Tip Top Tip Top Tap on Magnificent Mile
Written: May 02 '05 (Updated May 02 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Firm quality of luxury, sleep relaxation, great location, polite staff, good food, wireless downstairs
Cons: Plastic plants, mix and match decor, loud bathroom fan, no wireless Internet in rooms
The Bottom Line: The location, comfort and quiet dignity of the Allerton easily overcome the its little shortcomings. It is Chicago's Tip Top Tap, indeed.
|
|
|
| jcgrow's Full Review: The Allerton Hotel - Michigan Avenue |
I consider myself a business denizen of downtown Chicago, traveling here often on consulting trips. I usually stay on the Magnificent Mile (upper Michigan Avenue), in order to be close to the office of my client here. For years, I have looked up and seen the giant red neon sign, reading: Allerton - Tip Top Tap. (That's a wonderful use of alliteration that sticks in the mind forever after seeing it.) This month, visiting Chicago several times on business, I decided to finally book myself a room in the Allerton to see what lay behind the red neon.
The Basics
What you'll find inside the Allerton is a typical Chicago luxury hotel. There is some history to the Allerton Hotel, which opened in 1924. The Tip Top Tap cocktail lounge opened in the 1940s, but is, sadly, gone. The Tip Top Tap hasn't been there since the 1960s. Too bad. I wanted a martini up high.
The Allerton has been operated by Crowne Plaza since 1999, and they seem to do a fair job of it. Everything you would expect in a mid-level luxury hotel is here. The hotel certainly is not the tops, but it does offer a very welcoming, plush and comfortable place to stay.
Magnificent Location
The Allerton is directly in the middle of the Magnificent Mile, on the East side of the street, with half of the Magnificent Mile to the north, and half of it to the south. The Magnificent Mile is a section of Michigan Avenue that serves, essentially, as a gigantic urban, outdoor shopping mall (with some prestige business offices mixed in for variety). You'll find a good number of high-end shops up and down the avenue, which is jam-packed with pedestrians any time of the year, even in the winter. but especially in the warmer months of the year.
Those of you who are Mac fans will be pleased to know that just 30 feet outside the Allerton's front door, there is the largest Apple store in all of the United States. It's so large that it has two stories, with plenty of Apple computers available for shoppers to try out for themselves.
Help
Allerton staff are great people. They're approachable, not allowing their funny hotel costumes to get in the way of humanity, but they have a real dignity as well. Everyone, from the room service staff to the maintenance staff, has treated me with the sense of genuine, neighborly eagerness to be of use, without acting the part of the groveling servant.
The one thing I hate about hotels like the Allerton is that you have to fight to keep your hands on your own bags. When I travel with a small briefcase and a light carry-on bag, I really don't want to pay for someone to meet me at my room with my own bags, but I suppose that if you like to play the Zsa Zsa with a cartful of bags, it's a nice service. In any case, the Allerton staff obligingly backed off when I suggested that I prefer to keep my own luggage with me.
Mix Match Decor
Perhaps the designers refer to the style as New Eclecticism. All I know is that the furnishings of my room don't match. The chairs have different shapes and upholstery, and the couch in my sitting room is of another style altogether. I have a tall, upward-pointing floor lamp, one table lamp that is roughly-based upon some kind of urn, and then a false wrought iron desk lamp that has been artificially roughened to make it appear old. The bedside lamps have a separate. cracked glaze ceramic style, and on the wall there's a sort of sconce that seems to be attempting an ancient Greek look, without quite pulling it off. Did the ancient Greeks have sconces? The curtains are a strange, thick fabric the color of lime, raspberry and orange sherbert.
I am desperately in search of a design theme other than Stuff We Can Find To Put In a Nice Hotel Room. Oh well. It's all very comfy.
Buttons to Nowhere
One piece of advice I have to the Allerton is to replace its phones. The telephones are practically covered in little useful buttons that connect the visitor directly to a variety of useful services - like a room service, or a wake up call, or the business center. The problem is that the buttons don't work. All of those little useful services have been disconnected, and you have to dial 0 to get to them through the front desk. This is a common problem in mid-luxury range hotels these days, but a matter than can be simply corrected. I just feel a little bit dumb pressing buttons on telephones and waiting for nothing to happen.
Sleep Overkill
The Allerton seems to be taking part in a sleep experimentation program organized by Crowne Plaza executives in an attempt to build a unique brand position for the hotel chain. The room features a sleep kit, including a relaxation CD, lavender spritz for the bed sheets, ear plugs, a sleep mask, a nightlight in the bathroom, and big plastic clips that look like they are intended to keep potato chips fresh, but are stuck on the sherbert-colored curtains instead.
The earplugs are much appreciated. Nice as it is, the Magnificent Mile in Chicago has an awful lot of traffic background noise, and a bit of silence is refreshing. Of course, the relaxation CD is also there to cover the noise, but most of the CD consists of a guided relaxation exercise. Guided relaxation exercises are just not the kind of thing I'm willing to follow in a hotel room with a recording supplied by complete stranger. The idea just creeps me out. Luckily, there is a final track on the CD which is nothing more than acoustic relaxation without words, and the CD player by the side of the bed has an automatic repeat function that you can use to play just this final track over and over again while you fall asleep.
Corded Internet
Wireless high speed Internet access is one of those things that I look for in a hotel, and I was disappointed to discover that the Allerton does not offer wireless high speed Internet access in its rooms. There is an ethernet cable, but I like to move around while I write, and the table where the ethernet cable comes out of the wall is right in front of a big mirror, which means I must watch myself as I work on the computer. I have a big nose, and it gets in the way of the words sometimes, if I have to look at it.
My disappointment is soothed by the fact that the Allerton offers free wireless Internet access in its 3rd floor lobby. That's quite nice to use if you're waiting to meet someone, or just like to watch people while you fetch your email. The sofas in the lobby are mighty comfortable, so it is no real sacrifice, except for the fact that it would be frowned upon if you visited the lobby wearing nothing but the plush terry robe that is given to you for the length of your stay by the hotel.
Food
Oh, it's good. I particularly recommend the french onion soup, which has the epitome of that flavor that the Japanese refer to as umami - and yes, it is that special flavor of richness found in french onion soup that would encourage one to exclaim "Ooooh, Mommy!"
It sounds mundane, but I also must say that the pizza offered by room service is quite nice, with a good crust and honest sauce. I make a point of saying this because, although the people of Chicago make a big deal about their pizza, I have to say that from my experience with Chicago pizzas, I'm not impressed. The places that deliver around the Magnificent Mile have great publicity, but pizzas that just don't live up to the hype.
For a more dignified entree than pizza (as if dignity means anything when eating in one's hotel room), go for the beef tips, which are luscious, but skip the lamb, which is a bit harsh on the palette.
Little Irks
There is a lovely painting of an fishing village on the wall. I don't know why it's in this hotel, given that we are in the Midwest, and any fishing villages that ever might have been present on Lake Michigan are now long gone. In any case, the painting is obscured by an atrocious plastic plant. It's bad enough to have any plastic plant in a hotel room, but this one is gussied up to resemble a topiary. The problem with that is that the plastic sticks coming from out of a central wooden post are clearly visible, even though the idea of the plastic plant is that it is supposed to be growing out of two thinner trunks that twine around the post. This is an obviously fake topiary that cannot even make up its mind about where it does not grow from. It is beneath the Allerton.
A final complaint is small, but nagging: One cannot turn on the light in the bathroom without getting a loud ceiling fan that stays on as long as the light turns on. There ought to be second switch to spare a toothbrusher the irritation of the sound of manufactured wind.
Make a Reservation
All in all, I very much enjoy the Allerton, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a feeling of deep comfort while visiting downtown Chicago. The downsides that I mention here are merely for the information of potential visitors. I do not think that they accumulate to any sufficient degree to warrant the choice of another hotel.
Visit the http://www.allertonchi.crowneplaza.com/ to make a reservation.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
jcgrow
|
|
Location: Trumansburg, New York, United States
Reviews written: 238
Trusted by: 50 members
About Me:
Editor of IrregularTimes.com, looking at the world at through an irregular lens.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.