Every bit of France helps, not that New York isn’t already a lush garden, virtually a jungle, of sensual temptation. Still, when a touch of France comes to New York, our civilization quotient leaps up a notch. The whole town felt infinitely tonier this autumn when the Hôtel Plaza Athénée unfurled its red awning on the East 64th Street and posted its chain-draped huissier to greet guests at the door. Ready or not -- and it’s not -- the Plaza Athénée ia already a favorite soup kitchen for the rich and substantial: Its little jewel of a restaurant, Le Régence, has been claimed almost overnight by the orphaned richlings of the temporarily closed Quo Vadis. But I can’t guess who will pay from $195 to $370 for a not wildly luxurious double, a tub big enough for two dwarfs…and no bidet.
   

       There you have it. Our new Plaza Athénée is not very French. I guess I expected a clone of the Parisian place, vast, lavish, awesome palace, in its grandeur. This is a dollhouse version in the compact space once occupied by the Alrae. In our $245 double (plus $22 tax), with its giant space gobbling bed, there is scarcely enough room for a Jane Fonda workout. The towel rack does not heat. The marble tile in the bathroom and the closet’s built-in drawers suffer from shoddy workmanship. There is no clock. And except for one graceful little table, the reproduction furniture is definitely Orphan of the Empire and Louis the Klutz.
   
       The welcome is scarcely auspicious, but that doesn’t count. Hotels often open months before the kinks are conquered. The desk clerk invites us to be seated at the Louis XVI bureau plat, a naked desk, for the sign-in. It’s as ritzy as shopping for jewels at Buccellati. “Alas, we do not seem to have your reservation,” a most serious night manager announces, in a tone (possibly Swiss-tinged) somewhere between a scold and an apology. Already I feel guilty. It’s the most French moment of our stay. We cajole. After all, we did call, and then call again, to reconfirm. ‘It’s not a problem, “ he says, but clearly it is. ‘We can speak French,” my friend offers, in French. “That isn’t necessary,” he assures us, most seriously.
   
       And now he leads us through the lobby, “a rich-looking and quiet place,” exactly as interior designed Valerian Rybar promised, with great bouquets of flowers, murals painted to evoke Goblin tapestries, and stretches of marble. The elevator sulks. A bellboy rubs the electric eye feverishly. At last we rise. We have a corner room, 813, overlooking rooftop hardware on the east and few trees in an apartment-house courtyard below. The bed is enormous, its huge sweep of headboard upholstered in blue velvet.
   
       “You asked me for a big bed,” the manager reminded me.
   
       “I asked for a double.” I measure off a modest 54 inches along the half-mile of a quilted bedspread.
   
       “In Europe, we call that a twin-and-a half.”
   
       Our bags arrive. The bellman opens the armoire to show us the television set. “We hide it in the armor,” he observes. He flourishes the remote control and points out the safe for our jewels.” And the kitchen.” But no.  He is mistaken. There is no kitchen, and no fizz on ice, no cocktail peanuts, no flowers, no fruit. When I pay $245 for a night’s lodging, I expect champagne, chocolates, apricots, passion fruit, a cocoon of warmed towels, a tub for two to swim in -- not toddlers, but two trim adults. I expect the bed to be turned down. I want to laugh when I see how seductively the chambermaid has arranged my black lace nightgown on the edge of the bed. But no…no…none of that.
   
      Not that our lodging is without luxury. The wood hangers are free-floating, not affixed to the closet -- that’s classy. The magnifying mirror has its own built-in illumination. Great, if you’re fascinated with your pores. Each light switch glows in the dark. There are two bath-size bars of fragrant Nina Ricci soap—each in its own petaled plastic box, plus shampoo, bath gel, a shower cap in a compact vial, a bathroom phone, and two soft, fluffy bathrobes with the gray Plaza Athénée crest.

       The icy corridor is infinitely more palatial, with its pale-mauve paisley carpeting and couturier trim. Not quite Versailles, but assuredly French. Too bad the columns block the mirrors. It’s tough enough braving dinner without a designer label: I can’t even check to be sure my seams are straight.
   
       Where once there was a bridge over a moat leading to the Alrae’s shadowy Château Henri IV, a hideaway canteen for illicit lovers, there is now a handsome lounge (for drinks or afternoon tea) with deep-teal-blue walls and the Plaza Athénée’s fussily pretty dining room, Le Régence. Tonight is just a mopey autumn Monday, but what a crowd this is: half of Park Avenue, coiffed and Galanos’d. The air crackles with money. It might be contagious. We decide to stay. “It’s like sitting in a Wedgewood tureen,” my friend observes as we are banqueted beneath the over door mural of fantasy crustaceans. It’s true. We are framed in Wedgewood-green panels with white-painted shells and curlicues, facing mirror reflecting mirror into Wedgewood infinity beneath a faux Tintoretto cloudy sky.

       It’s too soon to make a judgment on a restaurant this ambitious and this young. The wall trim has yet to be lacquered, chandeliers are still to arrive, sconces must be hung, and the serving crew is still green. But it’s clear from a lunch and this first dinner that certain grandes dames, Suzy fodder, feel at home in sea-green-and-turquoise armchairs, and the house motto, “Seafood specialties of the first water,” is both honored and abused. Surely chef Daniel Boulud, out of the Roger Vergé kitchen by the way of the Westbury’s Polo, can’t be happy about the finny special of the day that has long been steaming away inside the silver rolling cart. “Is that just for show or to serve?” we ask the captain. Clever fellow. He responds, “I think I’d do it for you to order. This has been sitting here since very early.” (Yet half an hour later, waiters are still serving what must be ossified sole from the rolltop cart.)
   

       When we question the identity of the red-wine-by-the-glass, he is instantly alert: “It’s just a vin ordinaire .” My companion nods. “Très ordinaire.” And the captain whisks it away, suggesting a half bottle of Pomerol instead. Why do I feel so ambivalent? A long time, I derided the New Yorker’s appetite for haute abuse and humble pie at the mercy of Gallic hauteur. Now I miss it. Well, just a little. Here even the menu is translated (though the tiny script will have our blue-haired dowagers reaching for their bifocals).

       In time, the staff and the kitchen may be more comfortable with the curlicues of the cuisine—feuilleté de turbotin aux chanterelles de l'Orégon indeed. For now, the service is a cautious compromise between classic presentation and nouvelle cuisine arrangements served under silver domes, then dumped unceremoniously onto the plate, a process that destroys the symmetry of one’s silken, delicately cooked lobster.

       Turbotin steamed in paper arrives disintegrated, its toss of vegetables limp. Ribbons of grilled salmon are almost rare, their sauce ethereal. Little dumplings of lobster, spinach, and tomato sit in a buttery pool. Slightly overcooked rouget tastes of the grill unless you choose to dab on olive tapénade or the anchovy butter piped onto croutons served by its side.

       Dessert is almost anything you crave from the chariot of sweets: tarts or cake not memorable, sorbets sometimes melted, sometimes not, plus sublime almond tuiles or other confectionary doodads from a tiny tiered “tree”. All this -- canapés, a “prelude”, “entrées, cheese, and dessert -- comes on the $47.50 prix fixe dinner (with certain luxuries extra, such as richly voluptuous foie gras $14) but lunch is à la carte.
   
       A brisk walk, the excellent mattress -- “Few things are as important as love and Woody Allen movies,” my friend notes, “but a good mattress is one of them”--and unpolluted quiet coddle sleep. The wake-up call sounds promptly at eight. I manage to order breakfast without totally waking and promptly fall asleep again. Forty minutes later, breakfast rolls in. The waiter has his own key—a French nicety, at last—and the New York Times, without prompting.

       The $10.50 Continental breakfast is supposed to include freshly squeezed orange juice (strained, tainted by one bad orange), splendid Danish, a buttery croissant, brioche, preserves and honey in miniature, good American coffee (they ought to at least offer French), and fresh fruit. “You forgot the fruit,” I inform the waiter.

       “You’re right, Mrs. R---,” he says, addressing me by my nom de credit card, and returns promptly with fresh raspberries. Moist but not scrambled eggs, tasty but soggy bacon, brewed English breakfast tea, and odd little parsleyed potato squares trying to pass as hashed browns bring the breakfast bill for two to $34.51.

       In all, our night at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée cost $474.4 . If I wasn’t blissed out on raspberries and the $474.48 were coming out of my bank account, I think I would picket the place.

Click here to return to Vintage Listings Page