Hotels like to advertise that they offer all the comforts of home, only better. So why is it so hard to find healthy items like cage-free eggs, low-fat milk and grass-fed beef in the restaurants of most large full-service hotels?

Hyatt Hotels aims to change that and lots more. This week the company unveiled Food. Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Served, a soup to nuts food philosophy that in essence overhauls the entire food and beverage service for all Hyatt full service brands. (more…)

60 Centre Street.

Many are called – and last week we were among them, taking a seat in the gigantic two-room juror’s bullpen at 60 Centre Street.

Jury duty isn’t as onerous as it once was. The officers explaining the rules deliver good patter. The free WiFi is strong. Even the $1.50 coffee at the courthouse cart has improved. Better still, once you’ve served, you won’t be called back for six years.

But New York’s courthouses are still big, brute, soul-deadening places (the wait to get through security was 25 minutes on a Monday morning). Come lunchtime, we wanted out.

Two hotels with inviting restaurants are within walking distance, provided you score an elongated lunch break (think twice you’re if assigned the standard 1-to-2-p.m. window). (more…)

On the wall.

What happens when a hip, budget-minded hotel decides to do a take on the classic hotel Sunday brunch?

You get Eat Yo Brunch at Yotel.

From our perch overlooking the hotel’s sprawling eating area on a recent Sunday, we sized up the food on our table and pictured the management tossing around ideas.

What’s the 21^st-century version of buffet tables lined with Eggs Benedict, carved meats and pancake soufflé in silver tureens? (more…)

Twice a year Restaurant Week muscles onto our dining radar with its vaunted three course fixed price lunches and dinners. Now in its 20^th year, the twice-yearly promotion timed to boost business during winter and summer slow spells attracts more than 300 restaurants including more than 30 in hotels.  This year’s first promotion, with $24.07 lunches and $35 dinners on weekdays, ends this Friday, February 10. (more…)

Talk about a misnomer. Lady Mendl, aka Elsie de Wolfe, the pioneering interior designer and Age of Innocence-era grand dame, never lived in the twin 1834 townhouses containing the tea salon bearing her name. And we can’t imagine this crusading modernist who loathed Victorian frou frou would have selected, or condoned, the curvaceous loveseats, tufted brocades, fringed lampshades and acres of carved wood that fill the salon’s two parlors.

No matter. We can’t think of a better place to retreat when you want to take a quick break from the 21^st century. (more…)

Haven’t ordered a turkey yet? Loathe the thought of doing dishes on a holiday? There’s still time to book Thanksgiving dinner – and a room for the night — at a hotel restaurant if you a) act fast and b) aren’t too picky about dining early or late (most prime-time spots are taken).

Like rooms, restaurants at New York hotels come in all styles so you can choreograph Thanksgiving as you wish – splashy or quiet, midtown or downtown, turkey or vegetarian. You can even watch your weight (sort of). Here are five tempting options. (more…)

Ellabess executive chef Troy Unruh.

Forget truffle oil. It isn’t even made from truffles, just like corn syrup isn’t sugar. But with truffle season in full swing until late December, you can revel in the real deal – “the diamond of the kitchen,” as the 18^th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin called the fabled, if less poetic, fruiting body of the underground mushroom known for its earthy flavor and heady fragrance.

Next Tuesday, November 15, ellabess, the contemporary American restaurant with the e.e. cummings-style name at The Nolitan hotel, celebrates big with a five-course black and white truffle menu ($150, $70 optional wine pairing) devised by executive chef Troy Unruh. We talked to the St. Paul, Minnesota native about the truffle’s distinctive fragrance, the challenge of using real truffles in desserts and his favorite off-duty food. (more…)

Times Square as seen from R Lounge.

This is what Times Square looks like from a window table at R Lounge, the Renaissance New York’s second-floor restaurant and bar with the flashy address – Two Times Square. Talk about the thick of things.

It’s one of those wow-I’m-in-New York! views, up there with the dining room at Helmsley Park Lane (Central Park), the roof bars at the Kimberly (Chrysler Building), the Bentley (East River), the James (lower Manhattan) and the Gansevoort Meatpacking District (Hudson River) and the revolving roof restaurant at the Marriott Marquis (the entire city).

And miraculously, when we stopped by mid-afternoon this week we had the room all to outselves, save for a woman with a broken leg seated by a window.  “Sit anywhere you like,” said the greeter. (more…)

The John Dory kedgeree.

Remember the scene in Ratatouille where a forkful of vegetable stew sends the grumpy restaurant critic into Proustrian raptures and transports him back to his carefree childhood?

Okay, the kedgeree at the Ace Hotel’s The John Dory Oyster Bar wasn’t quite like that.  No childhood memories bubbled up (we weren’t big kedgeree eaters in Northern California). But we ate a lot of the stuff during the four years we lived in London. And we loved it. (more…)

Jean Georges at Trump International

The first week in October is pretty innocuous unless you’re a foodie — or to be precise, a guide-loving foodie. This week Michelin and Zagat published their respective, red-covered 2012 New York City restaurant guides within a day of each other. That’s like back-to-back Golden Globes and Academy Awards. (more…)