A good egg.

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.

Executive pastry chef Deden Putra knows a thing or two about heroic,  look-but-don’t-nibble hotel pastries. He wowed guests in the lobby at Christmas with twin reindeer and a sleigh fashioned from lollipops.  I caught up with Deden and asked him about his latest creation.

What was your inspiration for the egg?

Spring with its cheery colors, good energy and fresh spirit.

What was the biggest challenge creating it?

Transporting the finished product from the kitchen to the lobby. (more…)

Work-down call.

The hotel room telephone has a buggy whip quality to it. When was the last time you used it to check a flight, find out movie times or talk to someone outside the hotel?

But with a nod to National Sleep Awareness Week, March 3 to 10, one hotel has come up with a reason for guests to pick up the phone for something other than ordering room service or answering a wake-up call.

The Benjamin calls it the work-down call. Starting this week, road warriors can request a work-down call designed to remind them that it’s time to power down and get ready to sleep.  It’s the flip-side of a wake-up call. (more…)

We finally got around to seeing the year’s top fashion documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.  In the spirit of her fabled Why Don’t’ You lists that spiced up an earlier iteration of Harper’s Bazaar, we offer Overnight New York’s Why Don’t You: the NYC Hotel holiday version. Here’s what to see and do at New York hotels while the holidays are still humming.

Take holiday tea at The Peninsula Forget petite fours. The Peninsula New York serves up a special holiday tea that’s as seasonal as Santa (or midnight champagne).  Brightening the pastry plate are bite-size fruit cake, crescent macarons, peppermint chocolate cupcakes and eggnog pecan tarts. A special children’s tea includes snowman marshmallows, peppermint cupcakes and Christmas cookies.

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We’re deep into the season of bright shiny objects. Some of the prettiest, cleverest, liveliest, happiest, wittiest – you get the idea — hang from the branches of New York City’s hotel trees. For a dose of instant cheer, check out our top trees of 2012.

Big Tree — This towering faux fir looks utterly at home in the lobby of the Four Seasons New York. (more…)

Hotel shops sell a lot more than Band-Aids, bathrobes and bottled water.  Many stock amusing, even unusual items you’d be happy to give – or receive.

And here’s the best part. Many offer online as well as in-hotel shopping. So browse what caught our eye. There’s still time! (more…)

Look but don’t lick.

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.

Look closely, and you’ll notice they’re lollipops – monumental ones (without the sticks). It took 48 hours, five hotel pastry chefs and 56 pounds of sugar to create them.  “Everyone’s doing gingerbread at the holidays, so this year we did sugar,” says Executive Pastry Chef Deden Putra, who oversaw the project.

Putra knows what he’s talking about. He has several large holiday constructions on his resume including last year’s ten-foot white chocolate Christmas Tree at what was then the Jumeirah Essex House. (His pastry team built a grand-scale Essex House out of gingerbread the previous year.) (more…)

Honest Abe, the gingerbread version.

Who needs bricks and mortar – or limestone and chisels – when you’ve got gingerbread? Or to rephrase, ever wondered what the Lincoln Memorial, Kyoto’s Toji Tower or the Sphinx might look like as edible holiday sculptures?

The answers, just in case we’ve struck a chord, are on view along with three other fanciful-but-recognizable gingerbread concoctions in the fourth annual exhibition of holiday gingerbread creations at Le Parker Meridien hotel.

As in previous years, the city’s top bakeries and restaurants cooked up clever brown-cookie creations, on view in the hotel’s 56^th Street atrium through January 3. And perhaps inspired by the year’s theme of Landmarks Around the World, this batch – each example clad in protective Plexiglas and planted atop a podium — is nothing short of monumental. (more…)

Companion — the inflatable version.

The last time we saw Companion, artist KAWS’s iconic cartoon character with big curly ears, Disney hands and a pair of Xs for eyes, he was a sculpture – a really big one. During the summer of 2011 his seated form, rendered in gray and white in steel, loomed 16-feet tall in front of The Standard hotel, hands over his eyes, the shyest character in town.

A year and change later he’s back in New York. This time he’s even bigger (and weighs a lot less). Look for him up in the air, hands covering eyes, at the 86^th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

As far as we know, Companion is the first hotel sculpture (temporary or permanent) to morph into a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. (more…)

New balloon in town: no peeking.

Companion, the giant balloon depicting grafitti artist KAWS’ iconic bashful character, isn’t all that’s new at this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 22.

After years of marching down Seventh Avenue, the parade has a new route for 2012 — and probably beyond. And as we reported last year, for guests hoping to watch from a hotel room the choices have changed — and shrunk.

Eight Seventh Avenue and Times Square hotels, including giants like the Park Central New York, Sheraton New York, Doubletree Guest Suites Times Square and Marriott Marquis, won’t be seeing Santa & Co. this year.  (more…)

A good egg.

Whenever a holiday rolls around, we head to Jumeriah Essex House in the hope of seeing a grand-scale edible work of art. Last Christmas a 10-foot-tall tree constructed from 500 lbs. of white chocolate commanded a corner of the lobby. The year before, a minutely detailed rendering of the hotel in gingerbread doubled as a mouth-watering photo op.

And with Easter nearly upon us? The lobby and adjoining South Gate restaurant are showcasing Faberge eggs rendered in chocolate. Two of the eggs are three feet tall and weigh 35 lbs. All are gorgeous. And yes, they’re edible, but really, it’s much more fun to look at them. (And the signs say Do Not Touch.)

We asked Deden Putra, executive pastry chef at the hotel, all about eggs, crafting art out of chocolate and whether those creations ever get eaten. (more…)