Keeping Up Appearances
When it comes to gleaming luxury, call the unsung heroes
Brayan De La Cruz swirled a cloth along the inside rim of a US$260 (9,150 baht) cobalt blue Champagne flute. He raised it to the fluorescent lights overhead, and squinted up at it. “Look at that,” De La Cruz, 24, marvelled. “Perfect!”
Next to him, Kenrick Morante, 26, nodded. “It’s beautiful,” he said, adding, “It’s something I want to have in my house one day.”
The men, two of three glass attendants at the Baccarat Hotel i n midtown Manhattan, are responsible for ensuring that every crystal goblet, wine glass and votive sparkles like newly resurfaced ice. In practical terms, that means about $100,000 worth of stemware per night. So it is not surprising that they take their jobs seriously.
“There is a lot of pressure on our shoulders to do it quick,” said De La Cruz, who grew up in Guatemala. “It’s an art form. We’re the magicians behind the curtain.”
Magicians abound at New York City hotels. But guests, who are usually rushing around at a frantic pace, often take it all for granted. People may forget that behind every polished piece of cutlery, behind every special sauce and behind every switch that flushes a toilet from across the room, is a real live person.
There is Rachel Kaplan, 23, who in addition to serving as the digital marketing coordinator at the Dream Downtown is the hotel’s “scent sommelier”, responsible for choosing the fragrances that waft through the hotel.
Orion Berge, the director of beverage at the InterContinental New York Barclay, whips up house-made tonic water and vermouth to use in signature cocktails at the hotel’s bar, the Gin Parlour.
There is Adam Leonti, 32, the executive chef at Harvey, the soon-to-open restaurant in the Williamsburg Hotel in Brooklyn, who mills his own flour for pastas, breads and cakes — up to 200kg in an hour. And there is Kristin Sievert, 27, a business travel sales co-ordinator and family ambassador at the Plaza, which also means that she is the hotel’s Eloise expert. Her job entails updating staff members and guests on the “whereabouts” of the fictional six-year-old resident. (“You just missed her — she went to Central Park with Weenie and Skipperdee!”)
At the Peninsula New York, Sam Vitjathorn, the regional technology manager, oversees the electronic low voltage department, which operates and maintains the technology inside each of the hotel’s 235 rooms. This includes bedside panels that control the lighting, temperature, privacy button, television, radio, alarm clock, room service menus and draperies.
Some guests have been so enamoured with the high-tech panels that they have asked if they can buy them. “We unfortunately have to let them know that it’s proprietary to the hotel and not for sale,” said Vitjathorn, 61, a former engineer in the Thai navy who has been with the company for two decades.
At least they asked. At the Carlyle, guests have been known to walk off with the paper shades adorning the lamps dotting the tables at Bemelmans Bar. This is in no small part because of the painstaking craftsmanship of Hector Patino, a mural restoration specialist who paints them to look like the original scenes on the walls.
Patino has worked at the Carlyle for 16 years. It is his job to maintain every piece of art in the hotel, including Marcel Vertès’ celebrated murals in Café Carlyle and Ludwig Bemelmans’ murals of Central Park in Bemelmans Bar. He refinishes furniture, camouflages electrical panels and even deals with graffiti, such as it is.
“Someone drew on the wall in the women’s bathroom in hot pink marker,” said Patino, 58, who was born in Pereira, Colombia.
To him, it’s more than a job: Just for fun, he painted a beach scene on a wall in the employee cafeteria. His artistic skills go beyond restoration and painting: In 2011 and 2012, he won first place in the Coney Island Sand Sculpting Contest.
Patino’s work caught the attention of Radha Arora, the president of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, who bought six lamps, which start at $1,000 for custom pieces. “I love the historic and whimsical murals, so now I can always enjoy a special piece of New York in my LA home,” he said in an email. Joyce and Jeffrey Sudikoff took a little piece of New York home with them, too. In early 2014, the couple, who live in Los Angeles and on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, tried the homemade jam served with breakfast while they were staying at the Lowell Hotel. It was made by Marty Pizzuti, who has been a waiter there for 31 years.
The Sudikoffs, owners of Edgartown Books and Behind the Bookstore, a café and restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard, decided to serve the jam with biscuits and sell jars of it. “The packaging is nice, very country,” Sudikoff said. “They sell well.”
Pizzuti, 61, likes to call himself the hotel’s resident “jammelier”. His side gig began in the mid-1990s, in Europe, where he frequently vacationed. He would bring home special jams for the regular hotel clients, including the actors Jeremy Irons, Ian McKellen and Robert Redford.
“They really got used to it and I said, ‘I’ll go broke if I keep doing this’, so I started tinkering with it at home,” Pizzuti said. About five years ago he began making his own spreads — marmalade, preserves and jelly in flavours like clementine, kumquat and ginger pear — at his country home in the Poconos. In 2012, he officially founded Marty’s Home Kitchen, selling jars for $4.50 to $6.50 each through his website. The Lowell Hotel continues to offer his spreads during breakfast.
The glass at the Baccarat Hotel can also be bought, though it is decidedly more expensive, ranging from $100 for a Bordeaux degustation glass to around $1,000 for a decanter. There are more than 40 types of stemware, including six highball and lowball designs. It is Morante’s job to know the nuances of each, which he shares with others, including bartenders, servers and hostesses.
Morante, who grew up in the Bronx, the son of Ecuadorean immigrants, said that 18 months ago he did not know fine crystal from regular glass. “It took a good two months to learn,” he said, adding that he once bought a $500 vase for his mother. “She didn’t know what it was,” he said with a laugh. “I said, ‘It’s made in France! It has history!’.”
Caring for the crystal requires a high-alkaline liquid detergent, and the machine is set at 59C for the wash and 84C for the rinse. An attendant wipes each piece with a 100% cotton GarnierThiebaut napkin.
“What we do is an art form,” Morante said. “It can’t be done by everyone.”
Such dedication has not gone unnoticed. At 88, Bob Watson, an adviser at Valerie Wilson Travel, has had plenty of time to contemplate the finer points of alcohol consumption. He can be found at the Baccarat bar two or three times a week, sipping a martini from a $250 glass. Watson met Morante, who is also a bartender’s assistant, and the younger man left an impression.
“This is a kid who was born in the Bronx, and started out as a dishwasher and moved up and has real great passion for his job, which is keeper of the glassware,” Watson said. “When you look at a glass that costs $250 as opposed to what a normal bar would spend — $3 to $5 a glass — there is a difference.”
To him, the care that Morante puts into each glass dignifies the cocktail experience, making it all the more special. It’s an effort he appreciates, Watson said. “It tastes just a little bit better.”