The Angad Arts Hotel
St. Louis, Mo.
A boutique hotel that actually has a new idea.
The Angad, a new hotel in St. Louis’ Grand Center Arts District, sounds like a hotel with a gimmick, and in fact it is: Guests pick their rooms not just by size, but also by color. Each guest room is outfitted almost exclusively, from walls to furniture, in a single bright hue: blue, green, red or yellow. Each color is supposed to represent and inspire a prevailing mood. Red is passion, of course. Blue, tranquility; green, rejuvenation; and yellow, happiness.
It turns out to be a pretty good gimmick, in large part because the rooms are comfortable and thoughtfully designed. I stayed in a blue room, and not only did it indeed feel tranquil, it felt cheerful, as I imagine all the colors would. The weather was cold and gray during my December visit to St. Louis, so returning to a bright and cheery hotel room proved a real rebuff to the winter blahs. (That’s additionally nice because the surrounding Grand Center Arts District—while it has impressive cultural offerings like the Fox Theater, the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Powell Hall, the home of the St. Louis Symphony—is pretty dreary to look at.)
I was impressed by the thoroughness of the execution. The custom-designed furniture is playful without any sacrifice of function; the lighting, such a challenge in so many hotel rooms, is stylish and fun but doesn’t require a master’s degree to operate. And when I arrived in my blue room, I was greeted with a tray of blue: blue macarons, blueberries, blue Jell-O, blue cotton candy and a blueberry muffin. If you’re not at least a little charmed by that, there’s not much any hotel can do for you.
Other strong points for the Angad include an exceptional restaurant, David Burke’s Grand Tavern, one of the few hotel restaurants I’d want to eat at even if I wasn’t staying there. During my three days in St. Louis, I had more meals at the Grand Tavern than I needed to, but I kept finding myself wanting to try additional things on Burke’s creative American menu: the “ritz crabcake benedict,” with a quail egg, country ham and tomato jam; the “crackling pork shank,” which could feed a small family; the filet mignon with shrimp and grits, the most flavorful filet I’ve had in ages. The Grand Tavern’s kitchen also serves room service 24 hours a day, which is unusual in a reasonably priced boutique hotel.
One other thing about the Angad that’s actually different from, say, a boutique hotel in New York or Los Angeles; the staff is refreshingly attitude-free and couldn’t have been more helpful, from the manager who helped scout out additional blue macarons for me to take home to my young sons, to a desk clerk who mapped out a detailed cultural plan of attack for me. It’s almost as if all the bright colors have rubbed off on them. angadartshotel.com
