The hotel's star attraction is the Redwood Room, a holdover from the old hotel. It's now a trendy bar and the Asia de Cuba restaurant. Actually I'm not sure if it's all that trendy since it didn't seem to have much of a crowd, but in any event it's a great looking space. We had lunch at Asia de Cuba while we were waiting for our room to be ready. The whole room is supposedly panelled with the wood from one redwood tree, and it makes quite a stately impression, especially when combined with the lofty ceiling heights. It was even more stately because we were the only customers.



As astute readers will remeber, we've eaten at this restaurant in New York and London, and as usual enjoyed the food. We shared a great plate of dumplings, for the Asia part of the name, then I followed with the Cuba part in the form of a big greasy Cubano sandwich wth some nasty yucca chips. Very filling, but the room is the real show stealer here. (Food-15, Decor-20, Service-15)

We stayed at the St. Martin's Lane Hotel, a very hip (at the time) hotel owned by Ian Schraeger, the inventor and key booster of the hip hotel, for better or worse. I was quite into this type of hotel for a while, but, like most of the market (and Ian himself) have pretty much moved on. The lobby is fun, like in all these places, lots of odd pieces like a giant fishbowl, big gold teeth and a huge chess set, for no particular reason. Disco music everywhere, including the lifts where you're also followed by a big pair of eyes on a tv screen. It also has the Asia de Cuba restaurant usually found in Schraeger's hotels, and a trendy bar. And the staff is very easy on the eyes. As an aside, I like the format and menu of the Asia de Cuba chain, particularly the New York one, but I know a lot of people find it tired and pointlessly fusion-y, so I suspect I'm in the minority here. Anyway, of course you know where this is leading, and that is that the rooms are tiny, nicely decorated, but tiny. It was quite a challenge for two adults with excess amounts of luggage to stay here for a week, but we survived. St. Martin's Lane Hotel-(7), Room-4, Facilities-8, Service-4, Wow-3 (because I'm a sucker for the overdesigned lobby). We didn't take many photos of the lobby because we were pretending to be too cool so we'd fit in, but the photo with Somchai in it was taken in our room, and I think you can see about half the room in the photo.