The Ritz-Carlton St Louis

The appeal of staying in a chain hotel, any chain, is a certain consistency, an ability to know what one can expect in advance. If you are visiting a place like Milan, New York, or Tokyo, you may prefer to be surprised by the seemingly endless variety of hotels; you may welcome the unexpected, and relish the satisfaction of seeing how different hotels find unique solutions to the same basic hospitality puzzle — how to make their guests happy.

But in a city where one's lodging options are constrained, a city with no market for independent, adventurous boutique hotels, the consistency of a chain hotel is a welcome guarantee. And few hotel chains manage to turn consistency into an advantage quite as well as Ritz-Carlton.

Thus the Ritz-Carlton St. Louis draws strengths from the brand's basic template, yet without that “where am I again?” feeling so common to bland corporate chains. Here the familiar drawing-room atmosphere of the wood-paneled old-world lobby is a welcome immersion into a world of luxury seemingly foreign to the upscale suburb this hotel calls home.

Thus it's almost like a vacation within a vacation — inside this hotel, you are no longer in St. Louis, but in some sort of Democratic Republic of Ritz-Carlton, a place where all bathrooms are marble and the Cigar Bar is the obvious nightlife choice. And this particular outpost has its own distinct personality — dinner is served not just inthe traditional fine dining restaurant but in the Wine Room as well, with the food chosen to complement the wines, rather than the other way round — and this must take some choosing, as this hotel boasts the most extensive wine list of any Ritz-Carlton anywhere.