the heart of the hotel is the indoor-outdoor boé restaurant where you can sample a unique menu of seasonally evolving, eclectic new american cuisine

The Crescent is in the heart of Beverly Hills (zip code 90210). Walk three blocks and you’re on Rodeo Drive — though if you can afford to stock up on Versace and Mikimoto, you probably won’t be staying at the Crescent; it’s one of the less expensive options in the area, which means that some rooms are under $200 a night. And unless you’ve got some business here, there’s not much to do other than shop. Or eat: there are lots of cafes and restaurants in the area, and I especially recommend the Enoteco Drago around the corner on Canon Drive for good food and an excellent list of Italian wines. (Don’t go if you’re looking to sample the best of California vintages.)

If you read about the Crescent on hotel review sites, the negative ratings mostly mention the noise. These reviews are accurate. There is a bar downstairs which produces loud music until fairly late. The plumbing gurgles like a giant percolator in the ceiling. The walls are so thin you can hear your neighbor snore. Sometimes people also yell outside. If you’re a good sleeper, terrific; if not, consider another hotel, or check in on Sunday when the bar is closed and the occupancy low.

The place goes in for austerity in other respects, which may also disqualify it for travelers of a certain disposition. Here are some things that my room at the Crescent did not have:

  • The preprogrammed iPod mini promised by the hotel website.
  • Any form of hard liquor in the mini-bar. (I am not a hard drinker, but I had a sore throat when I arrived and sought the soothing touch of Jack Daniels.)
  • A safe.
  • A coffee-maker.
  • A closet. (There was a small stand-alone wardrobe.)
  • A chair.
  • A bathtub.
  • A working telephone.

The thing is, though: what the Crescent does at all, it does stylishly. It’s just that bathtubs, chairs, mini-bottles of liquor, and coffee-makers are not on the list. But the shower is hot and high-pressure, with a seat. There is a very nice scrubbing-loofah. The bathrobe is black waffle cotton: cool, comfortable, and slinky. The food packets in the mini-bar are generous — the prices are still, of course, higher than you’d pay in a grocery store, but you don’t quite feel that you’re forfeiting all self-respect just by opening one of the packets of chips. The bedding is excellent. The room service is prompt. The wireless internet requires no finicky set-up.

As to the decor, it belongs to the black-grey-and-white school of boutique hotel decoration, but the combination of textures makes the effect soothing rather than stark. A grumbly reviewer somewhere else remarked that the bathroom looked like what he’d expect from an East German prison, and I laughed when I read this, because I knew just what was meant — the bathroom is done in severe grey concrete — but the effect is not (in my opinion) depressing or unfriendly. Mostly, I think, the aesthetic affected is a relaxing simplicity: to provide what is needed, do a good job with those items, and avoid trifling at all with anything else. The selection doesn’t quite match my own ideas of what’s necessary and what’s a frivolous distraction — I could do without the mini-bar canister of Oxia Personal Oxygen and I don’t need a choice of Voss or Perrier water, but I do use coffee-makers and bathtubs. Nonetheless, I can see this being someone’s idea of the right balance, and I respect that.

Even so, there are some things that were plainly broken. The telephone didn’t work and could not be fixed, despite several complaints. The promised iPod was not there, which is not a huge deal (I have my own iPod, after all), but which seems out of sync with the hotel website. There was a television, but it was tucked away into a corner such that it would be hard to watch from bed. I turned it on only to confirm that it functioned, but the prospect of trying to watch it didn’t much appeal. Finally, it was hard to enjoy the room service meals to the fullest when the desk didn’t have enough space to hold the tray, and there wasn’t a chair anyway.

Overall, though, it’s fair what the hotel website says about itself: the heart of the hotel is the restaurant and bar downstairs, Boe. When you check in, you may have to weave a path through this area; may have to pick your way up the staircase between customers; may find that your way is blocked by someone chatting up a girl named Romy. Boe aims to be both hip and cozy, like the living room of someone with a great caterer and gorgeous friends. A fire burns in the fireplace at all hours, and in the evening the staircase is decorated with candles. The food is great — the seared sea scallops properly tender inside, the enchilada cheesy without being too heavy. The drinks are expensive but superb.

That living-room feeling carries over to the hotel service as well, so personal and friendly that it’s hard to get too angry about the lapses (like my unfixed phone) and easy to be charmed by the touches of thoughtfulness (a fresh orange left at the bedside after housekeeping, or the array of garnishes brought with my room-service martini). The people who work here are unjaded; many are young. Sometimes routine requests catch them by surprise. I startled one staff member just by asking for a pot of tea for my room, though he did then search the kitchen until he had improvised the basic ingredients: not a tray with a tea set laid out on crisp linen, but an individual teabag, a mug, and a pitcher of hot water that he helped me carry back to my room, free of charge. They’re a little unprofessional, in other words, but unprofessional in the best possible way: they don’t project omnicompetence, and they don’t take charge of your problem for you; but they’re willing to collaborate on your problem with you, and sometimes that’s just as good.

If you’re the kind of person who routinely sends back restaurant meals, though, don’t go. You won’t be satisfied, and it makes me sad to think of the charming staff taking the brunt of your displeasure.

Oh, and I did try the Oxia. More about that here.

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