Manhattan Mary - 1
To New York. New York, the center of the universe, the hum and the noise, and the cheeriness, and the cars looping their way around, jerking up and down, thanks to bumps in the road, and ceaseless trying to get somewhere very fast.
In fact, when Girlahead arrived at Mandarin Oriental, she couldn't even go up to her room, #5016. She managed to get the house car to nip her along to Bergdorf Goodman to pick up an absolute trophy, a distinctive F. Goyard backpack. It's obviously an essential that needs breaking in. Either it, or the new owner, need a break-in session.
Then it was out on the town. First drinks in the hotel’s secret bar, reached at the end of the main bar counter in the 35th floor, looking down over the kingdom that is Central Park. It's a stupendous speakeasy, still much as it was when Alinea, the Chicago cocktail crew who opened this anonymous space as The Office until COVID closed it down. Exactly a year ago the hotel re-opened it, inhouse, as The Bar.
A floppy-leather cover holds the menu, celebrates a Silk Road of drinks that, not coincidentally, coincide with various Mandarin Oriental hotels along a route against the sun, and thus against the route of natural progression. Take Dolcissima – see below – a cocktail celebration of Mandarin Oriental Lake Como. (It WAS delicious, a perfectly-frothed pink throat-quencher of Hendrick’s, Campari, Lemon Basil, and Prosecco…)
Thanks to the men, and women, of MONY, this is the palace of perfection. What seemed like hours ago, thre’d been that quick retail trip (last visit it was a similar cameo, but to visit the then-forthcoming Mandarin Oriental Residences). Tonight, the programme included a perfect off-duty spell, dinner across the street at Jean-Georges’ Nougatine, where Mandarin Oriental's Man in the Americas, Marcel Thoma, was in his element, see above.
This is the hotel for high achievers – golly, few, other than E. Musk, achieve more than the Ambani family, whose pad back in Bombay, the HBA-designed Antilia, soars up through 27 storeys. Here, their New York hideaway, Mandarin Oriental New York, in the SO&M tower at Columbus Circle, reaches 35 floors. The owner’s spa-loving wife has her own little gig in Bombay away from home (it’s called the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre). Here in Manhattan there’s art and theatre and wellness immediately to hand. The 36th-floor gym, which sells that private-luxury Zimmerli clothing, may not be the city’s biggest but the Technogym and weights are well chosen, the fruit and health bars are way above par and few alternatives look straight down over the southwest corner of Central Park.
Oh that view. #5016 may be stressing 2003 style but you can overlook a propensity for dark reds when you’ve got That View (and the must-curl-up-on curved sofa is thankfully beige). The bed is terrifically comfortable, and cleverly a long padded bench in front of the bedroom window can be used for unpacking. The bathroom has two sinks, just the right proportions to be able to reach the mirrors over. And what a blessing to have a clock inset into the mirrors. Oh yes, Roederer at breakfast’s rather nice, with pain artisanal and whatever – and sunrise over Central Park just adds to the perfection.
