New Orleans comfort
Dauphine isn’t about trends, and that’s a good thing
NEW ORLEANS— I was worried. It was the 10th anniversary of Katrina, and I shuddered to think of the effect that billions in aid would have had on a town whose character depended so much on a delicate balance of beauty and shabby.
For a place that has already been Disneyfied several times over, I feared the worst. So, I’ve never been as relieved checking into a hotel as I was at the Dauphine Orleans Hotel.
Price: Rooms are in the $150 to $200 (U.S.) range.
Location: The Dauphine (415 Dauphine St., dauphineorelans.com) is in the heart of the French Quarter, about 100 metres from Bourbon St., and 40 metres from the Double Play, open 24 hours, and as real a French Quarter bar as you’re going to find.
Dining: There’s a comfortingly low-key breakfast room that you have to go in and out of several doorways and courtyards to get to in the morning, but that’s it for food. And that’s as it should be. The last thing you want to do in the middle of the French Quarter is hang around your hotel. There’s a bar, May Baily’s Place, which was one of the famous Storyville bordellos, where you could have your first drink — but once again, you should definitely spread it around.
Comfort and design: This is what I liked most about the place. It is reassuringly neither pretentious nor derivative of some retrogressive notion of New Orleans. Walking into the light-coloured but heavily wooded lobby, and up to the room — which, though renovated in 2013, still has deeply unfashionable earth tones — you’ll find a bathroom shower head not in the form of anything meant to reproduce rainforest precipitation. In short, nothing to indicate the hotel’s been overtaken by the latest trends. It makes the experience deeply comfortable.
Service: Friendliness in New Orleans is expressed in volubility. Not using five words when one will do is considered rude. This seems to go double when you’re actually working in hospitality. From the front desk to the bellhop to the woman who brings your poached egg to your table at breakfast, be prepared for a constant stream of affable and thoroughly charming miniature conversations.
Downside: Obviously, if you want the latest in hotel technology and design — iPads to control the lighting, a pillow menu, and whatever the current colours you find in chains the world over — you will be disappointed. If you are in New Orleans because New Orleans is different from every other place on earth, and quite possibly the best thing about the United States, then you’ll be happy this hotel is as careless of trends as it is. Bert Archer was a guest of New Orleans Hotel Collection, which didn’t review or approve this story.