Chef Brian Wieler and his arugula planter box.

The answer is on your plate or in your glass if you order an arugula salad or a muddled-mint mojito at LCL, the hotel restaurant and bar.

Last summer the Westin Grand Central turned its rooftop into a modest organic Eden suspended 41 stories in the air. And this year the fleet of 11 dirt-filled planters and four fat barrels are back in business, bearing fruit – and vegetables and herbs – destined for hotel guests once again. (more…)

Greening the roof.

In observation of Earth Day (and Month), we pause for a quick pulse check on how New York City hotels are doing on the green front.

This month the city’s largest hotel, the 1,981-room New York Hilton, took a big stride towards energy efficiency.  As befits a big hotel, the gesture is grand.  On view is the hotel’s new green roof occupying 16,000 square feet atop a fifth floor setback. The garden, consisting of a vast array of sedum harvested at an upstate farm, isn’t open to guests. But it offers a glimpse of nature for hotel guests on the 53^rd Street side of the building who happen to gaze down from their windows.

More important, the plants are on board to do what roots and foliage do naturally – absorb airborne pollutants, deflect solar radiation and reduce the thermal load.  The predicted result: less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and less energy required to keep the building cool. (more…)

Chef Devesa and the Barclay bees.

In a city known for lavish rooftop amenities, from lounges to pools, the roof of the Intercontinental New York Barclay is neither the tallest nor the chicest. But it’s got buzz.

In June, a fleet of wooden planters arrived, and before long, a small-scale urban garden brimming with herbs, fruit and flowers bloomed atop the roof’s southeast corner (the plants enjoy a spectacular view of the Chrysler building).  And in mid August, the bees swarmed in, housed in four wooden hives, each the size of an old tube TV set and populated by 70,000 to 80,000 tiny bugs.

“We’re looking forward to serving our own honey at our breakfast buffet,” says Serge Devesa, executive chef at the hotel, standing serenely beside a hive. In his white chef’s coat, the French-born chef could be a beekeeper, and the bees steered clear of him. They left me alone, too, though that was probably because, unlike Devesa, I avoided them. (more…)

An Element kitchenette.

Back to the land isn’t a phrase that leaps to mind when I think of New York, especially anything having to do with Times Square.  So I was intrigued to learn that Element New York Times Square West, a skinny skyscraper looming over the Port Authority Bus Terminal with nary a barn nor pasture in sight, is about to begin offering guests the opportunity to have food delivered from Holton Farms, an eighth-generation family farm in Vermont. (more…)

Full disclosure: we love hotel soaps and have been known to wrap up a gently used bar of Malin + Goetz or Miller Harris and take it home. But we don’t always and we’ve wondered – what happens to the hundreds of thousands of lightly used soaps and shampoos hotels collect each week? (more…)

As a group, New York City hotels aren’t very green. It’s not for want of trying. Many reside in old buildings

The Element lobby.

constructed long before sustainability was on the radar.  Yet almost weekly you hear of advances on the green front, from baby steps to strides.

In December the InterContinental New York Barclay, a 685-room hotel billeted in a Roaring 20s building, switched completely to wind-powered energy.  Earlier this year the 899-room New York Palace, a stylish marriage of the historic Villard Houses (more…)

The Barclay's evergreen tree.

Yes, the boughs of the holiday tree at the Intercontinental New York Barclay Hotel are undeniably green. But so, it turns out, are the little white lights.

Last week the 84-year-old neo-Federal-style hotel shrugged off the residue of its Roaring 20s technology and became one of New York’s first hotels to use wind energy for 100 percent of its electricity. Wind energy is beloved by environmentalists because it’s super clean, powered by generators that produce zero emissions. (more…)

A new, ultra-clean showroom at the Hyatt.

Once upon a time, no hotel room was complete without an ashtray. Non-smoking rooms eventually appeared and, voila, room categories were born.

Now the choices for guests booking at a small but growing number of hotels include a third category   – the hypo-allergenic room, cleansed within an inch of its life of nearly all surface and air-born impurities. For the estimated one in five people afflicted with allergies or asthma, this is news worth noting. (more…)