Sampling the St. Regis: Exaltation at a Price

ONE of the nice things about the St. Regis-Sheraton Hotel is the three staff members on call to serve each guest. Included, of course, is a maitre d'etage on each floor.

"We ordered better weather," the first of several said as he carefully hung our clothes. "But sometimes it doesn't arrive."

My wife, Suzanne O'Keefe, and I accepted his apology with all the condescension that comes with pretending one belongs in a place this swank. Over the course of the next 24 hours, we would summon him and his successors to bring midnight coffee as well as bath gel to replace what we had depleted, and to repair a clogged toilet.

The 6 A.M. toilet problem was addressed when a workman arrived less than a minute after the maitre d'etage summoned him, and solved less than five minutes later when he wished us a good day. "Truly unbelievable," Suzanne said.

The St. Regis is top of the hill, a wonderful, fantastical collection of rooms and experiences, of old and new memories. We found this true whether dawdling over a splendid tea, savoring chartreuse of lobster in the hotel's elegant restaurant, sleeping between sheets of Egyptian cotton, exercising in the health club decorated with murals of French landscapes and -- why not come out and say it? -- just imagining what it would be like to live this way all the time.

Normally, we live midst a three-ring, two-bedroom circus, with a 4-year-old named Roy and a 1 1/2-year-old named Guy. Meals last for 43 seconds max, but this is ample time for fish sticks to go ballistic.

Our nights are characterized by Guy, who is teething, waking up, say, four or five times. Roy will make a stumbling appearance twice. Musical beds follow, particularly since Guy decided ours was far cozier than his crib. We are tired, frazzled, forever prepared for the worst and don't care who knows it.

Might we be pardoned for wanting to escape to a perfect planet, just once? Of course! So it was that we learned of the St. Regis's special weekend deal. A room replete with Louis XV furniture, a chandelier, a king-size bed and a crystal dish of luscious minted chocolates rents for just $325, a $50 discount but still stratospheric even by Manhattan standards. That includes continental breakfast and Sunday newspaper.

Arriving at the St. Regis, on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street, is itself a grand New York experience. There is that bulbous sentry box, with white curtains. Above the marquee is the wonderfully anachronistic St. Regis Cab Call, lighted with incandescent bulbs. A doorman in top hat took our bag from the cab, and we realized our decision not to take the subway and walk a couple blocks was sound.

Check-in was pleasant. When asked what Sunday morning newspaper I would like, I of course said this one, as well as The Times of London. That provoked blank stares, then a suggestion that The International Herald Tribune might be a worthy substitute. Hardly. This might have been our biggest disappointment, and I've had bigger.

Room 711, ours, was stunning, even though it is said to be the hotel's smallest. Silk-covered walls, mahogany furnishings, fresh flowers, 12-foot-high ceilings. The bathroom was exquisite, featuring several kinds of Italian marble, golden fixtures, a cavernous tub and a separate shower. Towels and robes were luxurious. The sort of bathroom where you can spend time.

The phone, how to describe the phone? Well, first, there were four of them, each with two lines and a computer hookup. The main one by the bed had a computer screen that was flashing "Hello, Mr. Martin" as we arrived. Well, hello.

A 24-page instruction book and practice helped us navigate through this phone-cum-computer. It communicates in six languages, regulates the lights in each room, tells you the time anywhere in the world, runs the radio and television and even lets you talk on the phone.

The closet also has its element of technological sophistication. The light comes on when you open the door. When you step away, the light goes off. Then if you step back in front of it, bingo, the light shines again.

The closet experience sums up the magic wrought on this 20-story edifice that was the city's tallest when it opened in 1904. On the one hand, there is sure-handed preservation of what has always had something of the quality of a grand Parisian apartment building. The plaster moldings on the ceilings, for example. On the other hand, late-20th-century technology is quietly ubiquitous. It's all the result of a $100 million restoration begun in 1988 by I.T.T. Sheraton, the owner, and finished last September. The scope of the job is indicated by a reduction in the number of guest rooms to 363 from 557 to allow more space in each. New rooms have been added as well, including the Salon, a comfortably dignified sitting room with a 1904 fireplace.

We began to get very comfortable. Tea time found us in the Astor Court, another new room adjacent to the lobby. We settled into overstuffed chairs, and gazed approvingly at the new trompe l'oeil sky. A harpist added to the atmosphere. We worked our way down three stories of silver serving dishes. At the top were scones, right out of the oven. Next came tiny sandwiches; the goat cheese with sun-dried tomatoes was perhaps most tantalizing. At the bottom only in altitude were assorted decadent tartelettes and cakes.

Then we did the whole thing again, at no addition to the basic charge of $18 a person. Tea was regularly replenished.

This little world of sybaritic sippers exuded a murmur of nice conversation. The couple next to us seemed to agree that Club Meds were now attracting "a better class of people," and that they should not have an affair, at least for now. A chap across the way studied The Financial Times as if it were Scripture. Nearby, two quite young blond women gave every appearance of having been to places like this lots.

My wife then retired to our room: the bathroom, to be specific. She was shocked -- shocked! -- to discover the scale showed her four pounds heavier than what she knew to be the truth. Since this was after our Devonshire cream-drenched tea time, I said nothing. I retired to the bar, while Suzanne bathed.

The King Cole Bar is famed for Maxfield Parrish's beloved mural. It seems to show the king and his courtiers in wonderfully cynical moods. Or it might show a quite devilish in-joke perpetrated by the artist, one having something to do with a bodily function. But proponents of the second theory say the bar has been positioned too close to reveal it readily.

It was all enough to drive people to throw back cocktails at $8 or $9 a throw. As the barside crowd imbibed, they chattered in at least four languages, a recurrent reality in this very, very international hotel. Ah Yes, the Truffle Juice

For dinner, we chose the hotel's Lespinasse restaurant, named for a mademoiselle who ran one of the hotter salons in the Paris of Louis XV. Awarded three stars last year by The Times, it is a large and gilded room.

The waiter suggested that my choice of an appetizer, fricassee of mushrooms and artichokes with a truffle-juice-flavored chervil risotto ($14), might best be followed by sauteed ragout of Millbrook venison with a brandy pepper sauce ($28). He hit that nail on the head, by jove.

Suzanne's salad of quail, lentils and goose liver ($12), followed by chartreuse of lobster ($32) -- featuring sauteed lobster with a crispy covering, and without -- proved equally edible.

The high point of our $122.09 feast undoubtedly came when both main courses arrived, each covered by a silver dome. Two waiters appeared to remove the silver dishes simultaneously. We felt as if we were in a movie or something.

The air of unreality continued at bedtime when I felt the need for a slice of hot apple pie a la mode ($9.50). Room service, at 11:30 P.M., was prompt and polite. Good night, love. With heads supported on divinely comfortable pillows, we slipped into the kind of uninterrupted dreamland we had almost forgotten existed. Pursuing Health, Early and Alone

Habit, though, prevented me from sleeping past sunup. After dispensing with the problem toilet, I asked our maitre d'etage for a cup of fresh coffee. She was a pleasant new arrival from Berlin, reflecting the international quality of the St. Regis's staff.

I then found myself at the door of the health club, free to guests, on the hotel's lower level at 6:30 A.M. A sign said Sunday opening time was 9. I stopped at the front desk to confirm this. They promptly offered to open the club immediately, if not sooner.

For more than an hour, I was alone. I played on all manner of automated exercise machines, as well as lifting a weight or two. I enjoyed murals of finely manicured classical gardens almost as much as watching rock videos on television. I relaxed in a sauna turned on just for me.

I floated back upstairs and we enjoyed the continental breakfast of delicate pastries, fresh-squeezed juice and and strong coffee. We also requested and got a large bowl of four different kinds of fresh berries. Report From the Home Front

The time had come. "It's exactly 9:30, Doug," Suzanne said. We used the speaker phone to ask our baby sitter how the night had gone.

"Not too bad," Lisa chirped. Guy had been up three times, Roy only once. If she has had more restful nights, she was nice enough not to say it.

We then leisurely perused the paper, the rarest of pleasures. We sipped San Pellegrino and Evian mineral waters, both free from the otherwise quite expensive in-room bar.

Our last decision was what to order from room service for lunch. We feared the beluga malossol caviar at $155 for 50 grams might be too salty. So we went with the lobster ravioli and fresh fettuccine with young vegetables ($19.50 each) and were not disappointed.

Indeed, nothing on this little corner of heaven proved disappointing, unless one had operated on the misapprehension that heaven comes cheap. But home beckoned, and we were eager to get there. Don't ask me why.