The Hotel Bar

One of life's best indulgences

Let's talk about the hotel bar. When you find a great one, it can be transcendent. You've settled into the corner table, or the prime seat at the end of the bar, and the staff keeps refilling your bar snacks. One drink can turn into three in the blink of an eye. When it's good, I humbly think a hotel bar offers something much different than just a typical bar.

Living in New York, we're fortunate to have many options in this department, but you must know where to look. I've found myself in some great rooms over the past few weeks, so they've been on my mind. By definition—and probably by law—any hotel bar is more expensive than the non-hotel variety, so you might as well be sitting in a cozy room with a great atmosphere to account for this.

Hotel bars, by their very nature, are transient. They're a room where hotel guests mingle with locals, creating a unique cocktail of personalities. Business folks from out of town rub shoulders with regulars who live around the corner, and everyone seems to be in their element, especially in the grandest of institutions. This transient charm makes hotel bars more special for reasons we can't quite put our finger on, but it's certainly intriguing. Perhaps it's just me, but I find that people are ever-so-slightly more dressed up in a hotel bar, which certainly adds to the appeal.

That said, here are a few of my favorite hotel bars in the city that I would recommend visiting if you haven't already.

The King Cole Bar at the St. Regis opened last month after nearly a year-long renovation. I had been once before, six or seven years ago, and was eager to go back earlier this year; when I realized it would be closed until October, I was pretty dejected. A couple of weeks ago, after my girlfriend and I saw "Oh, Mary!" on Broadway (if you haven't seen it, I would make plans to go immediately, as it's an incredible show), we decided to see if we could get into the King Cole Bar, and we were fortunate enough to be able to.

The bar itself is small and cozy, with the much larger area outside of it perhaps still technically being King Cole Bar-adjacent. However, considering there's an abundance of overhead light, I wouldn't recommend sitting out there. Any good hotel bar provides an abundance of high-quality snacks, and King Cole Bar excels in this department. Legend has it, the Bloody Mary was invented here, nearly one hundred years ago.

Bemelman's, the gold standard (depending on who you ask) in hotel bars, has become a pretty polarizing topic in recent years. Its popularity has led to overcrowding and a shift in its atmosphere, which some seasoned New Yorkers find off-putting. While I agree with them that a wait of any kind is not ideal, I don't mind waiting a few minutes to get in. If the wait is short or nonexistent, Bemelman's still has to be one of the best rooms in New York City. I'm not uptown that often, but Bemelman's is at the top of the list when I am. One small reminder—as with the King Cole Bar, you want to be in the main room, not in the room outside of the main room. If you don't have a piano and Ludwig Bemelman's hand-painted wallpaper in sight of your seat, you're in the wrong room.

A buzzing Bemelman’s is perfect for any occasion, especially in the evenings when you have any number of their award-winning pianists serenade you as you drink your martini.

The Swan Room at the Nine Orchard may be the oldest on this list. However, it was not always a bar; it was used as a room for bank tellers for the first hundred years. It wasn't until recently that it was transformed into an incredible cocktail bar for drinks and light bites, along with the sixty-foot tall ceilings. I believe it to be Downtown New York's best hotel bar and a great option if going above Fourteenth Street is a rare occasion. Despite its grand ceilings, the space is designed so that each table feels very private despite being extremely close together. I suggest getting there thirty minutes to an hour before the sun goes down so you can see the room in the evening light lit up before it gets dark and transformed into a candlelit scene.

The Chelsea Hotel needs no introduction; however, an updated restaurant and bar—Cafe Chelsea—came with its remodel. Anyone who's read Just Kids by Patti Smith, a prerequisite for moving to New York City, knows the importance of the hotel. For me, the crown jewel is Cafe Chelsea, a French brasserie on the hotel's first floor. A perfect place for a lunchtime Kronenbourg all the way to a late-night martini.

We recently had lunch at The Mark, which is quite the spectacle. It had been a while since I'd been there, and I enjoyed returning. I loved the dining room and bar area, which was buzzing on a Saturday afternoon. We stumbled upon the John Lobb booth upstairs, complete with a shoe shine. This immediately shot to the top of my NYC to-do list—John Lobb Shoe Shine at The Mark. It's a great room and a great place to be on an uptown afternoon in the Big Apple.

The one place at the top of my list that I have yet to go to is the Fifth Avenue Hotel's Portrait Bar, which comes highly recommended. One of the things I adore about New York is the abundance of bars and restaurants to try, and everything is constantly evolving. With their timeless charm, traditional institutions are beautifully complemented by a wave of new up-and-comers. These newcomers are vying for attention and a place in the rich tradition of these old stalwarts.

So the next time you want to try somewhere new or mix it up a bit, whether in your hometown or New York, consider the hotel bar for any occasion. Just make sure to wear a jacket and a collared shirt. A tie wouldn't hurt, either.