IN NYC, SHAPING A NEW TRUE NORTH OF DINING OUT

PERHAPS WHAT WE NEED IS TO NORMALIZE A BREAKFAST OF TAMAGOYAKI, A SOUP-DUMPLING LUNCH, CHICKEN STEW AND FUFU AFTER A LONG DAY, AND A MIDNIGHT SAMOSA SNACK

- SOLEIL NATHWANI

When I moved to New York in 1998, for some it was still a minor rite of passage to make it past the velvet rope at the Royalton Hotel, down the signature royal blue carpet, and sink into a white chrome-legged chair in the already sunken Philippe Starck-designed lobby bar, all so a blasé server might deign to take an order. The bar and adjacent New American restaurant, once crowned Club Condé because of the frequency of Condé Nast masthead power lunches held there, were symbolic of a major shift in hotel trends, something of a signifier of the city’s pulse. Ian Schrager, the man synonymous with the cool-ification of hotels, launched the refurbished Royalton in 1988 (it was built as an apartment hotel ninety years prior), on the heels of the success he and his partner Steve Rubell had experienced with the launch of Morgan’s Hotel in 1984. Morgan’s, which birthed the moniker ‘boutique hotel’, was also home to Jeffrey Chodorow’s Asia de Cuba, a restaurant as famous for having doormen with headsets as it was for blending Chinese and Cuban cuisine, a novelty in the beige landscape of hotel dining. All of it had heralded a sea change in hotels and their restaurants.