The Waldorf-Astoria: the great gray dowager of Park Avenue personifies New York City at its best - Resort Of The Month

Travel America, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Randy Mink

Two of the hotel's restaurants flank the Lexington Avenue entrance. Oscar's, open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, is named after maitre d' Oscar Tschirky, the very first employee of the original Waldorf Hotel. For decades he was the arbiter of New York's social mores and culinary tastes. He is credited with the creation of such American staples as veal Oscar, lobster Newburg, Thousand Island dressing, and Waldorf salad.

Formerly a traditional coffee shop, Oscar's has been transformed into a stylish American brasserie. Crowd-pleasers include the breakfast and lunch buffets and $26 three-course dinners that feature house favorites like beef stew, chicken pot pie, and Yankee pot roast.

Bull and Bear, a classic New York steakhouse, serves hearty fare in a clubby atmosphere and is celebrated for the mahogany bar where guests enjoy cigars and cocktails while monitoring the electronic stock ribbon. Menu items include hamburgers ($16), filet mignon in Stilton and red wine sauce ($29), and a veal chop with caramelized onions and Stilton sauce ($38.50).

Inagiku, a Japanese fine dining restaurant, is on the hotel's 49th Street side, but is not operated by the Waldorf-Astoria.

As the hotel credited with popularizing room service, the Waldorf-Astoria offers it 24 hours a day. The room service continental breakfast ($24) includes fresh-squeezed orange or grapefruit juice, a pastry basket, and coffee or tea.

Many first-timers marvel at the extrawide, seemingly endless hallways on the guest room floors. Rooms feature Art Deco motifs, and no two are alike. All have marble baths. The Astoria Level's 87 upgraded rooms and suites allow use of the Astoria Lounge, which offers complimentary continental breakfast, afternoon hors d'oeuvres, dessert, and non-alcoholic beverages.

Two public areas worth a peek are the Grand Ballroom and Starlight Roof. Resembling an Old World opera house, the four-story ballroom is the setting for some of the city's most illustrious charity balls and banquets. Just above the enormous crystal chandelier, restorers removed a layer of paint that had covered a mythological hunt scene showing the goddess Diana chasing an impala and treated it with 22-carat gold leaf.

The Starlight Roof, the nightclub that epitomized glamor and sophistication in the 1930s and `40s, is now a venue for private social functions. Even couples who never had an opportunity to dance beneath the stars under its 18th floor retractable roof eagerly tuned in to radio broadcasts "direct from the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria." These programs brought the Big Band sounds of Count Basie and Glenn Miller into America's homes. For years, New Year's Eve with Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians was a Starlight Roof tradition.

Over the years, many other famous names have been associated with the Waldorf-Astoria. Apartments at the Waldorf Towers, a boutique hotel within a hotel, have been home to not only President Hoover, Frank Sinatra, and Cole Porter but to Gen. and Mrs. Douglas MacArthur, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, Cary Grant, and Joe DiMaggio. Other guests have included Nikita Khrushchev, Charles DeGaulle, the Shah of Iran, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ginger Rogers (star of the 1945 movie "Weekend at The Waldorf.")