Terry S.
Yelp
I ended up at the LaGuardia Plaza Hotel on one of the hundred recent days when the Departures boards at LGA flashed red with FLIGHT CANCELLED, repeated like a bizarre chalkboard punishment next to almost every flight. Bad weather, the airline said -- but I didn't see any.
After my own connection joined the army of CANCELLED flights, I spent too much time optimistically trying to get home that same night and not enough time plotting my Plan B hotel. Hundreds of other groups *also* needed a layover room; I ended up with very limited choices. In the end, I had to accept the lofty (or opportunistic) $250 plus price tag and was swept with a shuttle-full of other prisoners of circumstance.... to this particular hotel.
The price was a bummer, but I had high hopes that the marginal cost was paying for a surplus of comfort or overall luxury. After all, this was the PLAZA.
It was *some* Plaza, anyway. After a quick look at the wavery, featureless, 80s-era door frames (and a really determined and enormous moth on walkabout on the shirt of the man in front of me in the reservations line), I had to lower my expectations. "It's an airport hotel," I told myself. "Ignore the word Plaza and you'll be happy."
So then I was at an airport hotel. And I don't expect a lot of an airport hotel. It doesn't have to be close to anything fun; it doesn't have to have a view; it doesn't even have to be super quiet. There are airplanes nearby that need to take people places, after all. But I do very much want a well-maintained space; and a restaurant or bar that can make me a good dinner and a drink. But even these requirements turned out to be too much for this place.
The staff were friendly and my room was clean, but the two beds (which I had accepted because a single bed was for some reason much more expensive) were only slightly larger than "twin," meaning my feet hung off the bottom and I had to un-tuck the sheets. The decor brought the word "garage sale" to mind; the lights flickered and buzzed, and the bathroom light turned itself on in the middle of the night. When I flicked it back off, it made a terrifying "Tzzt" sound. If my electric at home did this, I would fire my husband.
But the worst and most depressing feature of this hotel is the restaurant, Elements... I *tried* to review that separately but it does not appear to exist in Yelp. So here goes!
_________ Elements Review _______
On the surface, Elements looks pretty nice for a hotel restaurant: clean, brown-and-white, high ceilings, laid out around the all-important bar. I imagined a friendly chat with a random developer over a good meal and a Belgian beer.
I got the chat!
The place was mobbed because of the flight cancellations, and there were only two bartenders plus a lone and harried waitress. For the most part, the three women got the job done. But my Old Fashioned -- there were no Belgian beers -- was unrecognizable: reddish because it had maraschino cherries and candied cherry juice instead of orange peel; full of tiny ice cubes when it should have had one large, slow-melting cube; and the bitters seemed to have replaced or at least overwhelmed any alcohol that might have been there. It was bitter to the point of being undrinkable even after the ice had completely melted.
I love an Old Fashioned. I have never had one I didn't like! I doggedly sipped, hoping the melting ice would change something, and I kept making horrible faces.
My neighbor, the developer -- someone had decided to grant that particular wish -- also had a mixed drink that did not bear resemblance to the mojito he had ordered. The bartenders seem to have substituted basil for mint, and I guess there wasn't much time for muddling, because the rigid leaves were sticking in his teeth. He was making more polite faces, but he was very unhappy.
My meal was disappointing, but I am grateful for the whim that made me choose the French Onion Soup instead of the Margarita Pizza. My developer-neighbor was not so lucky.
The Onion Soup was mostly cheese. It was not terrible cheese, and I do like cheese very much. But I had ordered *soup*, not cheese. Not only was there less than an inch of soup under the cheese, but the soup was not hot. Lukewarm soup had no way to melt the thick ceiling of cheese under which it cowered, and consequently I could barely move the wall of cheese to eat either it or anything else. I almost asked for a sharp knife.
Still, I felt a bit relieved: the Margarita Pizza was wet, limp and appeared to have been microwaved.
Ick. Never again.
