The Knave cafe — closed again until further notice.

Earlier this year Le Parker Meridien was forced to close its stylish Knave café for a month.  A freak accident at a construction site next door broke a wall and soaked the floor with liquid concrete, startling early morning guests sipping espressos and nibbling croissants.

Yesterday the hotel was once again a casualty of a construction mishap at another building. (Hurricane Sandy had a hand in this one.) As widely reported, a giant crane at the new One57 luxury apartment high rise came loose during the storm and was left dangling precariously over 57^th Street – across the street from Le Parker Meridien. Amid concerns that the crane could come crashing down — or swing into hotel room windows, hotel guests were forced to evacuate. The hotel is empty until further notice. (Two nearby hotels, the smaller Salisbury and West 57th Street by Hilton Club, were also evacuated.) (more…)

Not tonight: the Ritz Carlton closed temporarily by Hurricane Sandy.

A hotel with room service, 24-hour movies, a big soaking tub and a comfy lobby lounge doesn’t strike us as a bad place to be in a storm.

“I’ll watch the hurricane through my hotel room hot tub window,” writes a guest at The Out/NYC on the Hotelchatter website.

Still, Scary Sandy, or #sandynyc if you’re following Twitter, is doing what hurricanes do – making a mess of things for thousands of people, including those at New York City hotels.

Worst hit were those at hotels in the low-lying area’s of New York’s southern tip, or Zone A, where flooding is most likely to occur. Just 14 months ago, Mean Irene forced a coterie of hotels at the tip of Manhattan to evacuate guests and close until the storm blew over. (more…)

Party in the ballroom.

Bill Cunningham, sporting his signature blue jacket, strode in just ahead of us, a Nikon slung around his neck. Proof positive that there was to be no shortage of social glitter at the launch party for Sirio Maccioni’s new Sirio Ristorante at The Pierre last night.

In the hotel foyer a phalanx of Hollywood-cute staffers in white shirts and black ties collected coats and bags. Opposite them a long line of twenty-somethings in black cocktail dresses wielded guest lists as thick as September Vogue and checked off names.

Men in suits and women in stilettos mobbed the Pierre’s mural-lined rotunda, where photographers snapped Tony Bennett, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Martha Stewart and other knowns and lesser-knowns against a white backdrop. Guests poured into the ballroom, a marble staircase up, where no fewer than three open bars awaited. They filled the evening’s raison d’etre, the swanky-sleek Italian restaurant commanding the long ribbon of space most recently occupied by Le Caprice, an outpost of the plush London brasserie that never quite caught on here. (more…)

Caught at The Plaza.

As advertised: they really do have palms at The Plaza’s Palm Court. We spotted this one today, peeking out between closed French doors. It reminded us of a certain scene in Sixteen Candles. But it could just as easily be a palm’s version of a high-five.

Michelin’s newest star: the NoMad restaurant.

October isn’t normally thought of as the start of a new year – unless you’re publishing a restaurant guide. This month biggies Michelin and Zagat unveiled their 2013 guides to New York City restaurants. As always, we snapped up copies (yes, we still like paper guides).

How did New York’s hotel restaurants fare? Thumbs up. The days when no one ate at a hotel restaurant except hotel guests too cowed by the city  are long gone.

Still, getting a nod from a tony guide book is no guarantee of longevity. Two hotel restaurants that scored 2013 Michelin stars – no mean feat – are closing. This summer Gilt, a two-M star restaurant at the New York Palace, is to be replaced by a new, somewhat formal restaurant by French chef Michel Richard, who operates restaurants in Washington, DC, Las Vegas and Carmel, California, Eater reports. Richard is, in fact, planning three properties at the Palace, including a bistro in a room currently used as an event space and a pastry shop in the lobby. (more…)

Pretty in Pink pastries

From the NFL, whose big bruisers sport pink cleats to the comic strip artists who added pink ribbons to their strips, the color of Breast Cancer Awareness Month pops up a lot in October.

So why not at a hotel?

For the month of October staff members at The Peninsula hotel flaunt pale pink ties. Big bouquets of hot pink flowers bloom in the lobby. And guests who indulge in high tea in the hotel’s Gotham Lounge get a choice when they order the pastry portion of the spread – an assortment of seasonal tartlets and sweets or the Pink Pastry Plate. (more…)

No surprise Arbitrage was a hit with New York hotel viewers last month. The sleek financial thriller set in Bernie Madoff’s pre-incarceration Manhattan features lavish footage of two New York City hotels, The Pierre and The Plaza and a big kiss to The Sherry-Netherland.

Elsewhere in hotel rooms around the nation and Canada Arbitrage came in fourth (Marvel’s The Avengers is uber-resilient). Here’s the complete list, as always provided by LodgeNet, suppliers of in-room entertainment to 1.6 million hotel rooms in the U.S. and Canada. (more…)

The Traveler.

We’ll venture a wild guess that architect Arthur Loomis Harmon never dreamed the roof of Allerton House, a residential hotel for men he designed in 1916, would one day serve up Mexican beer, California Cabernet and cocktails like Fly By Night (gin, lemon juice, cinnamon-vanilla bean, orange blossom and sea salt on the rocks).

He probably didn’t foresee $70 cocktails to share either, like The Melon – vodka, gin, tequila or rum mixed with watermelon puree, lime juice, agave and mint and served in a baby watermelon.

But the roofless sundeck that looks like a Romanesque ruin with brick walls and arched openings embellished with classic columns is the perfect setting for a 21^st century roof bar. It even has postcard views of the Empire State Building, which Harmon — and his firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon — designed 15 years later. (more…)

Cooked to order.

Long before Shake Shack – and the $32 Daniel Boulud truffle burger – there was Burger Joint, the hole-in-the-wall hamburger heaven tucked behind a velvet curtain in a corner of Le Parker Meridien.  This week it celebrates its tenth birthday.

In a city where lunch at a hotel restaurant rarely costs less than $25 – and dinner costs a lot more — Burger Joint stands apart. (more…)

The grand staircase.

It’s publicity. And it’s free. But do hotels really want to be splashed on newspaper front pages? The famous guest grabbing the attention is rarely raving about the service. Consider Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the Sofitel New York. And today Lindsay Lohan and the W Union Square.

La Lohans’s early Sunday morning run-in with Christian LaBella, a 25-year-old congressional aide, landed her – and the W – on today’s front page of the New York Daily News (LO BLOW) and the New York Post (NEW LO).

The 26-year-old actress met LaBella, who works for Illinois Republican congressman John Shimkus, while club hopping and later invited him and a group of friends to her suite at the W. (more…)