The honest review of The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel

Stayed here last year and the room and service were both great, but what really stuck with me was the room service chicken.

The room was great and the service was on point throughout the stay. Honestly the thing I still think about is the half chicken I ordered off the room service menu. It set a high bar before I went on to the Beverly Hills Hotel afterward.

It's one of my favorite hotels in New York for the location and the people-watching, but the gym needs real work.

The Upper East Side setting is iconic and the people-watching in the lobby is some of the best in the city. That said, I agree with others that the plant-based dining needs expanding and the gym really needs an upgrade to match everything else here.

This is easily one of my favorite hotels, staff included.

The onsite restaurant and bar were excellent, and the room, while small for what we paid, still nailed the New York feel. The location isn't close to some of the better restaurants in the city, but the neighborhood itself is very walkable. We're already planning to go back.

We were upgraded to the Central Park Suite and the views were jaw-dropping.

This was our first stay and it won't be our last. We spent time at Cafe Carlyle, Bemelmans, and Dowling's, and the staff were superb throughout. It made for a genuinely unforgettable weekend.

This Manhattan institution towers 34 storeys and reads as refined rather than flashy.

telegraph.co.uk/travel·Jul 2025·

Compared with brasher competitors in the city, this hotel plays a quieter, more elegant game, and it holds up well under that kind of scrutiny.

For me The Carlyle is pure New York, the kind of hotel that has stayed itself while everything around it changed.

I think of it as the real high-society New York hotel, the one that JFK Jr. and Lee Radziwill haunted and that still shows up in that famous Bowie photograph. Comparing it to somewhere like Chateau Marmont almost feels unfair, because The Carlyle is a proper hotel first and a scene second. That's exactly what I want when I'm staying there.

The Carlyle has kept up a high standard of service until pretty recently, and the renovated suite I stayed in was excellent.

It's a genuinely stunning property, and they did put real effort into the renovation. My own suite, done in the last five years, was still my favorite compared to nearby options like The Surrey across the street, even though the Surrey's service is also quite good. It's a different, quieter kind of luxury than something like Chateau Marmont, which has never really matched it on service.

I've stayed here many times over 25 years in hospitality, and the look of the place is genuinely striking even when the food service is just okay.

Compared to the sameness I see at some other luxury chains, this hotel's design and interiors feel unique to the city rather than generic. Food service can feel a bit routine, but staff have gone out of their way for me before, once quietly arranging the hotel's Bentley to get me to an event after overhearing me mention it.

Four nights in the Central Park Suite and it might be my favorite New York stay so far, though the food options let me down.

Service was top-tier and the staff made everything feel personal, and the suite itself was incredible. The problem was the plant-based food. For a hotel this iconic I expected fresher, more current options, and instead it felt stuck in another era, so I ended up eating out most nights. Everything else, though, was close to perfect and I'd go back without hesitation.

“for a hotel that iconic, i expected them to have fresher / newer plant-based dishes”in their words

I spent a week recovering from surgery in a Central Park Suite here and it turned into the most impressive hospitality experience I've had anywhere.

My travel advisor let the hotel know why I needed the stay, and they arranged a grocery pre-stock, a blender for protein shakes, and extra pillows before I even arrived. What I hadn't even thought to ask for was the entire floor kept private, which meant total quiet during a stay when that mattered enormously. On the day of my surgery the staff coordinated to get me from the car to the suite with minimal steps and no fuss, moving quickly and carefully while I was heavily medicated and in pain.

“day-of, the staff coordinated to act like I was the ultimate VIP”in their words

The service was still impeccable, but the room service food really let the stay down.

I've always loved The Carlyle but this trip changed my mind on room service specifically. A cheese plate I ordered arrived as three small cubes of cheese, and a pate plate was just as sparse. I'd booked premium rooms twice specifically hoping for a bathtub and neither upgraded room actually had one. I'll be looking at other options next time.

This was our first stay and I think we've found our new go-to hotel in New York.

Service was excellent everywhere we looked, from room service breakfast to housekeeping that kept the room spotless without us ever noticing them working. We went to Bemelmans three times during the stay and each time the drinks and the music were excellent, with tables kept ready for hotel guests even while a line of non-guests waited outside. That kind of choice, protecting the experience for people actually staying there, is what makes us want to come back.

The AC broke and the water ran brown for hours, and then we got charged for a balance the hotel had told us they'd waive.

This wasn't our first stay but it might be our last. Brown water came out of the faucet, shower and toilet for a couple of hours and it made us genuinely uneasy. The AC then stopped working one morning and we waited over an hour for an engineer. The hotel offered to cover a small balance we had and then charged us for it anyway.

Everyone from the front desk to housekeeping treated our four-year-old like a king, and breakfast was one of the best we've had.

The staff showered our son with little gifts and high fives the whole stay. Our Madison king room was clean with lovely murals on the walls, and breakfast, the omelette especially, was perfectly executed. It's easy to see why this hotel has the reputation it does, and Bemelmans with live jazz was a great way to end the evenings.

I stayed here for a gala and the service started the moment I walked through the revolving doors.

The lobby has this honeysuckle scent that hits you the second you arrive, and check-in was effortless. I'd booked a standard room but it felt nothing like a basic room, decent size for New York with an extremely comfortable bed. The bathrobe alone was worth mentioning, it was that soft.

Our room wouldn't warm up because of how old the building is, and weeks later I was diagnosed with scabies.

Staff sent a technician quickly when the heat failed, but told us the building's age meant there wasn't much more they could do beyond space heaters. A couple weeks after checking out I developed bites and was later diagnosed and treated for scabies. When I called to ask for documentation that the room had actually been inspected, the hotel wouldn't provide any report beyond a brief email claiming an outside company tested it and found nothing.

I stayed one night during the coldest week of the year and got a complimentary upgrade to a marvelous suite.

The staff could not have been warmer, literally and figuratively. The suite had beautiful furniture, plenty of space, a lower bed that I actually preferred, and one of the best showers I've had in a New York hotel. I don't usually stay at hotels like this, so the whole thing felt like a real treat.

The lobby feels intimate rather than cavernous, and my room had actual floor space, which almost never happens in Manhattan.

I went in hoping for old New York charm and got it, with a small boutique hotel feel I prefer over the bigger chains. The staff were friendly and quick without being annoying about it. That said, the price is steep, and I found myself wondering whether it was truly worth the nightly rate versus just paying for the history and the zip code.

Our deluxe suite was huge for New York, though the bathroom was tight and the room felt a bit dated.

Check-in hit a snag since our room wasn't ready, but the concierge made up for it with a later checkout. Breakfast service was just okay, our drink order got mixed up more than once, but housekeeping was sweet enough to bring extra sheets at 11pm without complaint. The location made up for a lot, since Madison Avenue shopping was a twenty-minute walk from the door.

One of the bar staff explained why Bemelmans was closed that night to outside guests and turned it into a memorable moment anyway.

We'd hoped for a cocktail at Bemelmans and arrived on a night it was closed to non-hotel-guests for an artist residency. Rather than just turning us away, the bartender walked us through the history of the hotel and the murals painted by Ludwig Bemelmans himself. It ended up being one of the better parts of our trip and made us want to come back and actually get in next time.

We tried to raise problems with the staff during our stay and they didn't seem to care at all.

For what this hotel charges and the reputation it trades on, the service felt incompetent during our visit. We waited an entire morning for our table to be cleared, never got so much as a welcome gesture, and had to ask room service ten times for something that never arrived. The front desk was cold enough that it felt more like a budget hotel than a place at this price point.