackluster.
After supping upon Wall & Water’s spiced lamb sausage with baked Jerusalem artichokes finished off with the wild salmon paired with roasted organic beets, fennel and horseradish, I returned to my room with a refreshed martini in hand.
I cranked up the afore-mentioned Ms. Easton afresh and fell asleep with little Jasper, both buoyed by Sheena’s somniferous siren song.