THE FACTS ABOUT CITY CLUB HOTEL

USA New_York

There's a cluster of clubs on West 44th Street, but most grant access only after vetting your degree or your pedigree. At the City Club Hotel, a 65-room boutique hotel that opened this spring, the most noticeable rule is that the staff must wear Ted Baker. The City Club has the best aspects of club life: personal service, a central location, and the feeling on check-in that you've come home. Few homes, however, have the brilliant chef Daniel Boulud in the kitchen, chocolate-marble bathrooms loaded with Hermès products and Frette linens in the bedrooms. Designer Jeffrey Bilhuber has gone for a comfortable look, with polished cork floors and blankets with 'City Club' woven into them, adding a touch of dormitory chic; antique maps and old postcards decorate the rooms and all lights have dimmer switches. Boulud's restaurant, DB Bistro Moderne, is already a prime power-lunch spot serving modern US cuisine, but the hotel itself isn't a see-and-be-scene spot. WHEN TO GO Beware fashion collections in spring and autumn, when you can expect swarms of thin people with mobile phones WHICH ROOM TO BOOK Any room overlooking West 44th Street where the drama never stops CONTACT City Club Hotel, 55 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036 (00 1 212 921 5500; fax: 944 5544). Doubles £215-£257; suites £629