The Dream Hotel Midtown

When standing on the PHD Terrace at the Dream Hotel Midtown, to the left, through a smattering of vines and tropical greenery, the bright lights of Times Square glitter. To the right, Manhattan’s skyscrapers overlook the hotel’s open-air bar, plonked unexpectedly, like a little oasis amid concrete and neon.

Having opened in October, 2015, the PHD Terrace Midtown (another PHD tops the Dream Hotel Chelsea) is an element of the Dream Hotel Group’s effort to enliven a neighbourhood more commonly associated with work days than nights out. Indeed, the PHD Terrace provides a convenient watering hole for those on business in the area, whether they be guests at the recently renovated hotel (a restored 1895 Beaux-Arts flatiron building) or not. On a weeknight, a suit-clad crowd gets cozy on cushioned wrap-around benches, sipping Hot to Trot cocktails (a mix of tequila, cucumber, and jalapeno) and ordering sliders, and fried chicken and waffle “tacos”. Downstairs, a dance floor reverberates with R&B beats.

If this all seems a touch on the clubby side, fear not—the Dream Hotel has endeavoured to provide a variety of nightlife options for the midtown set. Downstairs, in a newly refurbished lobby (which features an enormous vertical aquarium loaded with tropical fish), one may find the Rickey, a cozy bar and lounge that serves inventive craft cocktails (the Pomegranate Rickey, with its fruit-filled baton of an ice cube, and the Bourgeois Pig, made with black truffle vodka, are standouts). Care for a meal? In-house Italian restaurant Serafina serves 20 types of handmade, brick-oven pizza, pastas, and fresh seafood in a friendly, elegant, Fellini-inspired room.

Once sleepy past six, Midtown is experiencing a revival of sorts, a new energy of which the Dream Hotel Midtown is most certainly a foundational part.

Dream Midtown, 210 West 55th Street, New York, New York, USA 10019, 212-247-2000.

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